object, he should now move the adjourn- | tatingly replied, "Yes; I will bring it forment of the debate till this day week. Motion agreed to. Debate adjourned till Tuesday next. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT WITHIN PRI SONS BILL-[BILL 36.] (Mr. Secretary Gathorne Hardy, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Attorney General.) COMMITTEE. Order for Committee read. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair." MR. GILPIN said, he rose to move the Amendment of which he had given notice "That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient, instead of carrying out the punishment of death within prisons, that Capital Punishment should be abolished." He felt some difficulty and hesitation in asking the attention of the House to the Motion of which he had given notice. In the first instance, he would express his extreme regret at the absence of his hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Ewart), whose name had been so closely connected with the amelioration of the criminal law, and who had done so much to abolish capital punishment. His reason for bringing forward this Motion now was, that he had a strong conviction that capital punishment was inexpedient and unnecessary; that it did not ensure the purposes for which it was enacted; that it was unjust in principle; that it involved not unfrequently the sacrifice of innocent human life; and further, that it afforded an escape for many guilty of atrocious crimes. Holding these opinions, he could not permit to pass an Act which proposed to re-enact the punishment of death without entering his solemn protest against it, and submitting the reasons why he thought it inexpedient that capital punishment should be inflicted. The late division on this question was no test whatever of the feeling of the House on the question of capital punishment. He was now asked, "Will you bring forward a Motion for the abolition of capital punishment in the face of the frequent murders, of the increase of the crime of murder-at a time when no doubt there are influences at work"-to which he would not particularly allude -"which aggravate the crime to an extent almost unprecedented?" He unhesi ward now, because, if my principle is good for anything, it is good at all times and under all circumstances." He would remind the House that the atrocious murders which were now being committed, and which they all so much deplored, were murders which were committed under the present law, and he believed would not be committed under the altered state of the law which he desired to introduce. The question he had to deal with was- by what means could they best stop the crime of murder? He disavowed emphatically any sympathy with crime-he disavowed any maudlin sentimentality with respect to this question. He was sure his right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) would with him that the question agree between them was, how best to prevent the crime of murder. He said, without that almost in fear of contradiction, every instance in which capital punishment had ceased to be inflicted for certain crimes those crimes had lessened in frequency and enormity since its abolition; yet, as regarded murder, where the punishment of death was still retained, the crime had increased not only in number but enormity. In proof of that allegation he might quote statistics; but the fact was well known, and he would not take up the time of the House by doing so. It was also not to be denied that this was a question upon which there had been a very considerable change in public opinion within a comparatively short period of time. Some of those who had the administration of the law in their hands, and some of those who had occupied the position of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), had come to the conclusion, at which he arrived many years ago, that capital punishment was undesirable-that it was unnecessary—and that the time had arrived when some other system ought to be adopted. Surely they were not succeeding in patting down murder. They had for centuries tried the lex talionis-the life for life principle-and they had miserably failed, and murder still stalked abroad. Earl Russell, in the introduction to the new edition of his work on the English Constitution, thus expressed himself as being favourable to the abolition of capital punishment "For my own part, I do not doubt for a moment either the right of a community to inflict the punishment of death, or the expediency of exercising that right in certain states of society. But when I turn from that abstract right and that abstract expediency to our own state of society when I consider how difficult it is for any Judge to separate the case which requires inflexible justice from that which admits the force of mitigating circumstances-how invidious the task of the Secretary of State in dispensing the mercy of the Crown-how critical the comments made by the public-how soon the object of general horror becomes the theme of sympathy and pity-how narrow and how limited the examples given by this condign and awful punishment-how brutal the scene of execution-I come to the conclusion that nothing would be lost to justice, nothing lost in the preservation of innocent life, if the punishment of death were altogether abolished. In that case a sentence of a long term of separate confinement, followed by another term of hard labour and hard fare, would cease to be considered as an extension of mercy. If the sentence of the Judge were to that effect, there would scarcely ever be a petition for remission of punishment, in cases of murder, sent to the Home Office. The guilty, unpitied, would have time and opportunity to turn repentant to the Throne of Mercy." mercy, and mercy was extended. Then there was the case of Alice Holt. She, too, was pregnant; but the Home Office, having got wiser by this time, would not bring her to trial until after the birth of her child. Then they brought her to trial, sentenced her to death, and carried out the execution. Against the injustice of such a proceeding he had at the time most earnestly protested. A practical point most serious to the interests of society was this: numbers of criminals had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes, because of the unwillingness of juries to incur the possibility of convicting the innocent. He believed it was on this ground that Mr. Waddington, the former Under Secretary at the Home Office, came almost to the opinions that he (Mr. Gilpin) entertained. He knew it did not appear in his evidence Now, the first objection which he (Mr. before the Royal Commission; but Mr. Gilpin) had to the punishment of death Waddington told him though looking at was its essential injustice. They gave the the matter from a different stand-point and same punishment to the crime of a Rush urged by different arguments, still he had or a Manning as they did to that of a very nearly come to his (Mr. Gilpin's) Samuel Wright, and other less guilty per- opinions that it would be desirable for the sons. They had, under the present law, interests of society at large that the aboliconstant occurrences in which the feeling, tion of capital punishment should take intellect, judgment, and Christianity of place. He (Mr. Gilpin) believed it was the public were against carrying out the not too much to say that there were men extreme penalty, even in cases where the and women walking about red-handed law was clear and unmistakable as to the amongst us-persons unquestionably guilty matter and there was every reason to be- of the most atrocious murders-who, had lieve that it had been justly administered the punishment for their crimes been other by the Judge who had condemned the than capital, would be now immured in criminal. Take, for instance, the case of prison, utterly unable to repeat such crimes the woman Charlotte Harris. She was as those for which they had been already sentenced to death, being enceinte at the tried. This arose from the unwillingness of time. According to custom she was re-juries to convict-an unwillingness which prieved until her babe was born, and then if the sentence of the law had taken its course she would have been hanged; but public opinion in the meantime had become so strong that the Home Office, even, he believed, in opposition to the judgment of the Secretary of State, had to give way, though the case was a fearful and atrocious one, and her life was spared. Richard Cobden, writing to him (Mr. Gilpin) with reference to this case, said "You are right. It is truly horrible to think of nursing a woman through her confinement, and then with her first returning strength to walk her to the scaffold! What is to become of the baby at its birth? is it to lie upon the mother's breast until removed by the hand of Calcraft? Oh, horrible! horrible! Could you not have a meeting to shame the authorities." Well, there were several meetings-one of 40,000 women, headed by Mary Howitt and they petitioned the Throne for did them honour-unless they had evidence positive and indisputable. It was right that evidence which would suffice to convict a man where the punishment would be fourteen years, or imprisonment for life, should be regarded as utterly insufficient to convict a man when the sentence would send him out of the world. Some twenty years ago Charles Dickens wrote a series of letters in The Daily News on the subject of capital punishment; and in one, headed "How Jurymen Feel," he said "Juries, like society, are not stricken foolish or motionless. They have, for the most part, an objection to the punishment of death; and they will, for the most part, assert it by such verdicts. As jurymen in the forgery cases (where jurors found a £10 note to be worth 398., so as not to come under capital punishment) would probably reconcile their verdict to their consciences by note was almost nothing; so jurymen, in cases of murder, probably argue that grave doctors calling to mind that the intrinsic value of a bank have said all men are more or less mad, and therefore they believe the prisoner mad. This is a great wrong to society; but it arises out of the punishment of death. And the question will always suggest itself in jurors' minds, however earnestly the learned Judge presiding may discharge his duty-which is the greater wrong to society?-to give this man the benefit of the possibility of his being mad, or to have another public execution, with all its depraving and hardening influences? Imagining myself a juror, in a case of life or death, and supposing that the evidence had forced me from every other ground of opposition to this punishment in the particular case than a possibility of immediate mistake or otherwise, I would go over it again on this ground, and, if I could by any reasonable special pleading with myself find him mad rather than hang him, I think I would." He had alluded to the numbers of persons who had escaped justice altogether, because juries could not make up their minds to convict under such circumstances; but there was another view of the case, and that was the execution of innocent persons, and when he said innocent persons, he meant persons innocent of the crimes with which they were charged. He would not delay the House by quoting what he quoted on a former occasion-the evidence of Daniel O'Connell, or the evidence of the present Lord Chief Baron, as to the frequency of the execution of innocent persons. But he would call the attention of the House to a case which occurred in 1865-that was the Italian Pollizzioni, who was tried for the Saffron Hill murder, when one of the most humane of our Judges expressed his entire belief that the conviction was right. Pollizzioni was sentenced, and was within Law had a few days of being hanged. done its best and its worst, when Mr. Negretti-of the firm of Negretti and Zambra-heard of the case, and became convinced that the man was innocent. He busied himself in getting evidence, which at last satisfied the Home Secretary, not that the prisoner deserved secondary punishment, but that he was absolutely innocent, and then he was taken out of the condemned cell. But for the interference of a private individual this man would have been hanged. It might be said that a case like this was very exceptional, and God forbid that it should be frequent; but within a few months there was the case of another man at Swansea, Giardinierioddly enough, also an Italian-who was sentenced to death, and was within a short Evidence was, time of being hanged. however, procured which showed him to be innocent. These were solemn facts. Charles Dickens said Prisons Bill all who may chance to read this Hence there should be a reasonable hesi- stated, in reply to a Question by Mr. "I could mention six or eight instances within my own knowledge in which men have been acquitted, purely upon the ground that the punishment was capital." And in reply to Mr. Bright, the learned gentleman said— "I know that juries have acquitted men clearly and beyond all doubt guilty of murder, and some of the very worst murders that have ever been committed in this country, and have done punishment of death. They would have convicted so simply because the punishment has been the if the punishment had been imprisonment for life, or any punishment short of taking the life of the man, and they have seized hold of any excuse rather than be agents in putting capital punishment into operation." This was not unreasonable; because a whether he or she were innocent or not. [executed no time was allowed to show It was only necessary again to refer to whether the crime was the result of a disthe well-known case of Samuel Wright, eased brain, or of that moral obliquity a working carpenter in Southwark, to which was rightly the subject of punishshow the inequality of the law, and that, ment. He felt grateful to the House for too, resulting simply from the character of the indulgence they had shown him on the punishment. He believed no jury a subject which had occupied his attention would have found Wright guilty on the for twenty years. Now, he would ask, charge of murder, and that no Judge but what was capital punishment? The punone would have left him for execution. ishment of death? No, it was not that. The prisoner, it was true, pleaded guilty The sentence of death was decreed upon to the crime, and neither the counsel nor all of us by a higher than a mortal Judge. the Court could induce him to retract the We but antedated the sentence, and by plea; but it was clear from the facts of how much this was done no man could the case that this was not a case of wilful know. A man might be sent to the murder. The man was awoke in the gallows who, according to medical opinight, and was dragged out of bed by a nion, could not live three months-and, violent woman with whom he lived. He in fact, a man had been recently executed, struggled with her, and seizing his razor, of whom the medical man said he could not which was lying in his way, without pre- live three months if he died in course of meditation he killed her. He was brought nature, and another man with a prospect up for trial, and he pleaded guilty. They of a long life. But what was the punishcould not expect a carpenter to be trained to ment? It was not death; it was antedating the niceties of the law, and it could not be the sentence passed upon us all by the Most wondered at that he, a conscientious man, High. From ten thousand pulpits in the determined to plead guilty. Almost at the land, they were told, and rightly told, that last moment a very large body of his fellow- for the repentant sinner the gates of Heaven working men came up to the Home Office were open, whether his death was a violent to plead that his life might be spared. one or not; and yet in the face of those The present Government was not then in sermons they said he did not mean that office. [Mr. BUXTON: Who was the Home the Judges say it in so many wordsSecretary] His right hon. Friend the "Your crime is so great that there can be Member for Morpeth (Sir George Grey). no forgiveness with man; but appeal unto It was thought, most unwisely in his God and he may forgive you if you appeal opinion, that the appearance of so large a in the right way and pay due attention to body of working men on such a subject was your religious advisers." We told the crian attempt to terrorise the Home Office, minal in one breath that his crime was too and a deaf ear was turned to their plead- great for man to forgive-that he was not ings, which might wisely have been granted. fit to live on earth, but we commended him Samuel Wright was executed, and that in to the mercy of the Highest. We said, in the face of Charlotte Windsor, the hired effect, that those feet "which would leave murderess of babies, who, to solve some no stain on the pure pavements of the of the subtleties of law, was brought from New Jerusalem would leave the polluting one part of England to another, and after mark of blood upon the ground that all was only imprisoned for life. He could mortals tread." He knew not how to esnever forget the morning of that execution. cape from this argument. If criminals The people in the neighbourhood, instead were fit to die the time of their going of rushing to see the execution, had their to Heaven was hastened; and if not blinds drawn down. It was a case which fit to die, they were allowed to go with all it would take a long time to wipe out from their unexpiated crimes on their heads be the memories of the people of that neigh- fore their final Judge. If we believed that bourhood. That happened about the time faith which we professed, then the greater that Townley, another murderer, was ac- the sin the greater the need for repentance; quitted on the ground of insanity-a plea and it was something monstrous that we which his subsequent suicide showed to be should set ourselves up to decide that true. But the question of insanity was a fortnight from the date of his senone of the most uncertain character; the tence was enough time for the worst murdividing line was disputed by doctors, and derer to make his peace with God. even by doctors in divinity; and the result we believed there was need for that peacewas that in the case of men who were making, let us give the murderer the time If which God would give him to make his peace with Him. If we wanted to teach mercy, let us set an example of that mercy, and at all events stop short of shedding human blood. And if we would teach reverence for human life, let us not attempt to teach it by showing how it may be speedily taken away. He therefore moved the Amendment of which he had given notice, convinced that by the entire abolition of capital punishment, and the removal from their criminal code of the principle of revenge-the life for life principle-they would inaugurate an era in which the sanctity of human life would be regarded more highly than it had hitherto been, and in which the sense of that sanctity, permeating through society, would result in a great lessening of the crime of murder, and consequently in increased security to the public of this country. in charge from attempts on the lives of the prison officials; and it was clear that it must be so. If a man be condemned for one murder to penal servitude for life, how could he be restrained from another murder. Punishment could go no further. He would be left to the indulgence of his brutal instincts without a check. The police officers examined before the Commission, who gave most intelligent evidence, one and all said that, from their experience of our most desperate criminals, they felt convinced they would have "knifed" this person and that, were it not that they were afraid, to use their own phrase, of being "scragged" or hanged. Pusey, a desperate burglar, who broke into a house in which an old lady and her housemaid lived, said, with an oath, that he would have "choked" both the housemaid and the old lady if it had not been that he was afraid of being MR. LEEMAN seconded the Amend-"choked" himself. This they would ment. Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this Ilouse, it is expedient, instead of carrying out the punishment of death within prisons, that Capital Punishment should be abolished," (Mr. Gilpin,) -instead thereof. MR. GREGORY said, the question before them was not, as the hon. Member who had just spoken seemed to suppose, one of softening the heart or saving the souls of murderers, but of preventing the Queen's subjects from being murdered. The balance of all authority, as far as they could arrive at it, was that the punishment of death was the great deterrent for murder. Of the eminent men who composed the Commission of 1866, they had the authority of eight in favour of continuing capital punishment; and as to the four who were for abolishing it, they entered the Commission with minds already made up, having been Members of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. The opinion of all the Irish Judges was unanimous in favour of retaining that punishment, and the opinion of the English Bench was also unanimous to the same effect, with the exception of that of the late Mr. Justice Shee. The opinions of those best acquainted with the criminal classes were to the same effect. The governors of gaols stated that the fear of death alone restrained the miscreants they had find upon the testimony of Inspector This |