some fifty years ago, capital punishment was abolished for all crimes but murder; and Mr. T. Fowell Buxton, speaking in the House of Commons, 23d May, 1821, said, 'One of the Pennsylvanian judges published a minute detail of the comparative state of crime in America, prior and subsequently to the alteration of the law; and I state upon the authority of this judge, published at a period when any error, if it had existed, must have been discovered, that crimes, and especially crimes of enormity, had decreased; but that in a given number of trials. the number of convictions had nearly doubled. He also states a fact, curious enough, as affecting the very question before us. In Pennsylvania, when the punishment for forgery was mitigated, the crime had decreased; in New York, where there had been no mitigation, the crime had gone on increasing.'

Here then we have a mass of most unquestionable evidence, gathered from almost every part of the world, in support of our assertion-that gibbets are in no degree necessary in a state, but may be abolished, not only with perfect safety, but with certain and large advantage. Ancient and modern times, barbarous and civilized eras, and countries in every degree of latitude, give testimony alike in support of our conclusion, and prove not merely, in Douglas Jerrold's words, that 'all hanging's a bungle,' but that the INVIOLABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE is the safest, as well as the noblest, foundation on which a nation's security can be built.

But we must now turn to the history of our own country. Our opponents take upon themselves to affirm, that let the testimony of other lands be what it may, respecting the efficacy or inefficacy of capital punishments, England's experience is all in favour of retaining the gallows. Judges from the bench, secretaries of state from their places in parliament, and gospelministers from their pulpits, express their opinions that the crimes in respect of which the pain of death has recently been remitted, are alarmingly on the increase.' We are in a position to disprove the assertion thus made, and to demonstrate most triumphantly that the reverse is the truth. We affirm, and will show, that just as the gallows has been more or less employed among our people, crime has advanced or diminished.

We need not dwell long upon the ages antecedent to our own but they speak so powerfully on our side, that in justice to our cause, we dare not pass them by.

We have already suggested a comparison between the state of crime under Alfred the Great and under Henry the Eighth. In the first reign, executions were almost unknown: and the quiet and orderly condition of the kingdom at that time has become

a proverb. In Henry the Eighth's time, when the gallows-fever seems to have reached a crisis, and seventy-two thousand culprits of one kind alone (thieves) were destroyed by it, crime of every sort abounded as it never did before or since. Disorder and wickedness overflowed the country at this infamous era, in a perfect torrent: as may be seen by reference to the chronicles of Harrison and Strype; and so inefficacious was this wholesale hanging-system, that the latter writer says:-'The number of felonies committed in one county alone (Somersetshire), was five times the number of the persons brought to trial for them. So that when executions were rarest in England, a child might walk with a bag of money in its hands through any part of the kingdom, without fear of being molested;' and when executions were most frequent, the country was so infested with thieves, mountebanks, highwaymen and assassins, that no man's life or property was safe from one moment to another.

Elizabeth's reign gives another attestation to the soundness of our argument. Good Queen Bess' hanged eight persons weekly, on an average, and if we turn to Stow's Annals' (p. 172.), we find the parliament complaining of the 'daily happening of horrible murthers, thefts, and other great outrages; and stupidly enough, passing more hanging-laws to restrain these enormities. The depraving tendency of the gallows is curiously illustrated in the following preamble of a law passed in this reign :

'WHEREAS, persons in contempt of God's commands, and in defiance of the law, are found to cut pockets, and pick purses even at places of public execution, while execution is being done on criminals, be it therefore enacted-That all such persons shall suffer death, without benefit of clergy.'

One could almost fancy this a satire on the punishment of death.

Of the ages immediately preceding our own era, we will say but little. We simply note, first, the atrocious fart, that between the accession of William the Third and the death of the Second George, no fewer than one hundred thousand human victims were slaughtered in Great Britain, by the hand of the executioner; and, secondly, the horrible growth of the legislatorial thirst for blood in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Concerning this latter fact, we cannot do better than quote Howitt's 'Journal,' (vol. ii. pp. 345, 6.)

The thirst for the destruction of life, which seems to have slackened for a moment during the latter part of George the Second's sovereignty, revived almost immediately upon George the Third's accession, and became characterised by a ferocity and remorselessness which can only be

likened to the mad eagerness shown by certain wild animals for human blood, after having once become acquainted with the taste of it. It is one of the most disgraceful facts ever recorded in the history of our race, that whilst in the reign of the Plantagenets four offences only were made capital, in the time of the Tudors, twenty-seven, and under the sway of the Stuarts, thirty-six, there were one hundred and fifty-six additional offences made punishable by death, during the reigns of the first four sovereigns of the house of Brunswick! Not only were all the obsolete capital laws revived, but new ones were enacted to an extent that is almost incredible. Shoplifting to the amount of five shillings, consorting for a whole year with Gipsies, breaking down the head of a fish-pond, cutting down an ornamental tree in a park-avenue, coining, sheep-stealing, horse-poisoning, forgery, returning from transportation, damaging Westminster, London, or Putney bridges, breaking any tools used in woollen manufactures, stealing apples growing in an orchard, exporting a ram and a ewe together out of England, cattle stealing, stealing in a dwelling house, being found armed and disguised in a park at night, highway robbery, stealing geese from a common, bigamy, letter stealing, sacrilege, stealing linen from a bleaching-ground, cutting and maiming, damaging the rail or chain of a turnpike-gate, rick burning, demolishing buildings in a riot, simple larceny, poaching, cultivating the tobaccoplant in England, smuggling :-these, and a multitude of other offences, more or less enormous, were punished with death by the sanguinary rulers of this murderous period; until at length, there was scarcely a page of our fiendish law-code that was not covered with human blood.

That this slaughter-system did not answer is evident, from the fact that the necessity' for fresh 'examples' was so often pleaded. Forgery, for instance, was so common and far-spreading, that twenty-nine different descriptions of this crime were made capital in the hope of repressing it; and even a minister of the gospel, Dr. Dodd, committed the offence in defiance of the penalty, and became the example' which probably he had frequently described.

'Matters, at length reached such a crisis, that parliament would pass no more hanging-laws, that juries perjured themselves daily, rather than give effect to the atrocious enactments of our statute-book, and that a great majority of our vilest criminals escaped all punishment for their offences. Ten-pound bank-notes were brought in as being of the value of thirty-nine shillings; goods worth a thousand pounds, were declared to be under the value of five pounds; and Lord Suffield produced on one occasion, in the House of Lords, a list of five hundred and fifty-five perjured verdicts, delivered during fifteen years at the Old Bailey, for the single offence of stealing from dwellings. So that it was at last palpable to all, that the system would not do. Consequently, a resolute few, amongst whom Sir William Meredith stands chiefly conspicuous, set to work to oppose the killing-theory altogether, and to try whether mildness would not operate far better than murder, to restrain men from crime."

Of the difficulty experienced by the reformers of the time re

ferred to, in procuring a mitigation of this awful and atrocious criminal code, no idea can be formed by any but the survivors of that era. Abuse, misrepresentation, defamation, and ridicule, were employed with a violence which can only be likened to the wild fury of a tiger, on being robbed of its prey. We do not know a more mournful evidence of what a sanguinary monster man may become, than is to be found in the picture of our professedly Christian legislature, as seen in the parliamentary records of the time. But we pass this by. The mitigations have been accomplished, and our business is only with the result. The penalty of death has been, in effect, abolished for every offence but murder, and we have to inquire whether the exchange of the capital for secondary punishment has proved beneficial or injurious?

We will commence our demonstration of the advantages which have attended the mitigation of our criminal code, by citing a table (No. 547.) printed by order of parliament in 1839. It takes two periods of five years each, and relates exclusively to such offences as were capital at the commencement. In the first of these periods, the five years ending 1833, there were executed in England and Wales 259 persons, and the committals for capital offences were 11,982. In the second period, the five years ending 1838, the spirit of mercy prevailed to so considerable an extent, that only 99 persons were put to death, and the committals for capital crimes were only 11,332; 650 less than in the time of rigour and severity! Now let it not be said, that this decrease in capital crime was merely a portion of the decrease in crime generally, throughout the kingdom; for in this second period, as compared with the first, offences not capital rose from 85,348 to 99,540. The diminution in capital crime is, therefore, the specific and evident result of the amelioration in our capital laws.

The following return, relating to London and Middlesex only, exhibits the decrease of capital crime on the mitigation of punishment, more strikingly still:

The above table proves two points for us; that with fewest executions there is less crime, and also greater certainty of conviction.

But it will probably be said, that there is no evidence to show whether the crimes referred to in the foregoing returns were really, or only nominally, capital; and that, therefore, the conclusion is somewhat vague. Now we are quite ready to admit, that when punishments are capriciously administered, results are not to be depended upon. Under such circumstances, calculation is completely set at nought. Let us then see how the matter stands with reference to crimes which were as practically capital at the period in question, as murder is now. We will take the average of seven crimes, before and since the abolition of death punishments, and trace the effect of mitigation, in regard to them :

Capital Punishment abolished, 1832, for Average of Average,

1844.

1830-1-2.1835-1844

Here, then, we are able to show, that although one or two of the cited crimes exhibit a slight increase immediately after the abolition of capital punishment in respect to them, on the whole the number of offences is very soon considerably reduced, and after an interval of twelve years from the commencement of the experiment, is less by nearly 8 per cent.

Even this table, however, for which we are indebted to the industry of Dr. Satterthwaite, of Manchester, is not quite so satisfactory as we could wish. The periods are not exactly consecutive. For aught that appears, the year 1833, for instance, may have presented a large increase in capital crime, consequent upon the abolition of the capital penalty. Let us, therefore, construct from the materials before us, a more complete account. We will take seventeen offences for which death was formerly inflicted, and as concerns which, the extreme penalty has been repealed; and we will ascertain, first, how many of these offences were committed during the last five years of executions for them; and, secondly, how many of these offences were perpetrated during the first five years after the substitution of an in