'In this instance, Sir George Grey gave a proof that he did not himself believe the inference which he meant his hearers to form. The capital penalty continued till 1837; and yet, in the five previous years, in defiance of the most inexorable enforcement of it, the numbers increased from 212 to 366. In that year it was repealed: and what followed? Why, a reduction to 183 in the next five years! But then, it has subsequently again increased: yes, just as it did (while the penalty was blood) in the years 1829 and 1830. The fact is, that this is a sort of epidemic crime; and its perpetration in more recent years, has been greatly facilitated by the sale of lucifer matches, by any vagrant strolling about the country."

In addition to Mr. Gilpin's statement, we may mention, that the number of commitments in the years when the punishment for this crime was death, affords no fair criterion of the real number of offences perpetrated. The law respecting arson,' says the writer in Howitt's Journal,' had become so inoperative, that in three years, out of 277 committed criminals, only 28 were convicted!' We may also append the following conclusive table:

In the Six Years ending

1836 (the last of the Capital Penalty) with 58 Executions, there were 493 Committals. 1842 no Executions 284

4. The Home Secretary tells us, that FORGERY has increased since the mitigation of the capital penalty. Once more, let us quote Mr. Gilpin, in reply to this assertion:

'As to forgery, to which the fourth of Sir George Grey's statements had reference, it is only surprising that any Home Secretary should have attempted to make the House of Commons believe what was implied by his statements, namely, that the commitments had increased in the same four periods, from 312, to 350, 564, and 731. Surely, Sir George Grey cannot be ignorant that, while the crime of forgery was capitalas it was in the first of the periods here cited-it was customary in the Home Office Register, to include under one head only the capital commitments; and that, now, it is customary to include under the same head commitments which were never capital-offences which constitute a very large proportion of the entire number of forgeries. In case, however, of his pleading such ignorance of the affairs of his own department, I shall here refer him to a return, No. 689, made to the House of Commons in 1847, in which what I have now stated is clearly admitted. What are we to think of the fairness of the Home Secretary, if he made his statement with the knowledge of these facts, or of his fitness for his office, if he knew them not?"

Connected with this crime of forgery, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the offence was capital, an immense number of criminals escaped prosecution altogether, and

thus the committals in the earliest cycle named, are made to seem so much smaller than in the subsequent cycles. When the subject of death for forgery was before parliament, Mr. John Abel Smith asserted, that neither the House, nor the country, were aware of the numerous offences of this kind that were hushed up.' Alderman Harmer stated, also, from his own knowledge, that the prosecutions bore no proportion to the cases in which no prosecutions took place,' adding, that 'he could not calculate to within a hundred, how many compromises of this crime he himself had known.' And it is a notorious fact, that the Messrs. Gurney, and other large firms, continually refused to prosecute at all, while the penalty for this crime was death.

5. BURGLARY. Here, again, the Home Secretary is egregiously at fault, as Mr. Gilpin thus shows:

'Sir George Grey's fifth statement relates to burglary, and implies that this crime has greatly increased. We may here again ask, whether Sir George Grey believes himself? As a lawyer, he must know that about the time that capital punishment was changed, the crime was by law defined anew, and made to include offences committed between certain hours of the evening and morning, a much longer portion of the twenty-four hours, and not those alone, as formerly, committed during darkness. Any further remark on his statistics of burglary would be superfluous.'

Thus, then, the case of our opponents is completely scattered to the winds, and their sophistry is left shameful and shivering in its naked and miserable deformity. But we have not done with our antagonists, yet.

Suppose their tale were true; suppose the facts were as they have stated them; suppose crime had increased since the exchange of capital for secondary punishments; what then? Would that prove that the increase was owing to the mitigation? Not at all. For we can show that crimes increased in an infinitely greater ratio, while they remained capital. Sir George Grey affirms an increase of crime, amounting to about forty per cent. in twenty years. Why, in George the Third's time, when two hundred offences were punishable with death, crime increased ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY PER CENT. IN FOUR YEARS! In 1814, the total commitments were 6,390; in 1818, they were 13,932! Is there anything like this in the history of mitigation? Well may we say, that the gallows is the cause of crime.

Now we will be generous to the supporters of death punishment. We will put their case in its strongest light. We will

admit all that they can possibly claim. We will give them the benefit of the following table; a stronger one than they have ever yet produced ;–

Statement of the Number of Commitments for Offences which were Capital in 1838, in each Five Years ending

We will admit, then, that by the table which we have above constructed from the parliamentary returns, there is shown a clear increase in crimes recently relieved of the capital penalty, to the amount of 30 per cent. in the first period of five years; a nearly similar number of crimes in the second; a further increase of 10 per cent. in the third period, and a still further increase of 18 per cent. in the last or a total increase between the first and last periods, of no less than seventy per cent. Very well; the crimes for which the penalty of death has been removed, have increased 70 per cent. since the removal.

But now let us look at the crime for which the punishment of

death has been retained, namely, murder; including attempts to commit murder, which is practically the same offence, inasmuch as in every case the penalty of death is braved by the culprit:

Statement of the Number of Commitments in each of the Five Years ending

Murder and Attempts to
Murder

1826. 1831. 1836. 1841. 1846.

661

770 1,023 1,221 1,459

We have here an increase of 16 per cent. in the first period, 32 per cent. more in the second, 20 per cent. more in the third, and 17 per cent. more in the last or an increase of no less than ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. in the last period, as compared with the first! Here, then, we may triumphantly rest our case. For even granting that the abolition of the gallows has been followed by an increase of crime to the amount of 70 per cent., we are able to show on the other hand, that the retention of the gallows has caused an increase of 125 per cent.

We think, then, that we may now claim to have proved beyond question, that wherever and whenever capital punishments have been abolished, the crimes in respect of which the change has been made, have, on the whole, as compared with the crimes for which the extreme penalty has been retained, materially decreased: that in a word, every experiment hitherto made, shows that there is less crime without the gallows than with it. It only remains for us, therefore, to apply our conclusion to the great practical subject of our inquiry-Can we with equal safety to the community, abolish the punishment of death, as respects the one remaining crime of murder?

We conceive that we might fairly claim an answer in the affirmative, upon mere parity of reasoning. If, as respects two hundred offences in England, and all crimes in other countries, crime decreases on the abolition of the penalty of death, there is surely every reason for supposing that murder would equally diminish, upon the substitution of a secondary, for the capital, punishment. There is nothing in the constitution of human nature, or in the constitution of society, that should make this one crime an exception to the general law. If the fear of death restrain any crime, it restrains all crimes; and if it fail to restrain one offence, it must fail to restrain every offence; more especially must it fail to restrain a crime like murder, which is never even conceived until all moral restraint is at an end.

But we build our conclusion on a surer foundation than logic.

We have positive proof to offer, that murder does not need the gallows to restrain it. We are in a condition to show, that murder flourishes most when murderers are destroyed by the hand of the law, and least when murderers are preserved.

We have already demonstrated the soundness of this position, by reference to ancient Egypt under Sabaco, to Rome, to Russia, to England in the early ages, to Tuscany, to India, to America, to France, Prussia, Austria, Holland, Belgium, and other modern countries; in all of which instances, we have seen that capital punishment increases murder, and its abolition represses it. We have only now then to turn to the records of our own land, in our own time. We shall derive a precisely similar result from our investigation.

To prove the effect of a diminution of executions on the number of murders, we take the following table :

We will next show that the fewest executions, in proportion to the number of murders, produces the fewest murders in future years. We select from a great mass of evidence, the following

return :

The government doctrine,' says the editor of the 'Magazine of Capital Punishment,'' is-That executions for murder, prevent murder. If that doctrine be true, how is it that the figures do not prove it? How is it that under the benign influence of 122 executions, so many as 444 murders were committed, while under the malign influence of only 50 executions, so few as 351 murders were committed?

But it may be said, that cycles of five years are too short for a satisfactory experiment. Be it so. We will take, then, cycles