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Treason, murder, rape, and burning a dwelling-house, were all the crimes that were liable to be punished with death by our good old common law. And such was the tenderness, such the reluctance to shed blood, that if recompense could possibly be made, life was not to be touched. Treason being against the king, the remission of that crime was in the crown. In case of murder itself, if compensation could be made, the next of kin might discharge the prosecution, which, if once discharged, could never be revived. If a ravisher could make the injured woman satisfaction, the law had no power over him; she might marry the man under the gallows, if she pleased, and take him from the jaws of death. to the lips of matrimony. But so fatally are we deviated from the benignity of our ancient laws, that there is now under sentence of death an unfortunate clergyman, who made satisfaction for the injury attempted: the satisfaction was accepted; and yet the acceptance of the satisfaction, and the prosecution bear the same date.

There does not occur to my thoughts a proposition more abhorrent from nature, and from reason, than that in a matter of property, when restitution is made, blood should still be required.

Having said so much on the general principles of our criminal laws, I have only a short word or two to add, on the two propositions now before us; one, to hang persons that wilfully set fire to ships; the other, to compel such offenders to work seven years on the Thames.

The question arises from the alarming events of the late fires at Portsmouth and Bristol; for which the incendiary is put to death. But, will an act of parliament prevent such men as John the Painter from coming into the world, or control them when they are in it? You might as well bring in a bill to prevent the appearance, or regulate the motions, of a comet. John the Painter was so far from fearing death, that he courted it; was so far from concealing his act, that he told full as much as was true, to his own conviction. When once a villain turns enthusiast, he is above all law. Punishment is his reward, and death his glory. But, though the law will be useless against villains, it is dangerous, and may be fatal to many an innocent person. There is not an

honest, industrious carpenter or sailor, who may not be endangerea in the course of his daily labor: they are constantly using fire and combustible matter about shipping, tarring and pitching, and caulking accidents are continually happening; and who knows how many of these accidents may be attributed to design? Indeed, the act says, the firing must be done wilfully and maliciously; but judges and juries do not always distinguish right between the fact and the intention. It is the province of a jury only to try the fact by the intention; but they are too apt to judge of the intention by the fact. Justices of peace, however, are not famed for accurate and nice distinctions; and all the horrors of an ignominious death would be too much to threaten every honest shipwright with, for what may happen in the necessary work of his calling.

But, as I think punishment necessary for so heinous an offence, and, as the end of all punishment is example: of the two modes of punishment, I shall prefer that which is most profitable in point of example. Allowing then the punishment of death its utmost force, it is only short and momentary; that of labor, permanent; and to much example is gained in him who is reserved for labor, more than in him who is put to death, as there are hours in the life of the one, beyond the short moment of the other's death.

WILLIAM PITT ON ECONOMICAL REFORM.

MR. PITT said, that he gave the most hearty consent to what had fallen from his honorable friend on the other side of the house --that a proposition for the retrenchment of the civil list revenue ought to have come from his majesty's ministers. He gave his entire approbation to this sentiment. It would have come with more grace; it would have come with more benefit to the public service, if it had sprung from the royal breast. His majesty's ministers ought to have come forward and proposed a reduction in the civil list, to give the people the consolation of knowing that their sovereign participated in the sufferings of the empire, and

presented an honorable example of retrenchment in an hour of general difficulty. They ought to have consulted the glory of their royal master, and have seated him in the hearts of the people, by abating from magnificence what was due to necessity. Instead of waiting for the slow request of a burthened people, they should have courted popularity by a voluntary surrender of useless revenue. Far more agreeable would it have been to that house, to accede than to propose: much more gracious to have observed the free exercise of royal bounty than to make the appeal, and point out what was right, what was necessary. But if ministers failed to do this; if they interfered between the benignity of the sovereign and the distresses of his people, and stopped the tide of royal sympathy, was that a reason why the House of Commons, his majesty's public counsellors, should desist from a measure so congenial to the paternal feelings of the sovereign, so applicable to the wants and miseries of the people? The natural beneficence of the royal heart would be gratified by the seasonable remittance. And surely it was no reason, because ministers failed to do their duty, that the house should cease to attend to theirs. Acting as the faithful representatives of the people, who had trusted them, they ought to seize on every object of equitable resource that presented itself; and surely none were so fair, so probable, or so flattering as retrenchment and economy. The obligations of their character demanded from them not to hesitate in pursuing those objects, even to the foot of the throne; and actuated by duty, to advise the crown to part with useless ostentation, that he might preserve necessary power; to abate a little of pomp, that he might ascertain respect; to diminish a little of exterior grandeur, that he might increase and secure authentic dignity. Such advice would become them, as the counsellors of his majesty, and as the representatives of the people; for it was their immediate duty, as the commons house of Parliament, to guard the lives, the liberties, and the properties of the people. The last obligation was the strongest, it was more immediately incumbent upon them to guard the properties, because they were more liable to invasion by the secret and subtle attacks of influence, than either their lives or liberties. It would not derogate from the real glory of the crown to accept

of the advice. It would be no diminution of true graudeur to yield to the respectful petitions of the people. The tutelage of that house might be a hard term: but the guardianship of that house could not be disgraceful to a constitutional king. The abridgment of useless and unnecessary expense could be no abatement of royalty. Magnificence and grandeur were not inconsistent with retrenchment and economy, but, on the contrary, in a time of necessity and of common exertion, solid grandeur was dependent on the reduction of expense: And it was the general sentiment and observation of the house, that economy was at this time essentially necessary to national salvation. This had been the language of the noble lord (Lord Nugent) on the other side of the house, and he had declared that if the bill then before the house had provided that all the moneys to be derived from the reductions proposed were to be applied to the public service, he would have given his hearty concurrence in it, and would have become one of its warmest advocates. Here then he begged leave to join issue with the noble lord. He had said that the savings were to be appropriated towards a fund for creating a provision for the royal family; and this clause he had found in the bill before them. He begged to inform the noble lord, that there was a clause in this bill which expressly stated that the moneys arising from the reductions proposed should be directly applied to the public service. The only merit that he could claim in a competition with the noble lord was, that his eyes were somewhat younger than his, and he would read the clause to which he alluded. He here read the clause alluded to.

This was the clearest refutation of the noble lord's assertions, but his error seemed to have arisen from his having taken notice of another clause in the act, which ordains, that the moneys appropriated to the payment of annuities to be granted to those persons whose places were to be abolished, should be placed in a fund as they should arise by the death of the annuitants, to create a provision for the royal family. This was the error of the noble lord: he had mistaken this provision for all the savings of the plan: unless indeed he imagined that to place money in the sinking fund subject to the disposal of Parliament, was not to apply it to the pub

lic service. He might consider the blind profusion of the minister as the public service; and unless it had been left to him to be mismanaged and squandered in his usual way, it was not applying it, in his opinion, to the public service. He trusted the house would excuse him for having wantoned with their patience on this point: and he, for his own part, should think his time and labor very well repaid, if thereby he had been fortunate enough to gain over so powerful an assistant and friend as the noble lord, to the prin ciple of the bill. It had been said by an honorable gentleman, who spoke early in the debate, that the bill connected two objects that ought to have been kept separate. His honorable friend (Mr. John Townshend) near him had shown, that these objects ought to go hand in hand together, and had very properly contended that this was the fit moment for introducing reform and economy. He should add, that the bill had a third object, much more important than either of these, and that was the reduction of the influence of the crown: that influence which the last Parliament, by an express resolution, had declared to be increasing, and that it ought to be diminished: an influence which was more to be dreaded, because more secret in its attacks, and more concealed in its operations, than the power of prerogative. All these objects were not only compatible with each other, but they had a mutual connection, and ought not to be divided in a measure of reformation. In all the arguments of the noble lord who spoke last, on the subject of the resolutions of the 6th of April, he observed the noble lord's objections were directed solely to the second of these resolutions: he took it for granted therefore, that the noble lord admitted the first. That resolution pledged the house to do something effectual in compliance with the petitions of the people. Why then should the house refuse to adopt the present bill, the operation of which in diminishing the influence of the crown, rendered it in his opinion much more valuable than the mere consideration of the saving it would effect? But it had been said, that the saving was immaterial; it was a matter of trifling consideration, when measured by the necessities or expenses at the time. It proposes to bring no more than £200,000 a year into the public coffers; and that sum was insignificant in the public

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