This unnecessary and indefensible action of the troops has been generally disapproved of since; but it received only praise from the government at that time, as will appear from the following letter of the Prince Regent to the home secretary, within whose charge the matter lay. My Lord:

409. The sec

(August 19,

1819)

The Prince Regent commands me to convey to your lord- retary of the Prince Regent ship his approbation and high commendation of the conduct to Lord Sidof the magistrates and civil authorities at Manchester, as well mouth as of the officers and troops, both regular and yeomanry cavalry, whose firmness and effectual support of the civil power preserved the peace of the town upon that most critical occasion. His royal Highness entertains a favorable sense of the forbearance of Lieut. Col. L'Estrange in the execution of his duty; and bestows the greatest praise upon the zeal and alacrity manifested by Major Trafford and Lieut. Col. Townsend and their respective corps. I have the honor to be, etc.

II. EARLY REFORMS

The punishments for crime were, at this time, more severe in England than in Russia. This attracted the attention of the emperor of Russia when he visited England in 1814. He is said to have explained it by the greater personal freedom of Englishmen. As men were more free to do what they would, they must be all the more severely punished when they did wrong.

tions of the Russian em

peror (1814)

In England, where every man enjoys so much freedom of 410. Observaaction, the execution of the laws must necessarily be severe, in consequence of the difficulty of imposing adequate restraints on the early transgression of them. As you cannot, therefore, interpose obstacles to the commission of crime, the only remaining check is to punish it severely when committed. In Russia we can interfere to prevent the commission; severe punishments, therefore, are not so essential.

411. Report of a com

mittee of the

The defense just given for the savage laws for the punishment of crime in England was not satisfactory to many enlightened men; nor was there any other sufficient reason why the laws of England should remain more harsh and cruel than those of any other country in Europe. The following report from a committee of the House of Commons, made in 1820, gives a list of some of those which it was proposed to repeal or to reduce in severity.

In considering the subject of our penal laws, your committee will first lay before the House their observations on House of Com- that part which is the least likely to give rise to difference of mons (1820) opinion. That many statutes denouncing capital punishments might be safely and wisely repealed has long been a prevalent opinion. It is sanctioned by the authority of two successive committees of this House, composed of the most eminent men of their age, and in some measure by the authority of the House itself, which passed several bills on the recommendation of their committees.

As a general position, the propriety of repealing such statutes seems scarcely to have been disputed; respecting the number and choice of them, different sentiments must always be expected. Your committee have not attempted a complete enumeration, which much time and considerable deliberation would be required to accomplish. They selected some capital felonies, for the continuance of which they cannot anticipate any serious argument, and which seem to them to serve no purpose but that of encumbering and discrediting the statute book. Various considerations have combined to guide their choice.

Sometimes mere levity and hurry have raised an insignificant offense or an almost indifferent act into a capital crime; in other acts the evil has been manifestly and indeed avowedly temporary, though it unfortunately produced a permanent law. Where the punishment of death was evidently unnecessary at the time of its original establishment, and where, if it was

originally justified by a temporary danger, or excused by a temporary fear, it has long been acknowledged to be altogether disproportioned to the offense, your committee conceive themselves warranted in confidently recommending its abolition.

But they have also adverted to another consideration. If in addition to the intrinsic evidence of unwarrantable severity in a law, which arises from the comparison of the act forbidden with the punishment threatened, they find also that the law has scarcely ever been executed since its first enactment, or if it has fallen into disuse as the nation became more humane and generally enlightened, your committee consider themselves as authorized to recommend its repeal, by long experience and by the deliberate judgment of the whole nation. . .

It has sometimes been said that the abolition of penal laws The desirabil which have fallen into disuse is of little advantage to the com- ity of repealing obsolete munity. Your committee consider this opinion as an error. laws They forbear to enlarge on the striking remark of Lord Bacon, that all such laws weaken and disarm the other parts of the criminal system. The frequent occurrence of the unexecuted threat of death in a criminal code tends to rob that punishment of all its terrors, and to enervate the general authority of the government and the laws. The multiplication of this threat in the laws of England has brought on them, and on the nation, a character of harshness and cruelty, which evidence of a mild administration of them will not entirely remove. Repeal silences the objection. Reasoning founded on lenient exercise of authority, whatever its force may be, is not calculated to efface a general and deep impression. The removal of disused laws is a preliminary operation which greatly facilitates a just estimate and (where it is necessary) an effectual reform of those laws which are to remain in activity. . . .

The statutes creating capital felonies, which the committee have considered under this head, are reducible to two classes. The first relates to acts either so nearly indifferent as to require no penalty, or, if injurious, not of such magnitude as that they may not safely be left punishable as misdemeanors at common law. Of these your committee propose the simple repeal. They are as follows:

Laws carrying

alty which the

committee proposes to repeal

Against gypsies remaining within the kingdom one month; the death pen- against notorious thieves in Cumberland and Northumberland ; against persons being armed and disguised in any forest, park, warren, highroad, open heath, common, or town; unlawfully hunting, killing, or stealing deer; robbing warrens; stealing or taking any fish out of any river or pond; hunting in his Majesty's forests and chases; breaking down the head or mound of a fish pond; being disguised within the mint; injuring of Westminster Bridge and other bridges.

Offenses which the committee

proposes to

The second class consists of those offenses, which, though in the opinion of your committee never fit to be punished with death, are yet so malignant and dangerous as to require the highest punishments, except death, which are known to our laws. These the committee would make punishable either by transportation or imprisonment with hard labor, allowing considerable scope to the discretion of the judges respecting the term for which either punishment is to endure.

Taking away any maid, widow, or wife; acknowledging or procuring any fine or recovery; helping to the recovery of stolen goods; maliciously killing or wounding cattle; cutting punish by im- down or destroying growing trees; bankrupts not surrenderprisonment or ing; concealing or embezzling; cutting down the bank of any transportation instead of river; making a false entry in a marriage register; sending threatening letters; destroying banks in Bedford Level; personating out-pensioners of Greenwich Hospital; maliciously cutting serges; harboring offenders against the revenue act, when returned from transportation.

death

On the three capital felonies of privately stealing in a shop to the amount of five shillings, of privately stealing in a dwelling house to the amount of forty shillings, and of privately stealing from vessels in a navigable river to the amount of forty shillings, the House of Commons, though not the House of Lords, have pronounced their opinion by passing bills for reducing the punishment to transportation or imprisonment.

...

The same committee collected evidence from a great many persons connected with the criminal courts to show

that when the laws were so severe, persons injured would not prosecute, and juries would not declare culprits guilty, even when the evidence was perfectly clear. The laws could not therefore be enforced, and their own objects were defeated.

prove the

Mr. Shelton, who has been near forty years clerk of arraigns 412. Testiat the Old Bailey, states that juries are anxious to reduce the mony to value of property below its real amount, in those larcenies penal laws where the capital punishment depends on value; that they ineffective are desirous of omitting those circumstances on which the capital punishment depends in constructive burglaries; and that a reluctance to convict is perceptible in forgery.

Sir Archibald MacDonald bears testimony to the reluctance of prosecutors, witnesses, and juries, in forgeries, in shoplifting, and offenses of a like nature. He believes that the chances of escape are greatly increased by the severity of the punishments.

T. W. Carr, Esq., solicitor of excise, a very intelligent public officer, gave an important testimony, directly applicable indeed only to offenses against the revenue, but throwing great light on the general tendency of severity in penal laws to defeat its own purpose. From his extensive experience it appears that severe punishment has rendered the law on that subject inefficacious. Prosecutions and convictions were easy when breaches of the law were subject to moderate pecuniary penalties; even a great pecuniary penalty has been found so favorable to impunity that fraudulent traders prefer it to a moderate penalty. The act of counterfeiting a stamp in certain cases, within the laws of excise, was, before the year 1806, subject only to a penalty of £500, but in that year it was made a transportable offense, of which the consequence was that the convictions, which from 1794 to 1806 had been nineteen out of twentyone prosecutions, were reduced in the succeeding years, from 1806 to 1818, to three out of nine prosecutions.

Mr. Newman, solicitor for the city of London, speaking from thirty years' experience of the course of criminal prosecutions in that city, informed the committee that he had frequently