prehensive principle just now stated, I mean that of privately "stealing from the person. As every degree of force is excluded "by the description of the crime, it will be difficult to assign an 66 example where either the amount or circumstances of the theft

place it upon a level with those dangerous attempts to which the "punishment of death should be confined. It will be still more "difficult to show, that without gross and culpable negligence on "the part of the sufferer, such examples are probable, or were ever "so frequent as to make it necessary to constitute a class of capital "offences of very wide and large extent."

After some important general remarks the work proceeds.

* Let me now return to the debate on Sir Samuel Romilly's late motion. By the new statute private stealing may be accompanied by aggravations which subject the offender to transportation for life and shall it be said again, as in the House of Commons it once has been said, that such punishment carries with it "a proclamation of impunity?" That statute has the peculiar merit of endeavouring to adapt a gradation of punishment to the gradation of malignity in crimes called by one common name. For my part, I welcome transportation as a substitute for death. But with the general properties of it as a punishment I am by no means satisfied.

+'It is singular enough that the punishment for private stealing by hard labour, which has lately been proposed as one of the substitutes for death, seems to have occurred, though indistinctly, to the very legislators by whom the penalty of death was first appointed. By the statute of the VIIIth of Elizabeth, this crime when committed clam et secrete was excluded from the benefit of clergy, and it is necessary for every indictment to contain those words in order to subject the accused party to capital conviction. Now this very statute in its preamble says, "that it " is made to the end that the fraternity or brotherhood of cutpurses

"and pick pockets may not continue to live idle by the secret spoil " of good and true subjects. Does not then this preamble itself "seem to intimate that the proper remedy is to oblige the criminal "to hard labour?” *

+'The opponents of Sir Samuel Romilly laid great stress upon the number of offenders who are guilty of "larceny from the person;" and to their arguments I shall reply, what impartial inquirers must often be disposed to say on other occasions, “nec nihil, neque omnia." They who admit the same premises are not always led by them to the same conclusions, and in the discussion of moral questions it often happens that difficulties arise, not upon the truth of a general principle, but upon the degree in which it is applicable to particular points of practice, and upon the purposes for which it ought to be controuled by other principles equally comprehensive, or equally sound.

'That the frequency of an offence is sometimes a solid plea for enforcing, and even enacting severe statutes, will, as a general proposition, not be denied. And the utmost which a man of reflection would require is, that when such frequency has been long and considerably checked, such severity should be proportionably relaxed. § You avowedly did not employ death till criminals were numerous-you should have ceased to employ it, when they became fewer-you may resume it when they become numerous again.

'Whether it be possible for some kind of small offences to be so frequent as to justify capital punishment for the prevention of the aggregate mischief produced by them is, also, a general

* See Dagge, vol. II. chap. x. Sect. 2.

+ 438.

Terent. Adelph. Act i. Sc. 2.

§ The principle of such relaxation is well stated by Valerius Messalinus. "Placuisse quondam Oppias leges, sic et temporibus reipublicæ postulantibus remissum aliquid postea, et mitigatum quia expedierit." (Tacit. Annal. lib. iii. par. 7.)

question, upon which good men will pause, before they decide in the affirmative. In my view of the subject,

"Mores sensusque repugnant,

Atque ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et æqui.'

The number even of small crimes may render their tendency very dangerous. But would that tendency have induced Blackstone to retract or qualify his position," that it is not the frequency only of a crime, or the difficulty of otherwise preventing it, that will excuse our attempting to prevent it by a wanton," and, as I would say, unnecessary, and therefore unjust" effusion of human blood?" Smaller crimes are, from their yery nature, most likely to be frequent, and many who commit them may make a jest of the light punishments denounced against them, But shall it be said, that their severity, therefore, must be indefinitely increased? "Is it not obvious," says Mr. Dagge, “that if "punishments are to be increased on this account, they might be "aggravated till all small crimes are made capital? But such a sys"tem of legislation as this reasoning tends to establish, would "indeed breathe the true spirit of Draco's laws." +

DR. MOORE.

In England, Germany, and France, a man knows, that if he commit murder, every person around him will, from that instant, become his enemy, and use every means to seize him and bring him to justice. He knows that he will be immediately carried to prison, and put to an ignominious death, amidst the execrations of his countrymen. Impressed with these sentiments, and with the natural horror for murder which such sentiments augment, the populace of those countries hardly ever have recourse to

stabbing in their accidental quarrels, however they may be inflamed with anger and rage. The lowest black-guard in the streets of London will not draw a knife against an antagonist far superior to himself in strength. He will fight him fairly with his fists as long as he can, and bear the severest drubbing, rather than use a means of defence which is held in detestation by his countrymen, and which would bring him to the gallows.

The murders committed in Germany, France, or England, are therefore comparatively few in number, and happen generally in consequence of a preconcerted plan, in which the murderers have taken measures for their escape or concealment, without which they know that inevitable death awaits them. In Italy the case is different, an Italian is not under the influence of so strong an impression, that certain execution must be the consequence of his committing a murder, he is at less pains to restrain the wrath which he feels kindling within his breast; he allows his rage full scope; and, if hard pressed by the superior strength of an enemy, he does not scruple to extricate himself by a thrust of his knife; he knows, that if some of the Sbirri are not present, no other person will seize him; for that office is held in such detestation by the Italian populace, that none of them will perform any part of its functions. The murderer is therefore pretty certain of gaining some church or convent, where he will be protected, till he can compound the matter with the relation of the deceased, or escape to some of the other Italian states; which is no very difficult matter, as the dominions of none are very extensive.

Besides, when any of these assassins has not had the good fortune to get within the portico of a church before he is seized by the Sbirri, and when he is actually carried to prison, it is not a very difficult matter for his friends or relations to prevail, by their entreaties and tears, on some of the cardinals or princes, to interfere in his favour and endeavour to obtain his pardon. If this is the case, and I am assured from authority which fully convinces me that it is, we need be no longer surprised that murder is more

common among the Italian populace, than among the common people of any other country. As soon as asylums for such criminals are abolished, and justice is allowed to take its natural course, that foul stain will be entirely effaced from the national character of the modern Italians. This is already verified in the Grand Duke of Tuscany's dominions. The same edict which declared that churches and convents should no longer be places of refuge for murderers, has totally put a stop to the use of the stiletto; and the Florentine populace now fight with the same blunt weapons that are used by the common people of other nations.

View of Society in Italy, Letter 43.

ROME.

on a

Thefts and crimes which are not capital are punished at Rome, and some other towns of Italy, by imprisonment, or by what is called the Cord. This last is performed in the street. The culprit's hands are bound behind by a cord, which runs pulley he is then drawn up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, and, if lenity is intended, he is let down smoothly in the same manner he was drawn up. In this operation the whole weight of the criminal's body is sustained by his hands, and a strong man can bear the punishment inflicted in this manner without future inconveniency; for the strength of the muscles of his arms enables him to keep his hands pressed on the middle of his back, and his body hangs in a kind of horizontal position. But when they intend to be severe, the criminal is allowed to. fall from the greatest height to which he had been raised, and the fall is abruptly checked in the middle; by which means the hands and arms are immediately pulled above the head, both shoulders are dislocated, and the body swings powerless in a perpendicular line. It is a cruel and injudicious punishment, and left too much in the power of those who superintend the execution, to make it severe or not, as they are inclined.