For the same misdemeanor, a gentleman is punished with a fine only of five shillings, and a poor wretch, who has been without education or instruction, and has been compelled by his necessities to associate with those amongst whom these depraved habits generally prevail, is to be punished with the most severe penalty of solitary imprisonment. But what is to be said when this injustice is extended so far, that what, in the judgment of the master of a workhouse, may be deemed abusive or improper language, or misbehaviour, no matter to whom, whether to some servant of the house, or to an inmate like himself, with whom he may happen to have quarrelled, is to expose him to such severity. If this is to be the state of our penal law, enacted only for the most friendless and unprotected part of the community, at least it ought to be done by public statutes, to which the attention of this house should be drawn. This evil appears to me to be one of sufficient magnitude to occupy the most serious care of this house, and I shall probably in some future session bring it distinctly under their consideration. The remedy most likely to be effectual, would probably be to come to a resolution that no bill should pass this house, containing any clause, giving power to parish officers, or guardians, or trustees of the poor, or governors or masters of poor-houses, to inflict corporal punishment or imprisonment, which had not first been submitted to a committee of the whole house. This, however, must be the subject of future consideration, and I hope that the house will not think that I have improperly wasted their time in noticing what I cannot but consider as the wrongs of those who have such imperfect means of making their sufferings known. To return, however, to the immediate subject of this debate, let me conjure the house to reflect how much time has passed since the legislature enacted that Penitentiary Houses should be erected, that although the ground for erecting them has been bought at great expense to the public, nothing effectual towards establishing them has yet been done. That the want of them in the mean time is every day more sensibly felt, that other punishments are found to be ineffectual, that crimes have become more frequent, offenders more daring and desperate, public

morals more outraged, and the laws more despised, and then to say whether we ought to persevere in the system which has hitherto been followed, and whether we ought to defer, even though it be only to another session, a measure from which so much good is to be expected.

The house then divided, and the numbers stood thus:

Ayes
Noes

52

69

Majority 17 against the motion.

Mr. Bathurst then moved a resolution, which was carried without opposition, and is in these words: "Resolved, that this house “will, early in the next session of parliament, take into considera❝tion the means of most beneficially carrying into effect the acts "of the 19th and 34th years of his present Majesty's reign, for "the establishment and regulation of Penitentiary Houses."

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1810.

THE NAVIGABLE RIVER ROBBERY BILL.

The order of the day for the third reading of the Navigable River Robbery Bill having been read,

Sir Samuel Romilly rose and spoke in substance as follows:Sir, the house may very well suppose that it is not my intention to proceed with this bill at the present moment, or to provoke

much discussion upon a day which is seldom devoted to the dispatch of public business. It is not my intention that the house should proceed upon this bill to-day, but merely to move that it be read a third time on Wednesday next. As the other business, however, which stands for that day may make it impossible to proceed on this, and as the session is very near its close, and no opportunity has hitherto been afforded me of stating the grounds upon which this bill has been introduced into the house, I shall avail myself of this occasion to say a few words upon that subject.

The object of the bill is to repeal an act of parliament passed at the close of the last reign, which made it a capital offence for a man to steal property on board ships or other vessels on navi. gable rivers, or upon wharfs or quays, to the value of 40s. I do not recollect, and I have not been able, from all the inquiries I have made, to hear of a single instance in which this act has been carried into execution. I do not take upon myself to assert that it never was executed; it is very probable that soon after it passed it was in some instances enforced, but I have not met with any one who remembers such an instance. There have, indeed, been but few persons who have of late years been even committed for trial under this act; few, I mean, when compared with the number of crimes actually committed. In the year 1802, only 19 persons; in 1803, 24; in 1804, only 6; in 1805, the same number; in 1806, only 9; and in 1807, only 5. This appears from the returns in the Secretary of State's office: but though none have of late years been executed for this crime, and so few have been charged with it, it is notorious that the crime had lately become extremely common, and was thought not many years ago to be greatly increasing. It was for the express purpose of checking that increase of this description of crimes that a police office was established at Shadwell, and the act under which it was established, the 39th and 40th Geo. III. c. 87, purports to have been passed for the more effectual prevention of depredations on the river Thames. The crime has, however, I

believe, within the last few years, been much less frequent than` it had been; but this improvement is to be ascribed to the mere circumstance of the wet docks having been erected, which has made the commission of the offence more difficult, and not to the existence of a law which held out a punishment that never was inflicted. That prosecutions on this act have not been more frequent is not surprising, since in this instance, as well as in those of stealing in shops and in dwelling houses, it depends in a very great degree upon the party robbed whether he will prosecute for a capital offence or for a simple larceny. Prosecutors in general cannot persuade themselves to adopt the sanguinary spirit of the statute; but it must be confessed, that it is a most extraordinary state of the law of any country, that it should depend upon the pleasure of a private individual, who is not responsible to any one for his conduct, whether a public crime shall be punished with death, or with a much less severe penalty. The general grounds, therefore, upon which this repeal is submitted to the house are, that the present punishment is much too severe for the offence; that a law, which is not and cannot be executed, ought not to exist; and that this law has not even the recommendation of any antiquity or experience in its favour. Passed only just before the commencement of the present reign, and never, or in some very rare and unheard of instances en· forced, it may be truly stated to have been a most unsuccessful experiment in legislation,

This is certainly not an occasion of which I could with propriety avail myself to answer all the objections which I have heard stated in another place to the principle of this bill, and of the two others which were introduced at the same time into this house; but one of these objections appears to me to be of a nature, that I ought not to suffer even this the first opportunity that I have had, to pass by without animadverting on it. It has been observed, that two years ago an act was passed to take away the punishment of death for the offence of stealing to the amount of a shilling privately from the person, and it has been stated,

that the consequence of this greatly to increase the offence. servation of the judges, and it is added, that in consequence of this observation, they disapprove of the alterations which have been lately projected. Now there certainly can be no doubt, that if the crime has increased, and that increase has been caused by an alteration of the law, that alteration must have been pernicious; but if the fact of the crime having increased since the law was altered were clearly established, it would not necessarily follow that the alteration of the law was the cause of the increase of the crine. Indeed, at the very same time and in the same place in which it was stated that the crime of stealing from the person had within the last two years increased, it was also stated that the crime of stealing privately from shops had also greatly increased during the same period. But with respect to that latter offence, there has been no alteration of the law; it must be to some other cause, therefore, that the fact, if it exists, must be ascribed; although it is evident, that if the bill lately rejected by the lords had passed two years ago into a law, that supposed increase of the offence would have been represented as the obvious and indisputable effect of a cause, which, it is now certain, never existed. But how is it ascertained that the crime of picking pockets has increased since the repeal of the capital punishment? Why, the judges, it is said, have observed that it has increased. Now the experience and observations of the judges may safely be relied on to prove the fact that there have been more prosecutions for the offence, but not that the offence has been more frequent. The judges hear of the crime only when it is prosecuted; from them we may learn the number of prosecutions, not the number of offences. But though an increase of offences would be an evil, the mere increase of prosecutions is a great good. It is, indeed, one of the ve benefits which they who recommended the alteration of the law pointed out as likely to flow from it. It was said, that in the then state of the law, with a punishment so much more severe than the offence seemed to deserve, men who had suffered from the crime could

mitigation of severity has been This, it has been said, is the ob