not be induced to prosecute for it, and the complete impunity which was the consequence necessarily tended to augment such crimes. Repeal, it was said, the capital punishment, and prosecutions will multiply. What was predicted has happened. The law was repealed, prosecutions have increased: the experiment, so far, has been completely successful; and yet those who. are averse to every thing which they consider as innovation, immediately exclaim that a mitigation of the law has given encouragement to new offenders. Men, who would have escaped all punishment, have suffered transportation or imprisonment; and this has been strangely called an encouragement to commit crimes. To alledge the increase of prosecutions as a proof of the inexpediency of the new law, is a judgment not unlike that which Frederick, king of Prussia, pronounced upon the effect of some of his own regulations. He had published an edict, by which he had greatly diminished the expense of law proceedings: the immediate effect of that beneficial measure was considerably to increase the number of law-suits. Persons who had been before obliged to submit to injustice, because the means of obtaining redress were too expensive to come within their reach, were enabled to lay their complaints before the proper tribunals. But this, which was the strongest proof of the wisdom of his regulations, was considered by the king as an evil which had resulted from them, and he adverts to it as such in a subsequent edict, in which he seems to repent of the imaginary mischief and the real good which he had done, and, as a remedy for it, he adopts the strange expedient of commanding, by his royal authority, that every litigation, whatever be the subject, and however intricate and involved in difficulties, should be brought to a termination within the period of a year. Just of the same kind is the evil which is supposed to have resulted from the late change in our criminal law. That the law thus violated remains unexecuted, is surely a very extraordinary effect to refer to in proof of its excellence. But though I can see defects in our statutes, and would gladly correct them, it is very unjustly that I have been represented as not holding our systems of law in sufficient veneration. It would, indeed, be extraordinary if I, who have passed my life in the study or the practice of the law, who owe what little consideration I enjoy in society to the legal knowledge which I am supposed to possess, and who must look to the same source for whatever honours or advantages I may be ambitious hereafter to attain, it would indeed be extraordinary if I were desirous of weakening the respect which is due to our laws. My respect and admiration of our judicial system are not the weaker for being the result of a careful examination. The same attentive consideration which has led me to the discovery of supposed defects, has made me sensible of excellencies which are, perhaps, unobserved by those who are loudest in declaring that all is excellent; and I cannot admit that I deserve the reproach of being an inconsiderate innovator, because I have attempted to remove some imperfections in our law, and to render it still more deservedly than it is at present, the object of universal admiration. Sir S. Romilly concluded by moving, That the bill be read a third time on Wednesday next, which was ordered. When that day arrived, however, the other business before the house made it impossible to proceed on it; and it being evident that there was not time to carry the bill through the other house, it was given up, and, a few days afterwards, the parliament was prorogued.* *Copies of the three Bills which were proposed to the Legislature, and were rejected, are at the conclusion of this volume. |