SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH.

I HAVE already said something in praise of his speeches. They have in them what an old poet calls "Veins of Nature," a heartfelt simplicity, before which wit, and elegance, and acuteness, and the pomp of words, sink into insignificance.

ON FREQUENT EXECUTIONS.

I agree with my honourable friend (Mr. Combe) that no greater crime can be committed than the wilful setting fire to merchant ships, which may endanger not only lives and properties, but public safety. I should think this crime, above all others, fit to be punished with death, if I could suppose the infliction of death at all useful in the prevention of crimes.

But in subjects of this nature, we are to consider, not what the individual is, nor what he may have done; we are to consider only what is right for public example, and private safety.

Whether hanging ever did, or can, answer any good purpose, I doubt: but the cruel exhibition of every execution day, is a proof that hanging carries no terror with it. And I am confident that every new sanguinary law operates as an encouragement to commit capital offences; for it is not the mode, but the certainty of punishment, that creates terror. What men know they must endure, they fear; what they think they can escape, they despise. The multiplicity of our hanging laws has produced two things; frequency of condemnation and frequent pardons. As hope is the first and greatest spring of action, if it was so, that, out of twenty convicts, one only was to be pardoned, the thief would say, "Why may not I be that one?" But since, as our laws are actually administered, not one in twenty is executed,

the thief acts on the chance of twenty to one in his favour, he acts on a fair and reasonable presumption of indemnity; and I verily believe, that the confident hope of indemnity is the cause of nineteen in twenty robberies that are committed.

But if we look to the executions themselves, what example do they give? The thief dies either hardened or penitent. We are not to consider such reflections as occur to reasonable and good men, but such impressions as are made on the thoughtless, the desperate, and the wicked. These men look on the hardened. villain with envy and admiration. All that admiration and contempt of death with which heroes and martyrs inspire good men in a good cause, the abandoned villain feels in seeing a desperado like himself meet death with intrepidity. The penitent thief, on the other hand, often makes the sober villain think in this way; himself oppressed with poverty and want, he sees a man die with that penitence which promises pardon for his sins here, and happiness hereafter; straight he thinks, that by robbery, forgery, or murder, he can relieve all his wants; and if he be brought to justice, the punishment will be short and trifling, and the reward eternal.

Even in crimes which are seldom or never pardoned, death is no prevention. Housebreakers, forgers, and coiners, are sure to be hanged: yet housebreaking, forgery, and coining, are the very crimes which are oftenest committed. Strange it is, that in the case of blood, of which we ought to be most tender, we should still go on, against reason and against experience, to make unavailing slaughter of our fellow-creatures. A recent event has proved that policy will do what blood cannot do.-I mean the late regulation of the coinage. Thirty years together men were continually hanged for coining; still it went on: but on the new regulation of the gold coin, it ceased. This event proves these two things: the efficacy of police, and the inefficacy of hanging. But, is it not very extraordinary, that since the regulation of the gold coin, an act has passed, making it treason to coin silver? But

has it stopped the coining of silver? On the contrary, do you not hear of it more than ever? It seems as if the law and the crime bore the same date. I do not know what the honourable member thinks who brought in the bill; but perhaps some feelings may come across his mind, when he sees how many lives he is taking away for no purpose. Had it been fairly stated, and specifically pointed out, what the mischief in coining silver in the utmost extent is, that hanging bill might not have been so readily adopted; under the name of treason it found an easy passage. I, indeed, have always understood treason to be nothing less than some act or conspiracy against the life or honour of the King, and the safety of the state: but what the King or state can suffer by my taking now and then a bad sixpence, or a bad shilling, I cannot imagine.

By this nickname of treason, however, there lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to be burnt alive, a girl just turned of fourteen; at her master's bidding, she hid some white washed farthings behind her stays, on which the jury found her guilty, as an accomplice with her master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednesday; and the faggots all lay ready -no reprieve came till just as the cart was setting out, and the girl would have been burnt alive on the same day, had it not been for the humane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Good God, sir, are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, and are we lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child for hiding a white washed farthing! And yet this barbarous sentence, which ought to make men shudder at the thought of shedding blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason for more hanging and burning. It was recommended to me not many days ago, to bring in a bill to make it treason to coin copper, as well as gold and silver. Yet, in the formation of these sanguinary laws, humanity, religion, and policy, are thrown out of the question. This one wise argument is always sufficient; if you hang for one fault, why not for another? If for stealing a sheep, why not for a cow or a horse? If for a shilling why not

for a handkerchief, that is worth eighteenpence? and so on. We therefore ought to oppose the increase of these new laws; the more, because every fresh one begets twenty others.

When a member of parliament brings in a new hanging law, he begins with mentioning some injury that may be done to private property, for which a man is not yet liable to be hanged; and then proposes the gallows as the specific and infallible means of cure and prevention. But the bill, in progress of time, makes crimes capital, that scarce deserve whipping. For instance, the shoplifting act was to prevent bankers and silversmiths, and other shops, where there are commonly goods of great value, from being robbed; but it goes so far as to make it death to lift any thing off a counter with intent to steal.

Under this act, one Mary Jones was executed, whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press-warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman's husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debt of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging. "Tis a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen) and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen draper's shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket)" that she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did:" The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shoplifting about Ludgate an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate-street. When brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted

and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn.

Let us reflect a little on this woman's fate. The poet says, "An honest man is the noblest work of God." He might have said, with equal truth, that a beauteous woman's the noblest work of God.

The state be

But for what cause was God's creation robbed of this its noblest work? It was for no injury; but for a mere attempt to clothe two naked children by unlawful means. Compare this with what the state did, and what the law did. reaved the woman of her husband, and the children of a father who was all their support; the law deprived the woman of her life, and the children of their remaining parent, exposing them to every danger, insult, and merciless treatment, that destitute and helpless orphans suffer. Take all the circumstances together, I do not believe that a fouler murder was ever committed against law, than the murder of this woman by law. Some who hear me are perhaps blaming the judges, the jury, the hangman; but neither judge, jury, nor hangman, are to blame; they are ministerial agents; the true hangman is the member of parliament: he who frames the bloody law is answerable for the blood that is shed under it. But there is a further consideration still. Dying as these unhappy wretches often do, who knows what their future lot may be!-Perhaps, my honourable friend who moves this bill, has not yet considered himself in the light of an executioner; no man has more humanity, no man a stronger sense of religion than himself; and I verily believe that at this moment he wishes as little success to his hanging law as I do. His nature must recoil at making himself the cause, not only of shedding the blood, but perhaps destroying the soul of his fellowcreatures. '

But the wretches who die are not the only sufferers; there are more and greater objects of compassion still; I mean the sur