AUE UNIVERSITY XllBRARY REMARKS REFUTATION AN ARTICLE IN THE 118th NUMBER QUARTERLY REVIEW, ON LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S SPEECH, AT STROUD. '' Mark how a plain tale sli; ,11 put thee down.' LONDON : JAMES RIDGWAY AND SONS, PICCADILLY. The following pages were written shortly after the appearance of the Article which they profess to answer, but the all-absorbing interest taken at the time in the Canada question prevented their publi cation. It has become necessary to mention this, in order to account for the delay, which may have given some colour to the insinuations of the Tory press that the Reviewer's statements were unan swerable. February, 1838. REMARKS, Sf-c. Sfc. We have often been surprised that masquerades should have gone out of fashion in England. When it is considered how strongly the English character is marked by shyness, and yet by restlessness, — how it retreats from exposure, and yet how little it can bear repose ; — it might have been supposed that a mask which assists and protects both these quali ties, — which allows the fullest play to the wearer's activity without in the least compromising his re serve, — would have been a shield, that when once adopted, would never have been wholly laid aside. Laid aside, however, it seems to be, and after having reigned for more than one generation in the thea tre, the mall and the assembly-room, it has now sunk into a toy to amuse children, or a disguise used at a very few public and scarcely reputable assemblages. But, although the actual mask has been aban doned, yet as the feelings which first introduced it continue, the union of publicity and reserve is pre served, though in a different form. It has been removed from conversation to literature. We talk, indeed, with bare faces, but we write under a dis guise. We believe that in no country, and at no period was there so much unacknowledged pub lication as in England at the present time. Much ofthe scientific, much ofthe historical, much even of the mere literary, and almost all the political writing ofthe day is anonymous. In many cases this arises from diffidence ; no one when he sends his first manuscript to the press can tell how it will look in print, or, until he has heard the public voice, can estimate its relative merit. And even a practised author must often doubt how far the work which he is publishing will support his previous reputation. Such motives to concealment are blameless. But sometimes it is sought on very different grounds, and this is remarkably the case with political writers. There are persons who believe, or from their conduct must be sup posed to believe, that in the war of parties all instruments are lawful : and that the most effica cious of weapons is, large, unhesitating, unquali fied falsehood. If a person, unhappy enough to hold such opinions should also fill an eminent social position, if he should be a man of consi derable literary or political reputation, his pru dence might be less callous than his conscience. However indifferent to the crime he might fear the consequences of detection. The natural resort of such a person is to the pages of a review. There, surrounded by numbers as unknown as himself, he may accumulate, in safety, misstatements, mis representations and slanders. He may misquote and invent without responsibility to any tribunal, except to that of the internal judge who has ceased to act. Whether these were the precise motives which induced the author of the Review of Lord John Russell's Speech to consign it to the Quarterly, we cannot decidedly say. We do not know who was the author of that article, nor should we be willing, by uttering vague suspicions, wantonly to cast such a stigma on any man. It is possible, indeed, that the writer may be un susceptible of disgrace : it is possible that he may be one of those, whose office in his party is to bid defiance to shame, and to compensate the want of birth, or fortune, or character, by performing services, the mere proposal of which to men of spirit, would be an insult. If such be his posi tion, he may, perhaps, avow his work ; but if he can sink in public opinion, he will keep on his mask. These are strong expressions. We proceed to shew that they are not undeserved. The article in question is an answer to the following short passages in Lord John Russell's Speech. " The rule of Tory Ministries in this country was " neither short in its duration nor limited in its " extent — they had time enough to perform what- b 2 " ever good they meditated — they had power " enough to carry into effect any projects for the " benefit of the people which they might have " entertained. And now, gentlemen, I come to " you, and ask you, whether it be not a fair state- " ment to say, that they did many things which " were evil ; that they left undone many things " which were good and practicable ; and that a " great part, I should say the greater part, of our " task as a Reform Ministry, has been to correct " the errors, to repair the blunders, and to remedy " the evils, which those Tory Ministers had in- " flicted upon the country? My enumeration shall " be as short as I can make it, although, in making " it short, I must be culpable of many omissions. " In no very long period of years they increased " the debt of this country from 250,000,000Z. to " 800,000, 0001. — they imposed most burdensome " taxes upon the people, to pay the interest of that " debt — they incurred many unnecessary expenses, " and kept up many most useless establishments ; "to facilitate for a time the collection of taxes, " they depreciated the currency, thereby rendering " their imposts, in the end, much more burdensome " and more heavy upon the nation — they admini- " stered the poor laws in such a way as to deprive " them ofthe effect intended by the Act of Eliza- " beth ; they paid the wages of labour out of a " fund, that ought only to be distributed in the " way of charity, thereby reducing the independent " labourers ofthe country (to use a phrase' which 1 " remember my friend Mr, Horner once used to "me, when speaking upon the subject) to a state " of villenage. They effected also a Union with " Ireland, but they did not effect that union upon " its only true basis — a union of the interests, of " the feelings, and of the affections, of the people " of England and Ireland. It was a union bought " with money,- bought, I believe I am not exag- " gerating when I say, by 800,000/. of British " money, besides honours and titles lavished with- " out stint to buy the Irish Parliament, but not to " conciliate the people of Ireland. So much for " the acts of Tory Ministers ! \ " I come now to their omissions. — That which " they left undone was indeed great, and came in " the end to be almost appalling. In the criminal " law, for instance, they made little or no altera- " tion in the sanguinary character of the code, " which then ruled us; and, as regarded slavery- — " that unfortunate and sinful blot upon our name — " they did nothing' that could be considered as " effectually tending to its complete extinction. " With respect to other subjects, which I will now " leave untouched — but untouched only because I " wish to spare more time — they left everything to " do; they occupied themselves with maintaining " establishments, which they then said were neces- " sary, — in passing laws, from time to time, to " repress the rising discontent of the people, — and ' with these poor performances they thought the du- ' ties of Government were ended." — " Among the ' various alterations — among the various corrup- ' tions which were introduced into our constitution ' by Tory Ministers, who reigned supreme for up- ' wards of fifty years, must be numbered that of ' pouring into the House of Lords such a flood of ' persons of their own political opinions, as to ren- ' der that assembly the representatives of a parti- ' cular party rather than a sound constitutional ' body. I believe I am hardly exaggerating when ' I say that in the course of fifty years, in one way ' or another, not less than two hundred persons ' have been added to the House of Lords. Of ' course, the introduction of so large a mass of in- ( dividuals, all belonging to one party, has in some ' respects changed the character of the House ' of Lords." We have extracted this passage at length, partly for the purpose of rendering the Reviewer's stric tures intelligible ; and partly because it cannot be too often repeated, or too widely diffused. It con tains, in a few sentences, equally remarkable for their conciseness, force, and perspicuity, a calm and unexaggerated statement of. the prominent errors and crimes of the Tory Governments which, with a few brief intervals, ruled this country from 1784 to 1830. Our enemies seem to have felt that such a statement could not be left unanswered. They must have perceived, too, that it was unas- PEERAGE. 7 sailable by truth. Under the combined influence of these two feelings, they have produced the mass of unblushing falsehood which we now proceed to expose. Many of the minor errors and minor falsifica tions we must omit — partly from their insignifi cance, such as the discussion about the topography of Stroud, partly because they have been already exposed, as in the case of the calumnies about the Marquis of Tavistock, and as to the rest because the limits of a pamphlet necessarily confine us to a few principal topics. Those to which we can ad vert are the statements respecting the increase of the Peerage — the amendment of the Poor Laws, the abolition of Slavery, Finance, and the amendment of the Criminal Law, and we shall take them in the above order, though not precisely that adopted by the Reviewer. THE PEERAGE. " Not exactly the first in order," says the Reviewer, "but one of the most prominent, and " certainly the strangest topic of this speech, was " the alleged prostitution of the Peerage for party "purposes during the fifty years of Tory misrule." He then quotes the passage which we have last extracted from the speech, and comments on it thus : — " Now certainly this is very surprising from one " of a ministry who, in the first year of their power, 8 PEERAGE. " created nearly double the number of Peers which " had ever before been made within the same period ' ' — more than were ' lavished to carry the Irish " Union ' — and as many in six years as Lord Liver- " pool had made in sixteen — and who, it is well " known, endeavoured to make fifty, sixty, one hun- " dred more ; — having been only prevented from 'f thus annihilating the Peerage under a deluge of " degradation, by the unexpected resistance of his "late Majesty. " But this fifty years' profusion of Peerages were " it seems all lavished on one party. Lord John ' ' Russell conveniently forgets that in the former " Administration ofthe Whigs — 1806 — they created " no less than twelve Peerages in a few months." The Reviewer then enters into some calculations for the purpose of shewing that, excluding all the Peers created between 1781 and 1831, (that is to say, excluding more than two-thirds of the Peers created by the Whigs during the last fifty-four years,) the Tories would still have a majority in the House of Lords. " And yet," he adds, " Lord John Russell was " not ashamed to attribute the numbers of the " Opposition in the House of Lords to a profligate " profusion of Peerages made within an unjustifia- " bly short period in favour of one party exclu- " sively — such being in fact their own conduct, and "the main basis on which they themselves rest in " th*5 House of Lords." PEERAGE. We shall not waste time in hunting the Reviewer through the errors of his calculations. We shall not at present more than allude to the fallacy of his excluding from the Tory creations the 28 Irish Peers thrown into the House of Lords by Mr. Pitt. We shall only remark, that if he had taken his cal culation from an earlier period, if he had extended his attention to the ancient English Nobility, a very different result would have appeared. Out of the 79 Peers remaining from the House of Lords at it existed before the Revolution of 1688,. only 37 are now opposed to the Whig Administration. Out ofthe 101 remaining from that House as it existed at the accession of the House of Hanover, only 46 are hostile to the Government. Such is the differ ence of opinion in the old and the new Aristocracy. We proceed to a more practical question ; — to the developement ¦ of Lord John Russell's statement, that " among the various alterations — among the " various corruptions which were introduced into " our constitution by Tory Ministers, who reigned " supreme for upwards of fifty years, must be num- " bered that of pouring into the House of Lords " such a flood of persons of their own political opi- " nions, as to render that assembly the representa- " rives of a particular party, rather than a sound " constitutional body." The following are the short details by which this grave charge, a charge of wilful and systematic per^ version of the British Constitution, is established. 10 PEERAGE. At the accession of Mr. Pitt, in January, 1784,. the House of Lords consisted of only 194 English temporal Peers. From that period until January, 1825, inclusive, (when Lord Liverpool created his last Peer,) the House was augmented by the crea tion of — English Peers . . . 178* And by the Introduction of Irish Peers 28 i* Total 206 Since that time the creations have been 9 by Mr. Canning, 6 by Lord Ripon, 10 by the Duke of Wellington, 34 by Lord Grey, 5 by Sir R. Peel, and 13 by Lord Melbourne — in all 77, making, with the previous 206, a total of 283. Of this vast ad dition there were created by Whigs . . 59 By Mr. Canning . 9 By Lord Ripon . 6 And by the pure Tories 209 Total . 283 It may be supposed however that these creations were justified, or at least excused, by the Peerages which, during that interval, became extinct. We will shew how far that defence is available. The number of Peerages that have become extinct dur- * We omit in this computation the Barony of Braybrook, and the Earldom of Mansfield, which did not in fact increase the Peerage. PEERAGE. 1 1 ing that period is 75. The figures therefore stand thus— Peerages added since 1784 . 283 Peerages extinct since 1784 . 75 Total addition to the House of Lords since the commencement of the Tory reign . 208 Is it true then, or is it false, that during about 50 years " more than 200 persons have been added to the House of Lords?" Is it true, or is it false, that " the number of the opposition in the House of Lords is to be attributed to a profligate profu sion of Peerages?" When we find that in the same half century in which the Whigs created 59 Peers, the Tories made- 209, to what other cause than to a profusion of Tory Peerages can the num bers of the Tory Opposition be attributed ? But it may be supposed that the Tory creations though profuse were not profligate. It may be supposed that they were called for by the circum stances of the country. We will shew that they were most profligate — that they were not called for by the circumstances of the country, or even of the party, but were a portion of the insolent system by which the Tories endeavoured, and almost with success, to change the English Constitution into a permanent oligarchy. During the whole period in which the Tories were thus wildly abusing the royal prerogative, they 12 PEERAGE. were merely adding to an existing and irresistible majority. It was a majority in that House which brought Mr. Pitt into power in 1 784. If he had never added a Peer, he would have continued to reign there unopposed. In that very year he created 12 peerages. From 1786 to 1795, he created 41, and in 1796 and 1797, only two years, 32 ; and all this merely to swell a party which he found already predominant. Those who are favourable to his memory, may believe that he was not aware of the remote consequences of his conduct. They may attribute his reckless creations to the vanity of a very young statesman, intoxicated by the early possession of almost unlimited power, and delighted to shower dignities on his dependants and friends. Others may consider them as a portion ofthe whole sale bribery on which he condescended to found his influence. Others again may fear that the mis chiefs which have been the results of his actions, were in fact their motives. They may fear that while he was changing the House of Lords from a small senate, fairly representing the opinion of the educated portions of the community, into a large assembly, blindly directed by an overwhelming and factious majority, he knew that he was subverting its character and constitution, and deliberately in tended to subvert them. They may fear that he intended to effect what he actually did effect : that he intended to convert that House into a Tory fortress assailable only by an equally enormous PEERAGE. 13 creation — a measure which he well knew that no Whig minister would readily submit to. Whether these were or were not the motives of Mr. Pitt and of his Tory successors, whether they did or did not know whither their course must lead, whether they sacrificed the Constitution through ignorance or carelessness, or ambition, the result at least is now obvious. The great Tory majority in the House of Lords has been the creation and is the instrument of a party, and of a party opposed to the House of Commons and to the body of the people. Up to the present time it has indeed confined itself to passive resist ance. It has been satisfied with preventing good measures, without attempting to force the adop tion of bad. It has been satisfied with keep ing the country stationary, without endeavouring to compel it to retrograde. It has not stopped the supplies ; it has not joined in a vote of censure, or of want of confidence. It has not attempted to seize the Government. But how long can we rely on this degree of forbearance from a party so pre sumptuous, so headstrong, and so little acquainted with the feelings of the mass of the people ? And if it ever should break from the control of its more prudent and more 7-patriotic leaders, if the reins now held by the Duke of Wellington should^ fall into less firm or less skilful hands, what can, what must, be the result ? Will that result be that the 25 millions who now constitute in these islands the [4 PEERAGE. proudest, the most spirited, and the most en lightened population of Europe, will endure the dictation of 300 individuals ? Or will they de mand that the balance in the House of Lords be restored, in the only way in which it can be re stored, by an adequate creation of Peers ? It is true that such a creation will be a still further change in the constitution of that House. It is true that unless accompanied by other important modifications it will diminish its power, its re spectability, and its usefulness. But on whom will the responsibility of the change fall ? On the Whigs, on whom it will have been forced by the reckless ambition of their adversaries, or on the Tories, who, to repeat Lord John Russell's words, *' by pouring into the House of Lords a flood " of persons of their own political opinions, have " rendered that assembly the representatives of a " particular party rather than a sound constitu- " tional body." If that House is at last to fall ; if the most opulent, the most powerful, and, on the whole, the most enlightened aristocracy that the world ever saw, is to sink into a mere Legislative Council, with a rnajority the nominees of the Minister for the time being, — on Mr. Pitt and on his followers the guilt will lie. 15 STATEMENTS RESPECTING THE AMENDMENT OF THE POOR LAWS. In the black catalogue of Tory crimes, both of commission and omission, Lord John Russell has prominently inserted, as it was his duty to do, their conduct with respect to the Poor Laws. This is met by the Reviewer, not only by a denial of active misconduct, but even by a claim of merito rious exertion in the cause of Poor Law Reform. " It is too hard," he says, " to make the Tories " responsible for abuses, which were in no degree " within their ministerial functions, and which " they could only have remedied by suggesting " Parliamentary interference." Whether he wrote this passage in ignorance or in fraud, of course, we cannot tell : but he can have written it only in the grossest misinformation as to the facts of the case, or with the most deliberate intention to pervert them. " Too hard to make theTories responsible for abuses not within their functions, and which they could have remedied only by Parliamentary interference." — Why, these abuses were of their own creation — they were the results Of their own Parliamentary interference. They were as much their works as the Bank Restriction, or the Corn Laws. To prove this, we will cite only the evidence of a Tory, and, as the Reviewer truly states, one of the most intel ligent and respectable of that party. The follow ing passage is extracted from the Report of 1834, bearing the signature of Mr. Sturges Bourne. " The 36th George III. cap. 23, (an Act passed 16 POOR LAWS. " by Mr. Pitt), may be considered the great and " fatal deviation from our previous policy. The " 43rd Elizabeth never contemplated, as objects of " relief, industrious persons. It made no promises " of comfort or happiness ; it directed that those " having no means, and using no daily trade of life " to get their living by, should be set to work, and " that the impotent should receive necessary relief. " These were unalluring offers — they held out no- " thing but work and necessary relief, and those " only to the impotent, and to persons who must " always form a small minority in any tolerably " regulated society — that is, persons having no " property, and using no daily trade. The able- '* bodied industrious labourer was carefully ex- " eluded, and relief, therefore, as Mr. Pitt (in the " speech introducing his Poor Bill in 1796) com- " plained, became ground for opprobrium and con- " tempt. Relief was considered a burthen to the " payers, and a degradation to the receivers (and " to be marked as such by a badge), a remedy for " unexpected calamity, and a mitigation of the " punishment inflicted by nature on extravagance " and improvidence, but no part of the ordinary " fund for the support of labour. The paupers " were a small disreputable minority, whose re- " sentment was not to be feared, and whose favour " was of no value ; all other classes were anxious " to diminish the number of applicants, and to " reduce the expense of their maintainance. " The 36th Geo. III. removed all these fences j POOR LAWS. 17 it recognized, as objects of relief, industrious per sons, and enabled the magistrate, at his just and proper discretion, to order it to be given in a way which should not be injurious to their com fort, domestic situation and happiness. Mr. Pitt's Bill went still further; it admitted, within the pale of pauperism, not only the industrious la bourer, but the person with property, and en abled him, when possessed of land, not only to retain it while an applicant for relief, but to be supplied, at the expense of the parish, with a cow. It is true, that this Bill was dropped, but as it was not an individual, but a government measure, it may be cited as evidence of the gene ral feeling on the subject. " When allowance to the able-bodied, in aid of their wages, had once been introduced, when it had been found to be an expedient by which the expenditure in wages could be reduced, and pro fits and rents could be raised, when the paupers became numerous in most districts, and in some places formed the majority and even the large majority of the peasantry ; when their clamours for allowance were favoured by the farmers, and apparently j ustified by the rise in the price of the necessaries of life, who can be surprised if the magistrates were led, in some places, to connive at, in others to sanction, and, in still more, to promote, a practice, the evil of which had not then been experienced, which seemed so plausi- c 18 POOR LAWS. " ble in itself, and which so many persons com- " bined to favour? Who can wonder that, thus " urged and encouraged, they should have fancied " themselves entitled to settle the weekly income •' of the labourers ; and who can wonder at any " amount of evil that has followed so preposterous an " attempt ?" It is true that when measures intended, like al most all Mr. Pitt's, merely to effect a temporary purpose, began to produce the permanent evils which were their necessary consequences — when the peasantry became demoralized, and unmanageable, the Poor-rates and County-rates doubled and qua drupled — tenants began to fail, rents to diminish, and farms to be unoccupied — the Tories seemed anxious to retrace their steps. What they did, or rather what they attempted to do, is stated by the Reviewer in the following passage : — " They suggested in 1816 and 1817 a Committee " of Inquiry on the subject, and on the report of " that Committee they induced Mr. Sturges Bourne, " one of the most intelligent and respectable men " in the House — a Tory of course — to introduce a " bill for amending the law of settlement, and ano- " ther for preventing the misapplication of the " rates — two bills which embodied several of the more " useful and important parts of the recent measures. " The bill for preventing the misapplication of " Poor-rates was in its progress opposed more or " less decidedly by Lord Milton, Mr. Curwen, Mr. POOR LAWS. 19 " Phillips, Mr. Ricardo, Mr. Hume, Alderman " Wood, and Sir James Mackintosh,— all Whigs ; " and supported by Mr. Bourne, of course, Mr. " William Courtenay, now Earl of Devon, and two " or three other Tories. It passed the House of " Commons, and was taken up in the Lords by " Lord Harrowby, one of the Tory Ministers, but " thrown out on the second reading on the motion " of Lord Lansdowne, now Lord John Russell's " Whig colleague. We do not mean to say that " either in the Commons or the Lords the opposi- " tion to these bills was made a party question — we " believe that it was not — but it so happened that " its opponents were chiefly Whigs, and its suppor- " ters chiefly Tories ; and that it ultimately failed " because the Whigs did not afford it that active " support which the Tories gave to the measure of " 1 834, and without which Lord Castlereagh thought, " and thought most justly, that it would be hazard- " ous to attempt so critical and important a " measure." In these paragraphs there is a remarkable amount of truth — more perhaps than in the whole remainder of the article. It is true that the bills in question were introduced by the Tories — it is also true that they were thrown out by the Whigs ; and it is true also that they were important bills. All that is false is that the bills were useful, or that they embodied any part of the recent measure. The bill for amending the law of settlement would c 2 20 POOR LAWS. have destroyed the only class of industrious and independent labourers whom the existing abuses allowed to continue. Every one who has the least acquaintance with this subject, perhaps even the Reviewer himself, is aware that in the pauperised districts the only valuable labourers were those, who, having no settlement in the parishes in which they dwelt, were liable to removal if they applied for parochial assistance. The fear of removal gave them a motive to abstain from such application. It gave them motives to industry, frugality, and hon esty. It saved them in short from the general contamination. The object of the bill was to put an end to this fear. It enacted, that after three years' residence, no one should be removable. The first result would have been a general conspiracy among the employers of labour to prevent any non-parishioner from residing among them for three years. The obvious consequences would have been — the breaking the tie between master and servant, — the removal of men and their families from the places and the services to which they were attached, and where they were useful, to those where their presence was a mere incumbrance — the congestion of labourers where there were not funds for their em ployment, or even their maintenance — and all the oppression and ruin which follow an attempt on the part ofthe higher orders to deprive thelower of their only privilege, that of carrying their labour to the best market. The next result would have been POOR LAWS. 21 that those whom the cruel kindness of the Legisla ture provided with new settlements would at once have sunk into the general mass of pauperism with which they were surrounded. Diligence, economy, character, all would have become useless to them. And this the Reviewer calls "a useful measure." This, he says, was embodied in the Poor Law Amendment Act. Had he looked at that act he would have seen that its provisions are precisely the reverse — that instead of facilitating, it prevents the acquisition of a new settlement : that it abolishes or qualifies all the most usual modes of doing so, and renders a change of settlement almost im practicable. But the Bill " to Prevent the Misapplication of Poor Rates " was still more destructive. It enabled the Overseers to take into their care and manage ment any child or children of a person applying for relief, to be maintained, instructed, and employed at the expence and on account of the parish. Such was the "useful" measure of the Reviewer. It was a measure for spreading over England and Wales 16,000 foundling hospitals, in which the children of the labouring classes should be main tained, and instructed, and employed at the ex pense and on the account of the Rate-payers. We will not dwell on the breaking-up of all domestic ties ; on the mutual independence of parent and child ; ''on the legislative recognition, that the labouring classes, or, in other words, the vast ma- 22 POOR LAWS. jority ofthe population, are not responsible for the maintenance and instruction of their offspring. We shall confine ourselves tothemere pecuniary extrava gance ofthe scheme. Surely the Reviewer must share in the delusion, which we had fondly thought was eon- fined to the totally uninstructed portion of the com munity, that the fund which supplies poor rate is in exhaustible. He must believe that every parish poor- box contains an Aladdin's lamp, served by Genii, solely occupied in providing food and clothing for the offspring of a periodically doubling population. He must believe that when all prudence and fore thought have been extinguished, when every boy and girl may marry with the confidence that their children are to be maintained and instructed at the expence of the parish ; when all the motives to self-restraint, and most of those to industry and good conduct, are destroyed ; a stream of relief will still flow, and flow in a larger and larger volume, to supply the constantly augmenting de mand. And he gravely tells us that this gigantic abuse has been embodied in the Poor Law Amend ment Act ; an act which declares that the maintenance of all children under sixteen is the duty of their parents ; that relief to a child is relief to its father or mother ; and that even a step-father is bound to maintain his wife's children by a former husband, or even by a father not having been her husband. Among the many benefits which, in the course of his long and distinguished public life, Lord POOR LAWS. Lansdowne has confered on his country, not the least is the rejection of this monstrous Bill. In the last hour, indeed, when the fires kindled by the pauper rebellion of 1830, — a rebellion not im ported, as the Reviewer ventures to state, from France, but excited by poor law mal-administration, following its course, and terminating with its extinction, — when those fires had frightened the Tories out of office, and their successors had, with an energy and a self- devotion unparalleled in English history, ventured to apply an effective remedy, the Tories in the House of Lords, did, indeed, assist in the great work of poor law amendment. The Duke of Wellington, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Liverpool, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Wharncliffe, and many others of the party, were energetic supporters of the Bill. But very different was their conduct in the Commons They all voted for it indeed ; for they were landlords. But not one Tory of eminence occurs to us, as hav ing spoken in its favour, except Mr. Frankland Lewis. They knew that the measure was still more beneficial to the poor than to the rich ; but they knew that among the uneducated classes it must be unpopular, and unpopularity for public objects they never have willingly encountered, Such was the behaviour of the Tory commoners while the Bill was in progress. We have not words to express our contempt and disgust at their proceed ings since it became law. Knowing, as they well know, the absolute necessityof the measure, admitt- 24 SLAVERY. ing as they are ready to admit in private, that the welfare, the morality, and even the civilization of England depends on its preservation, knowing and feeling all this, their candidates in the election of 1835, and still more eagerly in that of 1837, raised an anti-Poor- Bill cry. They endeavoured almost every where, and in many places with success, to force themselves into seats by reviling a measure which its very excellence necessarily makes unpo pular. Such base subservience to the worst pas sions and worst prejudices of the multitude, such dishonourable disavowals, such fraud, and such incendiarism have no counterpart except in the worst periods of the French Revolution. SLAVERY. The statements, however, respecting Slavery, are, if that term can be applied to a tissue of gross, unblushing falsehoods, still more amusing. They begin by quoting the following passage from the speech : — " And as regarded slavery, — that unfortunate " and sinful blot upon our name, — they (the Tories) " did nothing that could be considered as effectually " tending to its complete extinction." On which the Reviewer thus comments : — " Another very unlucky topic, as poor Lord John " will find. The phrase is worded with all the petty " astuteness of quibble, to imply more than can be " maintained. ' The Tories did nothing towards the SLAVERY. 25 " extinction ofthe slave trade, that unfortunate and " sinful blot.' Such is the obvious meaning that " the words present ; so they were, no doubt, un- " derstood at Stroud ; so Lord John hoped that they " would pass with the public ; but if any too curi- " ous observer should say, ' Why, 'tis totally false,' " then my Lord may hedge himself by an appeal to " the exact words — ' I never said that the Tories " had done nothing towards the extinction of slavery — " I only said that the Tories had done nothing that " could be considered as tending to its complete extinc- " tion.' But this quibble shall not serve. It was " that class of statesmen, whom his Lordship de- " nominates Tories, that made the first, the most " constant, and the most important efforts for the " abolition of Negro slavery." We will not dwell on the confusion in the Re viewer's mind between Slavery and the Slave-trade, things as different as corn and the corn-laws ; we will meet him on the ground selected by himself : and we affirm, though Lord John has not done so, that the Tories did nothing towards the extinction of the slave trade. We affirm, that, on the con trary, they did every thing to prevent its extinction. When Mr. Wilberforce, and, as his follower, Mr. Pitt, proposed the abolition of what the Reviewer truly calls " that nefarious trade," when for twenty long years the proposal was annually made and annually rejected, who were its supporters and who were its opponents? Its supporters were the Whigs; 26 SLAVERY. its opponents were the Tories. Reason, humanity, religion, and — what with the Tories of that day was far more powerful — the influence of Mr. Pitt, all fail ed, and failed hopelessly. At length, after the strug gle had continued for nearly a quarter of a century, and through three Tory Administrations, the Whigs were for one year in office. In that one year they car ried the question ; and carried it against a minority, headed by Lord Castlereagh, in the Commons ; by Lord Westmoreland, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Eldon, and Lord Hawkesbury, in the Lords. So much for the audacious statement, that the Tories made the first, the most constant, and the most important efforts for its abolition. What follows is, if possible, a still bolder assertion. " But we have a more serious objection to make " upon this point. We retort upon them Lord " John Russell's own words, and we tell them, ' that ' ' they have done nothing that can be considered as " effectually tending to its complete extinction.'' They " have given, indeed, twenty millions to remunerate " our own planters for the loss — a hypothetical one " — which they may suffer from the nominal change " which has been made in the state of the black " population of our West India Islands. What the " effect of that change may be when it comes to be " more than nominal, we are not wise enough to " foresee; but at best it goes but a comparatively " short way to the complete extinction of slavery." So the conversion of the negro from a wretch SLAVERY. 27 destined, himself and his posterity, for ever to hope less servfude, into an apprentice for seven years, with absolute freedom at its expiration ; the subject ing him, during that short apprenticeship, instead of the utmost toil into which .he could be lashed, to only seven hours and a half of labour in a day ; the absolute abolition of all domestic or arbitrary punishment; the changing him, in short, from a mere article of property, into a being with legal . rights and defined responsibilities ; all this is " a nominal change." Our readers may find, in the following extract from Dr. Channing's letter to Mr. Clay, wdiat is thought, on the other side of the Atlantic, of this "nominal change." "England is a privileged nation. — On one part ' ' of her history she can look with unmixed self- ' ' respect. With the exception of the promulgation " of Christianity, I know not a moral effort so " glorious as the long, painful, meritorious struggle " of her philanthropists against that concentration "of all horrors, cruelties, and crime, the Slave "Trade. Next to this, her recent Emancipation " Act is the most signal expression afforded by our " times of the progress of civilization and a purer " Christianity. Other nations have won imperrsh- " able honours, by heroic struggles for their own " rights ; but there was wanting the example of "a nation espousing with disinterestedness, and " amidst great obstacles, the rights of those who " had no claim but that of a common humanity, 28 FINANCE. "the rights of the most fallen of the race. Great " Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt and " with a grinding taxation, contracted a new debt " of a hundred millions of dollars, to give freedom, " not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African. " I know not that history records a national act so ¦' disinterested, so sublime ! In the progress of "ages, England's naval triumphs will sink into " a more and more narrow space in the records of " our race. This moral triumph will fill a broader, " brighter page."* FINANCE. The most elaborate ofthe Reviewer's Misrepresen tations is comprehended under Finance. He ventures to assert that the Tories have been neither more profuse nor more careless of posterity in their expen diture, nor more negligent in retrenchment, than the Whigs. One mode of producing this result is by considering Mr. Pitt's Government from 1794 to 1801 as a Whig Government, because one Whig commoner and three Whig noblemen supported it, and, in doing so, deserted their party — a piece of nonsense so obvious that it could not have been committed, except for the purpose of commencing the comparison in 1806, instead of Lord John Russell's period, the beginning of the revolutionary war. Starting at this point, we will see how the matter stands. * A letter of Dr. Channing's on the Annexation of Texas, p. 21. FINANCE. 29 The amount of the public debt unredeemed on Jan. 5, 1793 was £. Funded 227,989,148 Unfunded 11,361,000 239,350,148 Terminable Annuities, £1,307,212, valued by Mr. Finlaison at . . 22,384,911 261,735,059 And the annual charge upon the same was 9,471,675 On the 5th of January, 1816, the public debt unredeemed was £. Funded 816,311,939 Unfunded 38,794,038 Terminable Annuities, £1,894,613, valued by Mr. Finlaison at . . 30,080,346 885,186,323 And the annual charge upon the same was 32,457,141 Shewing an increase in the debt, between Jan. 5, 1793, and Jan. 5, 1816, of £623,45 1,264 capital, and £22,985,466 of annual charge. It is true that for the whole of this increase the Tories are not responsible — a portion, but, as we shall shew, a very small portion, arose during a Whig adminis tration. 30 FINANCE. In March, 1806, the Whigs, with Lord Gren ville at their head, came into power. They re mained in office a few weeks more than one year. During that short time, at the risk of rendering themselves unpopular, they made an effort to place the finances of the country upon a firmer basis and by doing so they enabled their successors to meet the financial demands of the war with a facility otherwise impossible. For this object, they raised the Property Tax at once to 10 per cent, in order to meet, as effectually as they could, the rate of war expenditure already established at their ac cession to office, and which they could not sud denly contract. Their financial measures in creased the public revenue as follows : — In 1805 the produce of taxation paid into the Exchequer was 50,897,706/. ; in 1806 it was 55,796,086/. ; in 1807, 59,339,321/.; in 1808, 62,998,191/. The expenditure during these years was, £. £. 1805, 67,169,318 -s Leaving a defi- r 16,271,612 1806, 68,941,211 F ciency to be J 13,145,125 1807, 67,613,042 k provided fori 8,273,721 1808, 73,143,087 ' by loans of -10,144,896 The produce of the Property Tax in 1805, the first of these three years, was 4,546,614/.; in 1808, it was 11,413,562/. If the difference of these two sums be added to the deficiency of 1808, when the Tories were again in power, and upon every prin- FINANCE. 31 ciple answerable for the financial arrangements of the country, its amount would be swelled to 17,011,844/. The deficiency of 1806, 13,145,125/. which arose out of the financial operations of former years, should properly be placed to Tory account, because the means taken to meet it, and which proved afterwards so effectual, did not come into operation during that year, except in a trifling degree ; the addition made to the public income by the increase of the Property Tax in 1806, having been only 1,615,946/. It is absurd to make the Whig Administration, which existed only one year, answerable for the financial opera tions of a longer period. The deficiency of 1806 was a legacy left to them by Pitt, and the only year for which they can strictly be considered account able is 1807, when the deficiency was 8,273,721/. The actual income and expenditure are in this question the true points for examination, — not the amount of any loan contracted in a given year, which may be raised in order to cover the defi ciency of a former year, or to provide for future outlay. Judged in this way, how will stand the account between Lord Grenville's short-lived ad ministration and the Tory ministries, which with the interregnum of that one year ruled this coun try from 1792 to 1815. Dividing that term into two periods, viz. from 1792 to 1801, and from 1802 to 1815, all inclusive, we find that in the first period of ten years, the expenditure exceeded 32 FINANCE. the income of the country by 189,153,451/, or 18,915,345/. per annum on the average, while in the second period of fourteen years, the excess of expenditure over income was 236,329,309/., or 16,880,665/. of annual average deficiency. Leaving out of consideration the year for which alone the Whigs are answerable (1807), and striking the average ofthe remaining twenty-three years of war conducted by the Tories, the deficiency amounts to 18,139,523/. per annum, or 119 per cent, more than the deficiency of the year for which the Whig Admi nistration is chargeable. Will the Reviewer furnish an estimate of the amount to which the Tory deficiency, and conse quently the Tory debt would have amounted, if the Whigs of that day, had not had the firmness to meet as they did, the financial difficulty they found,which was none of their making, and for their efforts to overcome which, they are entitled to the lasting gratitude of their successors in office? As it is not to be expected that he will take this trouble, we will do it for him. The sums yielded by the Income and Property duties in the ten years, from 1806 to 181 5 in clusive, amounted to 126,240,227/. Deducting from this sum the produce that should have been realised at the rate furnished in 1805, 45,406,140/. there remains an increased amount of 80,774,087/. To provide this sum it would have been necessary to have created an additional debt, if funded in 3 per FINANCE, 33 cent, stock at the average rate paid upon loans du ring these ten years to the amount of 137,3 15,948/., but as so large an additional amount of stock as 13,700,000/. per annum could not have been raised upon the terms given for the loans actually con tracted, and, as besides, it would have been necessary to provide from year to year for the continually growing amount of interest upon the additional debt, it will probably be within the mark to assume that, but for the vilified Whig measure of raising the Property Tax at once to 10 per cent., the country would have been saddled with at least 150,000,000/. more of debt, and subject to the annual payment of 4^ millions more of annuities than it is at this moment. If on the other hand the Tories had been equally successful with the Whigs in approxi mating the public income and expenditure,. during the progress of the war, the capital of the debt existing at its close would have been less than it was by 285,883,448/. and the annual charge would have been less by 12,858,432/. These sums are found by supposing that the annual deficiency of 8,273,721/. had been funded at the average rate of interest paid on actual loans, but the average annual amount of money to be raised, being lessened by nearly ten millions, the terms of borrowing would have been more favourable, and the public would besides have saved the accumulating interest upon the larger D 34 FINANCE. sums actually funded from year to year. It is therefore probably within the mark to assume that the capital of the public debt at the close of the war would, in the case supposed, have been less than it was by at least three hundred millions. The Reviewer states that the augmentation of debt in the three Tory years, ending January 5, 1811, was not quite 29 millions. This does not at all agree with the statement in the report of the Committee on public income and expenditure. According to the Appendix to the fourth Report of that Committee, the revenue and expenditure of those years were as follows : — Years ending Jan. 5. Income. Expenditure. Deficiency. 1809 . £62,998,191 . . 73,143,087 . . 10,144,896 1810 . 63,719,400 . . 76,566,013 . . 12,846,613 1811 . 67,144,542 .. 76,865,548 . . 9,721,006 Deficiency in three years . ... £32,712,515 Being nearly four millions greater than the Re viewer's statement, although it must be owned very considerably below the deficiency of subsequent years of Tory management. The financial doings of the Tory Government will be placed in a striking point of view by taking from the Report of the Committee on Income and Expenditure, and other official documents, an abstract of the public accounts, commencing 5th January 1793, and divided into respective periods, FINANCE. 35 ending with the peace of Amiens, — the peace of 1815, — and the downfall of the Tories at the end of 1830. Ten years, ending Jan. 5, 1802. Expenditure £447,812,773 Income 258,659,322 Expenditure over Income £189,153,451 Fourteen years, ending Jan. 5, 1 8 1 (>. Expenditure £1,059,683,370 Income 823,354,060 Expenditure beyond Income .... £236,329,310 Fifteen years, ending Jan. 5, 1831. Income £831,104,402 Expenditure 791,397,246 Income beyond Expenditure .... £39,707,156 Excess of Expenditure, 10 years to 1802, £189,153,451 14 years to 1816 236,329,310 425,482,761 Deduct Income beyond Expendi- diture, 15 yearsto 1831 .... 39,707,156 £385,775,605 Thus during thirty-nine years that the Tories d2 « . ._ 36 FINANCE. were in office they actually allowed the expendi ture of the country to exceed the income by the enormous sum of 385 millions!!! The Reviewer's usual want of candour is observ able in his remarks upon Lord Henry Petty 's plan " to continue the Property Tax, and the other war taxes, after the termination of the war, by making them the securities — mortgages, in fact, for future annual loans." It is not stated that the essence of Lord Henry Petty 's plan was to mortgage the war taxes at the rate of 10 per cent, annually, reserving one-half of that pro portion, or 5 per cent., as a real efficient sinking fund for their redemption, and that this mortgaging was not to commence until the year 1811, up to which time the interest upon the loans to be contracted was to be met by other means, which were pointed out. Had this plan been carried into effect, the close of the war would have found the war taxes pledged to two-fifths of their amount ; one-half of which would have been a sinking-fund, which coming in aid of the unmortgaged portion, would, is Cf? CD co on" CD i — ' CD p= 4 CD i-SCDrt- o >-+3 i-S P rt- Ui «? a-i 1— I P- sr CD 00 00 CO 00 00 00 00 00 CO OO CO 00 oc OO 00 CO CO OO CO OO p rt- CD ,CD CD OO CO CO CO CO CO to to to to to to to to to to ,_ — 1 — ' 1—. 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They do not, perhaps, contain more malignant falsehood than his previous pages ; but they contain as much. Their substance is, that the Whigs, though they have been seven years in power, did not " bethink themselves of " this appalling concern," (we use his own lan guage) " until last Session, and that the Bills of " last session were prepared in a manner so •' slovenly as to be ridiculous ; they affected to be " consolidation, but were eight or nine in number " when they ought to have been but one. They " were sent up to the Lords — (without having re- " ceived one minute's attention, or one word of " discussion, in the House of Commons) — in such " a state of hurry, confusion, obscurity, and self- " contradiction, that the Chief Justice, in moving " that they should be read, was forced to apologise " for their imperfections, and they must eventually " have been thrown out as nonsense, if the Law " Lords had not interfered, and rendered my Lord " John's abortive attempts at legislation- -not, per- " haps, what they ought originally to have been — " (time did not allow of that) — but— just fit to be " passed." We are sorry to detain our readers by details, 64 CRIMINAL LAW. but it is only by going into details that the absurdity' n-ct of these charges can be shewn. The Whigs did not remain in office seven years without turning their attention to the criminal law. They issued a Commission more than four years ago, for the purposes of consolidating the whole Criminal Law, written and unwritten ; of considering what partial measures were necessary or expedient for defining crimes and punishments, and for the more effectual administration of Criminal Justice; thus, so far from not touching the Criminal Law for seven years, one of their earliest acts after the passing of the Reform Bill, was to insure the re vision of the whgle law : — the first attempt made in this country at a systematic digest of any one considerable branch of the law. And be it observed, that it is only from a consideration of the whole body of the law (confused and encumbered as it now is, both in its theory and practice, even after the consolidations and, such as they are, the improve ments of Sir Robert Peel) that any efficient im provement can be hoped for. But the issuing of the Commission was not all that they did ; in 1832 they passed, (as a Government measure,) the statute abolishing capital punishments in all those cases of forgeries which had been retained by Sir Robert Peel, except' indeed as regards the forging of Wills and Powers of Attorney ; exceptions, be it re collected, which were forced on the Government. The original bill did not contain them : it was CRIMINAL LAW. 65 the more enlightened wisdom of the Lords that compelled their introduction. The Whigs also passed the Prisoner's Counsel Bill, the Central Criminal Court Bill, and .some" other measures mitigating the severity of the law ; and, moreover, gave their support to the different Bills of Mr. Ewart, Mr. Lennard, and Mr. Aglionby. So much then for the seven years' neglect of the Criminal Law ; and surely it may be inferred they t, would have done more if they had not determined to wait for the digest of the Commissioners, which must lead to a revision of the whole code. But it is not quite fair to the Whigs to refer to what they have done, since they have been in office, as if their exertions commenced with that period. To estimate fairly their merits, we must look further back. Just 30 years have now elapsed since Sir Samuel Romilly first entered on the field of Criminal Law Reform. Who of the present Tories supported his exertions ? Is Sir Robert Peel's name to be found in the divisions in favour of any of those measures for the mitigation of the severity of our Criminal Code, which were brought forward year after year, and urged, with all the eloquence and truth both of Romilly and Mackintosh ? We are ready to allow to Sir R. Peel the merit of having employed a very careful draughtsman, Mr. Gregson, in the consolidation of some parts of the law, and the partial, and very partial, improvement 66 . CRIMINAL LAW. of some others. But after all, did these measures originate with Sir Robert Peel or with his party. — Were they not, in fact, forced upon him, as indeed were many other questions of reform and improve ment? Was the subject ever thought of by him, till it had been over and over again, pressed on the Go vernment, both from within and from without, until the general feeling could no longer be resisted ? In the universal eagerness to lavish praise on the man who reaped the first harvest, the merits of him who prepared the ground and scattered the seed, have often been forgotten. This, however, is not the place to do justice to the exertions of Sir Samuel Romilly, the most enlightened jurist, and one of the most upright patriots of our times — whose unremit ting exertions for the reform of our Code seem to have been forgotten by the Quarterly Reviewer. Year after year he attempted to repeal the punish ment of death, for stealing to the value of five shillings in a shop and forty shillings in a barge ! These attempts, were represented by the Tories, (the Bests and the Garrows of the day,) as the visionary scheme of a fanciful theorist, as the result of a heated imagination, and even as a covert attempt to sap the whole foundation of our penal jurispru dence. \ r ¦¦ -v, '., \, 7-v- Even after this measure, had passed the House of Commons, it was four times rejected by the Tories in the Lords. CRIMINAL LAW. 67 It is but a few years since that an attempt to repeal the horrible and disgusting punishment for High Treason, which directs that the culprit is to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution — to be hanged by the neck and cut down alive — to have his entrails taken out and burned whilst yet alive— to have his head cut off and his body divided into four parts, and placed at the. king's disposal (a -sentence' actualTy~perpetrated- within little more than one hundred years since) — was rejected, almost with derision, by a majority of the House of Commons ! " Nolumus leges Anglice mutari," cried Mr.Best; whilst Sir Charles Wetherell was for " standing on the ancient ways ;" and the-"* disembowelling alive (ipso vivente!) was held a desirable part of the Criminal Code ! Let any one consider how short, a time it is since any, the slightest mitigation of our sanguinary code was scouted with derision ; aj^^atliafc- a change has ,n©w come over us ! Who brought this about ? Cer tainly not the=3s©3?ies. How impossible it is, whilst reading those parts of the speeches of Romilly in which setting all opposition at nought, seeing clearly an-cLplahriy the triumph that awaits the great prin ciples he propounds, he binds himself " to proceed " unmoved either by bad report or good report, " to persevere undeterred, in the use of all means " for the advancing the well-being of his fellow- " creatures by improvement of the criminal law of " his country, "—not most deeply to regret that he f2 "8 CRIMINAL LAW. was not spared till these happier times, to witness the achievement of those victories of which his great exertions laid the foundation ! We now come to the consideration of the bills of the last Session : — those bills which were brought into the Lords " without having received one mi- " nute's attention or one word of discussion in the " Commons," and which were " so slovenly as to " be quite ridiculous ;" the details of which were " exceedingly ill prepared, and in such a state of " confusion and self-contradiction, that Lord Den- " man was obliged to apologise for them." The plain facts are as follows : — The Government originally intended to wait until the whole digest was prepared, but as the country had long been impatient for some diminution of capital punish ments, the Criminal Law Commissioners were directed to make a report specially on the subject of the punishment of death. Soon after the receipt of their report, viz. in the recess of 1836, Lord John Russell directed them to prepare bills founded on their suggestions.; Surely here was no delay. On the contrary it might have been said, and in fact was said, Why press forward a partial measure, while the general revision is incomplete ? , / < The Government, however, felt, that it was not-fit to allow some twenty-two or twenty-three crimes to remain capital after the Commissioners had recom mended their being so no -longer,- and the Govern ment had signified its approvalwf sneh-reeommen- CRIMINAL LAW. 69 dation. But we are told that the bills were hur ried through Parliament. What are the facts?— At the beginning of the Session, Lord John Russell laid on the table of the House a correspondence, containing the heads of all the bills, a»d detailed explanations of their provisions. On the 23rd of March, he introduced the bills with a full com mentary ; on the 24th of April, (the second read ing,) a long discussion took place, in which Sir R. Peel took a part; on the 19th of May, the clauses were minutely discussed in committee, in. which- discussion, Sir R. Peel again--- took a part; on the 27th of June, the bills were again canvassed clause by clause. On four distinct occasions, there fore, the bills were discussed in the Commons. That they were hurried through the House of Lords is admitted, but the reason ofthat is obvious, — they were brought up to that House after the unexpected death of the King had contracted the remainder of the Session j*fto a very few weeks; and it was a choice of evils, either to pass the bills without a lengthened examination, or to continue as capital, and to compel capital convictions, for some twenty-three crimes, which all were agreed should no longer be capital. But " they were prepared in a manner so slovenly as to be ridiculous." Let us see how true this asser- tionis. Thebillswere drawn by the Commissioners — three of them men in the first criminal law prac tice. They were submitted to more than one of the 70 CRIMINAL LAW. Judges and approved of, and were canvassed, as it is understood, over and over again by the law officers of the Crown and the Home Secretary, and also by Lord Denman in conjunction with the Commissioners. Mr. Baron Alderson, as was noticed by Lord John Russell, entirely approved of them, subject to some suggestions and altera tions, which were adopted ; and yet with all this care the Quarterly Reviewer says the Bills were slovenly. Whether they were or not, no one can fairly say that the Government was remiss in taking precautions to have them correct. What did they do — they proceeded on a formal Report of the Com missioners, on Bills framed by them on the credit of their professional character, approved of by some of the Judges, the Chief Justice, and the Law Officers of the Crown. If after all this preparation and care the Bills were slovenly (a point on which we apprehend that the Reviewer is totally incapable of giving an opinion of the least value), the only inference is that English lawyers are incapable of drawing a Bill. The last assertion is that the Bills were ren dered by the Law Lords " not what they ought to be, but just fit to be passed." Some of the provisions were altered during the progress of the bills through the Commons, and, as it always happens, in such partial and hasty alterations, some inconsistencies were created. To remove these Lord Denman proposed to re-insert certain of the clauses originally prepared by the Commis- CRIMINAL LAW. 71 sioners. It was to these alterations that Lord Denman referred in his opening speech, and his doing so has been tortured into an apology for the imperfection of- the original Bills ! The principal charge of Lord Lyndhurst against the details of the Bills (for he admitted the merits of the measure in general) was, that they would introduce anoma lies and inconsistencies. This was his Lordship's great point ; he more than once mentioned it as his discovery. How, let it be asked, can any partial change be made without introducing anoma lies? For instance, if burglary without force, which by the old law was capital, was made only liable to transportation for a term of years, whilst there were other crimes not touched by the Bills which others consider less heinous than burglary, and to which transportation for life was annexed, there was of course an imperfection, an anomaly. But the anomaly was in the old law, not in the new. Nor were these anomalies discove ries (as he called them) of Lord Lyndhurst's. The Commissionersdistinctly told Lord John Russell in their printed letter that the proposed partial mea sure must lead to anomalies and inconsistencies; and to this fact Lord John Russell expressly ad verted. But conceiving that the anomaly would not lead to any practical evil, he preferred the practical good of the immediate abolition of six teen capital punishments, and in this opinion the Commissioners concurred. Lord Lyndhurst was ^ / HVT*-f| CRIMINAL LAW. too Tjiigg to oppose the measure, aacTyet he— eotdd •sot-bear that the Government should gain any credit, by it, aB4-4-herefdf e he made the statement which we have referred to, in order to throw blame on the Ministers for not foreseeing these anomalies ; but what may surprise our readers is that his Lordship,, had^in his hand the correspon dence of the Commissioners and Lord John Russell, shewing that all parties were aware of the anoma lies, whilst hisidrdtfhip was propounding the dis covery as his own, and abusing the Ministers for not having made it. With respect to the alterations suggested by Lord Lyndhurst, in order, as he stated* to remove the anomalies, we do" not hesitate to assert that his alterations have introduced far more inconsistencies in the measures than existed before. His Lordship undertook the task of their correction — this can only be shewn by a reference to the detail ; and to support our assertion, we have added a short statement, which will be found in a note at the end, by way of Appendix. We shall close these observations with a few remarks on the merit of the measures effected by these bills. Not a syllable, be it observed, is said on this part of the subject in the Review : the manner, not the matter appears to be the subjecjj of complaint. t Although much had been done by Sir R. Peel, and by the Whigs and private indi viduals since he left office, yet, when these Bills Ii i CRIMINAL LAW. 73 were introduced thirty-seven offences remained capital ; of these, twenty-three have now been ab solutely repealed, and as regards offences against the person, robbery, burglary, arson, and piracy, these are no longer capital, when not accompanied by danger to human life. But the mitigation of punishment was not alone the merit ofthe measure by the new law the offences are more specifically defined, and the province of judicial discretion (the opprobrium of our criminal law), is reduced into more fitting limits. The spirit in which this important and syste matic change was recommended, affords good reason to expect much from the general digest of the whole Criminal Law now in progress. Al though an important improvement has been introduced in the classification of some of the crimes and their punishment ; that much yet re mains to be done, we think will be admitted, when we state that the unrepealed statutes containing enactments relating to Criminal Law still amount to upwards of four hundred, not to mention obso lete acts,— that the different kinds of punishments inflicted by these acts amount to more than one hundred and thirty, — and that the well known Ma gistrate's manual, — Burn's Justice, is now extended to six large 8vo. volumes, containing together 6521 pages ! We cannot hope that these pages have afforded very agreeable reading, for the exposure of false- 74 CONCLUSION. hood after falsehood is, at least, monotonous ; but we ask every impartial reader if that exposure has not been complete? We ask whether on every subject to which we have adverted, Criminal Law, Finance, Slavery, Poor Law Amendment, and Crea tion of Peers, the imputations which the Reviewer, in his ignorance or his malignity, ventured to cast on the Whigs, have not been shewn to be .not reali ties merely exaggerated or coloured, but inventions absolutely and completely false? We ask whether on all these points the Tories do not appear to have been actually guilty of all the crimes which their retainer ventures to attribute to the Whigs? Whether they are not. guilty of having degraded the Peerage 1 of having"" begujn„,4he ruin of the old English Poor Laws, by their absurd and mis chievous enactments, and consummated it by their still more absurd and mischievous maladministra tions ? Of having resisted to the utmost, the abolition of the Slave Trade, and done nothing whatever towards the extinction of slavery ? and of having wasted the national income by the wildest profu sion, and * the national capital by the most selfish anticipations ? Such was the natural conduct of a party pushed into power by the intrigues of a Court, and the predilections of a King, and main tained *a-it by bribing the avarice or the vanity of individuals, or by flattering the passions or the prejudices of the uneducated in all conditions of life. APPENDIX. Lord Lyndhurst having discovered the anomalies pro ceeded to remove them, and also to make certain altera tions of his own. No part of the old law was so fatally and mischievously vague as burglary ; it was equally a capital offence for a boy in going up Ludgate Hill after dark tp break a pane of glass and steal, or attempt to steal, a ribband, and for a gang of armed thieves to break into a dwelling at midnight, rifle the house, and alarm and ill- treat the inhabitants. The word " burglary," therefore, included every degree of criminality, from the inception of a petty theft to the completion of a savage and dangerous crime, and the punishment awarded by the law for all, indiscriminately, was death, In the Bill as introduced into the House of Lords, this wide range of offences was distributed into three classes; the first class, consisting of burglary with the more serious aggravation, was to continue capital; the second class, comprehending bur glary with aggravation of a less dangerous kind, was to be liable, to transportation for life ; while the third class, consisting of simple technical burglary, unaccompanied by any of the aggravations specified in the preceding classes, and therefore usually a crime of inconsiderable magnitude, was to be liable to transportation for fifteen years as a maximum of punishment, or a discretionary amount of imprisonment might be inflicted when the cir cumstances of the case did not require the extreme rigour of the law. Lord Lyndhust points out that the unaltered 76 law against stealing in a dwelling-house to the value of £5. affixed the punishment of transportation for life to that offence, and exclaims against the disproportion of punishment to this offence, and that of fifteen years tran sportation to the crime of burglary. The obvious answer to this is, that according to the Bills as they came up to the Lords, it was only simple burglary, unattended with circumstances of aggravation (not, in fact, the burglary talked of by Lord Lyndhurst), to which the reduced punishment was applied. It might, therefore, be an offence of a very trifling complexion, and could hardly ever occur in such a form as to require a higher punish ment than fifteen years transportation. In practice the anomaly could never have been of the slightest impor tance, because though the stealing in a dwelling-house was to continue punishable with transportation for life as a maximum of sentence, the Judges were authorized by the provisions of one of the new acts to pass a less sen tence if they thought proper. No. one, however, appeared to be prepared with this answer in the House of Lords, and therefore the " Law Lords" set to work to remove the anomaly, which they did by reducing the classes of burglary into two instead of three, leaving the gradations of this very wide offence (short of the capital crime) quite undefined, and applying to them a discretionary punish ment, varying from transportation for life to imprisonment for a day ; therefore to get rid of an anomaly of no impor tance whatever, Lord Lyndhurst by his suggestions destroyed the most useful part of the measure, namely; that which defined and classified in a systematic manner the large and constantly recurring body of crimes coming under the general description of " burglary." But this is not all the mischief done by the attempt to remove a 77 trumpery anomaly. By the Stat. 2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 62. the capital punishment of horse-stealing, cattle-stealing, and stealing in a dwelling-house to the value of £5. was repealed, and the specific punishment for these offences unwisely fixed as transportation for life, which was the only sentence the Judges had power to pass. This was obviously tying up discretion too close, and many prac tical evils resulted from the law. One of the Bills intro duced into the House of Lords, therefore, relieved this pressure, by enlarging the discretion of the judges as to these offences from transportation for life to imprisonment for several years. But the Lords, led away by their mis taken horror of the crime of burglary, espied traces of this unfortunate anomaly about the stealing in the dwelling- house, in this statute, and thinking that it would never do to allow stealing in a dwelling-house, under any circumstances to bear a punishment equal to that of burglary, they reduced the maximum of punishment, as to all offences mentioned in this act, to transpor tation for fifteen years. The effect of this is, not that stealing in a dwelling-house alone cannot now be punished with transportation for life (which was the only object intended by the alteration in the House of Lords), but that no higher punishment than fifteen years tran sportation can now be given for horse or cattle- stealing. That this quantum of punishment is not sufficient to repress the crime is admitted, and already great alarm is ex pressed in the country on the ground of the security which has been thus inadvertently withdrawn from property so necessarily exposed to plunder as horses apd farming stock. We are not aware of any other alterations made in the Bills in the House of Lords which can entitle the Re- 78 viewer to assert that the Lords made them " just fit to be passed ;'' one alteration they did however make, which is not a bad instance of careless, blundering legislation. In the act for abolishing the punishment of death in certain cases, the capital punishment was withdrawn from two offences; one, " soliciting another to commit. murder," and the other, "binding another by an oath to commit treason or murder." The. House of Lords struck out the former offence, viz. that of soliciting another to commit murder, from the repealing clause, and consequently it still continues to be capital ; but they allowed the latter offence, viz. " binding another by oath to commit treason or murder," to remain in the clause. The effect of this is, that the punishment for binding by an oath to commit treason or murder is transportation' for life, while the punishment for a mere solicitation to murder is death. The Law Lords found no anomaly in the Bills so mon strously absurd as this which they themselves carried into them. Such then is the character of the vaunted improve ments introduced by Lord Lyndhurst ; we could only shew the futility and falsehood of the Reviewer's charges by entering into detail, perhaps at too great a length. We have however, we perceive, omitted to notice another objection, which was rather a favourite one ; Lord Lynd hurst and others found fault with there being nine Bills instead of one or two, and represented the whole affair as a mere clap-trap, and the spreading them into Bills as in accordance with this object. The fact is, there were only three Bills originally. As, however, there were doubts as to what would or what would not pass, what parts might be necessary to omit or postpone, it was resolved, with the assent of the Com missioners, to make each class of crimes the subject of a 79 separate Bill, in order to avoid all difficulty of altering any particular part of a general Bill, should any subject or class be withdrawn ; but if any authority for such a measure is really wanted, it will be recollected that when in 1823, Sir James Mackintosh moved his resolution for repealing Capital Punishment on Forgery and several other Felonies, Sir Robert Peel, then Secretary of State, moved the previous question, contending that the reso lutions out to have been separated and leave ashed to bring hi a distinct bill on each. The reason we have given was distinctly stated to the House, and Lord J. Russell suggested that after each Bill had gone through a Committee, and the alterations been agreed on, they might be reconsolidated if it was thought best. THE END. NORMAN AND SKEEN, PRINTERS, MAIDEN LANE, COVENT GARDEN.