not for felony, but for subornation of perjury, although death be 'not the legal punishment of this offence.'

If the advocates of the practice of executing inhuman laws, on the ground of circumstances extrinsic to the legal crimes of the convicted persons, will not, upon this testimony, believe our view of the subject right, neither would they believe us, although "one had risen from the dead."

In fact, where the crime, as proved in all its circumstances before the Jury, is not such as to deserve death, no other consideration, can justify the infliction of it. The danger which the apologists of capital punishments apprehend from the badness of the convict's character, can be sufficiently guarded against by the punishment of transportation for life; but perhaps that mode of protecting society from the possible return of the convict to the error of his ways, is objectionable, because it sheds no blood!

There are some who argue this matter as if it were absolutely necessary that where, among eighteen convicts, no crime was of a sufficiently flagrant nature to deserve death, Government were still bound to select some for execution, lest it should be, for once, said that the Court of the Old Bailey had a bloodless session.

When we said that the stealing of pigs and asses, though as serious moral crimes as stealing horses or sheep, was not punished with death-and yet that sort of property was sufficiently protected-we meant, protected by the law;-for the poor man's ass that browses on the bare-worn common, is still less protected, in point of fact, than the sheep of the rich man, who can afford to keep a shepherd to take care of them; but the ass or the pig is frequently the whole of the poor man's live stock, and one sheep, or ten sheep, is a very small part of the rich man's stock; but to steal the whole of the poor man's stock deserves a moderate punishment, and to steal a small part of his wealthier neighbour's, calls for extermination !—Morning Herald, Wednesday, May 25, 1831.

Public Meeting at Exeter Hall-Resolution against the

Punishment of Death.

The report of the meeting of the Prison Discipline Society,' which will be found in our columns to-day, may, perhaps, furnish the advocates of sanguinary laws with some opportunity of exercising their peculiar ingenuity in proving that justice is not degraded, nor humanity shocked, nor reason outraged, by the Draconic severity of our Criminal Code.

It is a melancholy fact that England, whilst excelling most countries in other intellectual and moral advantages, and possessing institutions of learning and charity which equal, if they do not surpass, whatever public establishments of a similar nature have adorned the civilized world, is inferior to most nations that have emerged from barbarism, in the character and spirit of her Criminal Laws. It seems as if our legislators thought, that to have the power of taking away human life, was equivalent to having the right* to do so; and they have, in the exercise of this mistaken and abused power, accumulated statutes of blood, until the common sense, and common feelings, of the people are

* Among the numerous petitions presented in the foregoing session of parliament, there is one on record from which we have taken the subjoined extract. It came from HACKNEY, and was most respectably signed. We know not with whom it originated; but the intelligent reader whose views embrace higher considerations than those of mere expediency, will be glad to see this proof of advancing civilization :

'Above all, your Petitioners are deeply impressed with the 'sentiment that the CREATOR and LORD OF LIFE has not invested 'Monarchs, or any description of Rulers, or any Nations, or other 'Communities of mankind, however legitimate, venerable, or power'ful they may be, with THE RIGHT to exercise an unlimited discre'tion of enacting the punishment of DEATH for whatever offences they may think fit: but that the competency of human legislatures, for such legislative decisions, is limited by the revealed Will ' of GOD.'-(Printed Appendix to the Votes and Proceedings of the House of Commons for the year 1830.)

shocked by the system of vengeance which usurps the name of justice.

Cruel laws always defeat their own intention, as violent proceedings in general do, by the re-action which they produce. The object of enlightened justice is, that every violator of public and private rights should be punished; but, in order to that, it is necessary that his punishment bear a just proportion to his guilt. If the punishment be excessive, the public abhorrence falls, not on the offender, but on the law; and, as it is necessary to have the co-operation of public opinion in carrying the laws into effect, whatever laws excite the public repugnance, become incapable of being exercised in that certain and uniform manner, without which they must fall into contempt.

When laws are so irrationally severe that they cannot be generally executed, any particular instances in which they are put in force-as in the case of the two wretched men the other day, for offences not usually punished with death-excite disgust, and appear more like a harsh and cruel sacrifice to some capricious feeling, or temporary notion of expediency, than the debt of crime paid to dispassionate justice.

Such examples prove that, whoever may have the execution of the Criminal Laws of a country, the laws should be good, that Government may not have the power of throwing the responsibility of inhuman punishments on the vicious severity of the law. The members of the present Government, when in Opposition, had so repeatedly, and so powerfully, expressed their abhorrence of laws that visited mere violations of property as if they were offences of violence and blood, that the public were astonished to find a preparation for legal reform prefaced by such sanguinary arguments; but we hope the people will now see the necessity of constitutionally and vigorously insisting on the abolition of laws, which have themselves abolished the first principles of justice and humanity.-Morning Herald, Tuesday, May 31, 1831.

Special Commissions in Ireland.-Ferocity of the people increases with the vindictive spirit of the Laws.

If Special Commissions and capital punishments were the best means to subdue the passions, and correct the habits of a people, there is no reason why Ireland should not now be the most peaceable and the most civilized country in the world. No people on the face of the earth have had more of the discipline of rigorous laws, and few have had so much— and no people are more ready to act upon warm and impetuous feelings, under a real or imaginary sense of wrong, without any regard to the consequences of an intemperate or illegal vindication of what they consider their violated rights.

Last year Cork had its Special Commission-this year Limerick and Clare are undergoing that "fiery ordeal" of justice; and we suppose the avenging sword of the law will presently be bared in a similar way in Galway, the Queen's County, and some other parts.

The majority of the offenders to be tried, are charged with outrages and crimes punishable under the " Whiteboy Acts," which outrages have their origin in disputes about the rent of land, and the payment of tithe-matters that have been, for a great space of time, the exciting causes of the most bitter contention, and deadly animosity, between the rich and the poor; the former being backed by the laws of the land, which are truly vindictive; and the latter, by the no less vindictive laws of the nocturnal conventions of agrarian legislators.

In charging the Grand Jury at Limerick, the other day, Mr. Justice JEBB is reported to have said,—

The offences, which have led to this investigation, are of 'such a nature as to justify me in describing them as a species of ♦ warfare between the peasantry and the proprietors and occupiers of land. The object of this warfare is to deprive the proprietors or 'occupiers of the power of disposing of their property as they shall 'think fit, and to dictate to them the terms on which their estates

⚫ shall be dealt out to the peasantry of this country. The means by which this object is sought to be obtained, consists of every species of crime, accompanied by violence, by injuring of pro'perty of every kind, and by ascending, in regular grades, from ordinary trespass, to murder in its worst and most hideous forms -cold-blooded, premeditated assassinations, so cunningly contrived, so secretly plotted, and so timely executed, as to baffle, and escape, in many instances, the pursuit and diligence of the 'most active and persevering individuals, to whom are intrusted this branch of the administration of the laws of the land.'

We believe this description is not exaggerated; it is no more than the melancholy-the afflicting truth. What is worse, the moral disease, which has stricken the peasantry of Ireland, increases from year to year in violence and malignity. The Judge looks only to the crimes in the calendar, for the purpose of their punishment: the Government should enquire into their causes, with a view to their prevention.

Whatever the causes may be, we can assert, with confidence, that it is not mild and temperate punishment which has led to the contempt of the laws which Judge JEBB SO forcibly describes :-never were laws framed in a more exterminating spirit than the Whiteboy Acts; they have, since the first year of their enactment, which was 1787, been applied, from time to time, with an unsparing rigour, congenial with the temper of the fierce legislation that called them into existence. What is the consequence? They have not tamed the wild passions, nor subdued the exasperated feelings of the peasantry; on the contrary, they have rendered wild passions more savage, and exasperated feelings more vindictive. Instead of introducing discipline, they have increased disorder. Where they found the peasantry discontented, they have made them desperate; they have aggravated the evils which they pretended to cure, until we have seen the peasantry become, as they are at the present day, habituated to outrage, as a constant practice, and dreadfully familiar with the shedding of blood.

This statement of the increased and increasing demora