the proper orders, and, without any default of their's, those orders were not executed, the persons to whom the Government had next to look, was the military officer on whom the execution of the orders devolved; and then the trials of the rioters should have followed, by which arrangement the causes of crime, as well as the amount and extent of crime, would have been investigated by the operation of impartial and comprehensive justice.

But Government began with the lowest class of the accused; and the highest have not been subjected to the ordeal of any legal investigation. Special Commissions are of plentiful growth in these days of a liberal' Government; but, upon Special Commissions, the causes of popular tumult and crime cannot be investigated:-the bare facts of criminality or innocence only can be ascertained; and consequently no such trials can lead to the removal of the causes. They, however, authorize the application of the almost universal remedy of our criminal law-that of hanging: a sharp remedy indeed, but which, like all quack medicines, only attacks the symptoms of distemper on the surface of the body politic, and, by driving the malignant humours back upon the vital parts, aggravates the disease.

There are now five wretched men condemned to death, awaiting the execution of their sentence in Bristol. We cannot but admit that their offences are of a very serious nature, though there are circumstances which ought to have weight in mitigating the severity of the law :-crimes of impulse and sudden excitement may be very dangerous in their effects, but are far less malignant in their motives than those of cold, studied, and deliberate intention. If a party had conspired of malice aforethought to burn down Bristol, and murder the inhabitants, whose property was doomed to the flames, the law could inflict upon them no more than death. It is possible to aggravate even that punishment by torture; but even if the law allowed its infliction, public opinion would not tolerate it. This shews that for a crime of such

deep malignity, the simple infliction of death would not be considered too light a punishment; but wide is the difference between such a crime, and that for which the five convicts have been ordered to perish on the scaffold. Their crime was, from all that has transpired, without premeditation; and during the whole of the tumults they did not destroy a single life.

We are glad to hear from our Bristol Correspondent that a petition, very generally supported, will be forwarded from that city to Government, praying for a commutation of the punishment of those unfortunate men. In the prayer of that petition we heartily and earnestly join. We do not say enough, but we say too much, blood has been shed already in consequence of the Bristol riots. Many perished in the fires-many have been slaughtered by military execution, and many more maimed for life. The judicial destruction of five more human beings in cold blood will not be of the least advantage to the interests of society ;-justice does not demand their lives. We implore the Kingly Prerogative of Mercy to interfere, lest the country believe they were immolated on the altars of Revenge.—Morning Herald, Monday, January 16, 1832.

Case of the Rioters of Nottingham.

Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE, in pronouncing the extreme sentence of the law upon five of the Nottingham rioters, thought it necessary to justify the infliction of the dreadful doom prepared for the delinquents, by stating the particulars of the offences of which they stood convicted, and then arguing in defence of that principle of criminal jurisprudence, by which the application of the punishment of death is legalized in such cases, and in other instances of violations of the rights of property.

In adverting to the circumstances under which the offences had been committed, the Learned Judge said—

'It appears that, on the 10th of October last, a meeting was 'held in Nottingham upon the subject of Parliamentary Reform. 'After that meeting was over, a number of misguided and deluded men, taking advantage of the excitement which but too often fol'lows the assemblage of a large number of persons, proceeded to acts ' of outrage and mischief wholly unconnected with the original objects of the meeting. In the first place, a large and tumultuous assemblage of these persons, consisting of above two thousand 'individuals, proceeded to attack Sharpe's mill, and then went to 'the house of Mr. Musters, at Colwick Hall.'

Here the Learned Judge described the particulars of the outrages, which have been already given in the reports of the trials, and then went on to say

'The object of the law is not to punish criminals for the sake of revenge for the injuries which they have occasioned, but it is that, by the examples which are made, other persons may be 'deterred from violating the law by the commission of crimes; and 'it has been a most painful act on our part to discriminate between "the various degrees of guilt in which you have been implicated. 'We have made such selection as we thought best, and such as 'would afford proper examples to be made for the sake of the pub'lic justice of the country, and also such as we think His Majesty · may, if he should think proper, extend his Royal mercy to, so far as to spare their lives.'

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The Learned Judge then, having made some further observations to shew the grounds of the distinctions judicially taken in the cases where life was spared, and where it was to be sacrificed, concluded by ordering the five men to whom we have above alluded, to undergo the exterminating decree of the law, and besought them not to delude themselves by entertaining the least hope of mercy.

We know Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE to be as mild, and considerate, and humane a Judge as any that sits upon the Bench. But the habits of a system under which a man is educated, become to him a second nature; and it is very difficult-often impossible-for him to divest himself of the prejudices which early habit and association have taught

him to venerate, as if they were the emanations of pure and exalted reason. Judge LITTLEDALE has been from early life familiar with the principles and practice of a system of justice, which is of so harsh and vindictive a character, that even Sir Robert PEEL, since his own 'amended' code appeared, readily admitted, and that, too, in the debate on his Forgery Bill, that it is still the most sanguinary of any in Europe. Need we then wonder that a man of great natural kindness and humanity, like Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE, should, by the established influence of such a system, have his excellent understanding and benign feelings so warped and altered, that he should calmly talk of the practice of destroying human life, not because the crime was enormous, but because the example would be appalling?-as if the punishment of crime was altogether a question of political expediency, and wholly disconnected from all moral considerations of the degrees of guilt.

The doctrine proclaimed from the Bench on this occasion, was precisely the doctrine which Judge BULLER announced, when he declared that men were hanged, not < because they stole sheep, but that sheep may not be 'stolen.' If this argument of hanging men merely for example be good for any thing, we have a right to push it to its full extent:-and what will be the consequence? It is necessary that trivial as well as great offences should be prevented by the most effective examples; and therefore men should be put to death for the smallest crimes as well as the greatest: for if punishment be independent of moral considerations, the simple and compendious law of DRACO should be re-enacted in this civilized age and Christian country, and every offence in the calendar should have but the one word annexed to it, and that word-Death!

We do not mean to deny that the offences of which the Nottingham rioters stand convicted, are of a very serious character, and deserving of serious punishment; but there are very severe modes of punishment which do not spill

blood, and which, we venture to say, are more effective examples to society; for the agony of death upon the scaffold is, though terrible, but momentary; and constant experience shews that the impression, horrifying as it is for the time, is soon effaced: whereas the living example of the loss of liberty, with hard labour added, and the degradation of a felon's fate, is a constant warning during the whole of the most extended term for which the punishment continues.

It is worthy of observing, that the guiltiest of the men whom Mr. Justice LITTLEDALE has left for execution, was recommended to mercy by the Jury who convicted him. Will not then the death of that man for whom the Jury themselves felt a sympathy, excite more commiseration than any other feeling?-And when public feeling is with the criminal, and against the law, how can his punishment operate beneficially as an example?—Still stronger are the grounds for an appeal to mercy in the case of his less guilty fellows.

Let it not be forgotten that the crimes for which the five men condemned at Bristol, and those other five at Nottingham, are sentenced to suffer, were crimes arising out of sudden excitement, and connected with the agitation of a question which disturbed the country from one end to the other.

Judge LITTLEDALE speaks of the criminals as 'misguided and deluded men.' Most assuredly the learned Judge applies the proper epithets to their criminality :-they were misled by those advisers who, professing to support the Government, called the populace into a state of excitement always dangerous, frequently destructive; and, having committed them in acts of violence and outrageous folly, left them to their fate. We who deprecated every appeal to popular passion on the Reform Bill-we who recommended that the struggle should, on the part of the reformers, be one of temperance, and reason, and constitutional power, now come forward to pray for mercy to those misguided and deluded men,' whom we cannot be accused of having first