and left for execution under the last Old Bailey report, our readers will recollect that we alluded to the notice of motion which had been given by Mr. EWART, in the former session of parliament, and renewed in the present one, for leave to bring in a Bill to abolish the punishment of death, in cases of horse-stealing, cattle-stealing, and 'stealing in the dwelling-house, no person being put in fear ‹ therein.' We mentioned that this notice had been several times postponed without any sufficient reason having been publicly alleged, to account for a delay which involved the awful question of human life.

We have reason to believe that Mr. EWART postponed his motion so often as he did, not from a deficiency of zeal in the cause which he had undertaken, but from an anxiety that the more extensive question of capital punishments which it involves, might be certain of a deliberate discussion. He was, perhaps, induced to think that, pending the Reform Bill, sufficient attention would not be paid to the subject, important and pressing as it is. We understand that the Bill has long been ready, and that the reason for limiting it to the three offences specified, is, to obviate the chances of the greater obstruction to which a more comprehensive measure might possibly give rise; so much is it apprehended that the English legislature is less capable of taking an enlightened view of Criminal Jurisprudence than the French Chambers-than the Governments of the other civilized nations of Europe and even than the local legislatures of America, under whose laws none of those offences are punished with death, which Mr. EWART finds so difficult under a Whig Administration to have erased from the catalogue of capital punishments.

We would recommend Mr. EWART to amend his notice of motion relative to the offence of stealing in a dwelinghouse, by leaving out the words no person being put in fear therein.' This is too metaphysical a reason to assign for taking the life of man. Let not the fatal criterion be the

fears, real or imaginary, of any person, but the actual violence of the intruder. This distinction might be a protection to life; but to affix the same punishment to the offence of stealing in the dwelling-house, without the aggravation of any personal violence, as is annexed to the crime of murder, or to the violation of the rights of property, accompanied by atrocious outrage to the person, is to hold out a temptation to murder: for in the latter case the punishment can be no more than death; and by murdering the inmates, witnesses are put out of the way, and the chances of detection are of course diminished. Thus do passionate and vindictive laws become, not the support, but the obstruction of justice.-Morning Herald, Friday, February, 17, 1832.

Translation from LE TEMPS, one of the Paris Journals. We copy the following paragraph from the French Paper Le Temps :

ABOLITION OF THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

'The London Morning Herald has, in a succession of very strik⚫ing articles, directed public attention to this important question, and ⚫ has availed itself of every favourable occasion to get rid of CAPITAL • PUNISHMENT from the Criminal Code of England. We have just ' received a report of two meetings held at Dublin by the HOWARD 'SOCIETY, in which this humane and salutary innovation upon the English Code had been enforced with zeal and talent. The Society, ⚫ at its last meeting, voted unanimous thanks to several Frenchmen of 'distinction, friends to the abolition of capital punishment; and nomi'nated, as honorary Members of the Society, General LAFAYETTE, ‹ Messrs. BARTHE, GIROD (de l'Ain), Guizot, Lucas, ODILLON 'BARROT, DE TRACY, and ISAMBERT.

• The discussion upon this important subject being on the point ⚫ of commencing before the CHAMBER OF PEERS, we propose to give in a few days some extracts from this publication, (the report of the 'proceedings of the HOWARD SOCIETY), and of several others, ' which a Society instituted at LONDON, for the purpose of collecting ' and diffusing information relative to the punishment of death, has • circulated since its formation.'

Morning Herald, Tuesday, March 6, 1832.

Case of John Gibbs, sentenced to death at the Oxford Assizes, for Arson.

Among the cases of conviction for arson at the present country Assizes, there is one that has attracted our particular notice, and to which we would also direct the attention of Government, on account of the extreme looseness and insufficiency of the evidence, on which a verdict had been procured, which consigns a fellow-creature, unless the Royal mercy interpose, to a violent and ignominious death.

The case to which we allude is that of John Gibbs, described in the report to be a very respectable looking labourer,' tried and found guilty at the Oxford Assizes, of setting fire to a wheat-rick belonging to a Mr. Wing, and left for execution, the Judge telling him to entertain no hope of mercy.

We have repeatedly observed upon that indiscriminate application of the one exterminating punishment to various degrees of guilt, which is a disgraceful characteristic of our ' amended' Criminal Code. Under no head of crime is this monstrous confusion more apparent than that of arson. Any legislator, whose mind was not strangely possessed with the one sanguinary notion of the virtue of the hanging system, would have seen and marked the distinction between cases of arson which destroyed or necessarily endangered human life, and those which could only cause the peril or loss of property. If such a legislator thought it right to punish with death the midnight incendiary, who sets fire to a house in which there is a sleeping family, he would not confound a minor offence with so horrible a crime, by subjecting to the same punishment the offender who burns a barn unconnected with any human dwelling, or a rick of corn, or a stack of straw, in a field or other place, where life is not put in peril. The latter are bad offences, we grant ; but they are far from being either so malignant, or so dangerous, as the setting fire to a dwelling-house, with the intent of consuming its

inmates. As reason and morality make distinctions in the guilt, so would a reasonable and moral system of justice make distinctions in the punishment.

At present, however, our object is not so much to deal with the law of arson, as to observe upon the facts of the particular case to which we have adverted. It appears, then, that suspicion first fell upon Gibbs, by his being seen to 'work carelessly' at the engine employed to extinguish the flames-that his shoes fitted some foot-prints in a field leading from the turnpike-road towards the place where the rick stood that a witness met the prisoner coming as in a direction from the fire after the alarm was given; and that both having then proceeded towards the fire, the prisoner lagged somewhat behind, and was not there as soon as witnessthat a flint and steel were found in a close, near a place where, it was said, the prisoner stopped for a time in going towards the fire-that, when somebody asked him where he had been on the night of the fire, he said he had been at his father's, but afterwards said he had been at Barton, which is about two or three miles from where the fire happened—that he said to another person, he thought there was time for any one to get to Barton before the fire was seen-that upon an old woman saying, 'I wish those who set the stack on fire • were in the middle, burning in it,' the prisoner observed, < It will never be found out ;'-that, on the constable telling the prisoner he would have plenty of time to get up his witnesses to the Assizes, he answered, It's of no use getting any one to come there; they will try me, and will hang me.'

Now all this, we allow, makes out a case of suspicion, but is far from affording conclusive proof of guilt. If the offence be rightly punishable with death, it is, at all events, necessary that his guilt should be brought home to the prisoner beyond the possibility of a doubt; but the whole of this evidence may be true, and the prisoner guiltless of the charge. As to the steel, on which great stress was laid, the

witness, who was called on the part of the prosecution to trace it to the prisoner, failed to prove any such thing. She could only say that she saw a steel like it in the house of the prisoner's father seven or eight years before, but never saw such a one in his possession. As to the fitting of the shoes, it is at best a fallacious test; because the village shoemaker is often known to make shoes for a whole district of labourers on the same last, and nail them all after the one pattern; and it often happens that the very attempt to fit the shoes to foot-prints makes a secondary impression, which is mistaken for the original one; but in this particular case a witness for the prisoner accounted for the foot-steps by deposing, that, some time before the prisoner was taken into custody, he had walked with him across the field in question towards the stacks, to take shelter from a shower. The person at whose house the prisoner lodged, stated that he had seen the prisoner with a flint and steel, but never with the steel in question; and that the prisoner's steel, flint, and box were then at his house. As to the prisoner's saying ' it was no use to get any one to come to the Assizes for him, ' and that they would try him, and hang him,' it only proves that an impression has taken hold of the minds of persons in humble stations of life, like the prisoner, that to be accused of the crime of arson is tantamount to a conviction. Such an impression is not likely to be removed by executing men, as some have been already executed, on slender and dubious evidence of guilt.

Believing the Jury to have acted with perfect purity of intention, we consider them to have fallen into the great and dangerous error of mistaking suspicious circumstances, for-conclusive proofs of criminality. An Old Bailey Jury would never have been satisfied with such evidence as was given in this case. Their superior intelligence-their habit of closely sifting the evidence for themselves-would prevent them coming to a conclusion which negatived all doubt, from premises replete with doubt.