Page:On death punishments (Haughton).pdf/5

5 with death; these included sheep-stealing, robbery, forgery, burglary, horse-stealing, &c. In those days it was considered that the "safety of society" required the death of all persons guilty of these crimes; but the law has been altered, and death is no longer the punisment [sic] inflicted. Indeed, wilful murder and high treason may now be considered as the sole capital offences. What has been the consequence of this amelioration of our criminal law? Has society been in any way injured thereby? Parliamentary returns exhibit an exactly contrary result.

In the Rev. Mr. Pyne's "Plea for the Abolition of Capital Punishments," the following results, extracted from parliamentary official returns, down to the end of the year 1838, will be found:—

For horse-stealing, there were executed in the nine years ending December, 1829, 46 criminals; the number of committals being 1,626. In the next nine years, ending 1838, no executions for this crime took place, and the committals were reduced to 1,565.

For burglary and house-breaking (in reference to which Lord Wynford said, that if the capital penalty were repealed, "we should all be murdered in our beds"), there were executed in the six years ending December, 1832, 56 persons; and the committals, during the same period, were 5,199. In the next six years, ending December, 1838, there were but three executions for these offences, and the committals fell to 4,621.

For forgery—a crime which some mercantile men would still visit with the extreme punishment of the law—in the ten years ending December, 1829, 64 criminals were executed, and 746 committed. In the next ten years there were none executed, and the committals were 731.

I might readily multiply facts of a like nature with the foregoing. Indeed, I believe that in no single instance in which death punishment has been repealed, for any crime, in any country, have any other results been realised.

By a Parliamentary return, under date 14th May, 1846, I find the following facts stated in reference to seventeen crimes, which are therein enumerated:—

During the five years ending with the last year of an execution, there were committed 7,726 individuals, of whom 196 were executed. During the five years immediately following, and wherein capital punishment was not resorted to, the committals had fallen to 7,120.

The committals for burglary and house-breaking, for five years, ending with 1632, were 4,327; and the executions 46. During the following five years, the executions were three; and the committals had fallen to 3,734.

Here are indisputable statistics, (I could, without difficulty, add to the catalogue, but the recital would only weary you, and add nothing to the cogency of my argument) and they all prove, I should say, to the satisfaction of every candid inquirer, that the' "safety of society," instead of being endangered by a resort to