might have the support of so great a lawyer and so humane a man. Sir Matthew observes, "where offences grow enormous, frequent, and danger ous to the state; where they threat en to become destructive to society, and are likely to produce ruin among the inhabitants of a place, severe punishments, and even death itself, are sometimes necessary for the safety of the country." This description applied well to Nottingham, where no less than one thousand frames had already been broken, and the lives and properties of the inhabitants were at the mercy of a ferocious mob, who threatened destruction to all who opposed them. It was feared that the difficulty of detection might perhaps become greater when the severity of the punishment was thus increased; but this consideration was far less important than the chance that the crime might become less frequent. When a person reflects that he runs the risk of losing his life in gratifying his malice, he may be deterred from pursuing unlawful courses, even when the dread of transportation would not prevail. As to the other clauses of the bill, which went to enforce the provisions of a law now obsolete, for establishing watch and ward throughout the counties, no hesitation could be entertained, since many enlightened persons, intimately acquainted with the state of the county of Nottingham, looked forward to such a measure as the most effectual means of quieting the disturbances.-The evil was so enormous and pressing, that little time could be afforded for deliberation; and, at all events, this was not a case in which previous enquiry was demanded, since no difference of opinion existed as to the character and extent of the disturbances. That the measure now proposed was intended to be temporary, and that, although it might have been usual in ancient

times to appoint a committee of enquiry before adding to the severity of the penal code, yet this formality might well be dispensed with at the present day, when there exists so free and extensive a communication with every district of the country, by means of which members had abundant opportunities of informing themselves as to the state of the disturbed counties. That so soon as it should be known that parliament had taken up the subject with so much solemnity, a great effect would be produced on the minds of those infatuated persons who were acting under the delusion of more designing individuals.-That no advantage could be derived from a committee to enquire into the causes of the disturbances; for, although it were proved that they had arisen from a decay of trade, could the committee open the continent, and restore the commerce of the nation to the same facilities which it had lately enjoyed?—That the measure proposed was founded on that leading principle of all criminal law, pana ad paucos, metus ad omnes perveniat, the threat would have the effect of intimidating the many, and the punishment would fall only on the few. The bill had been brought forward not with a view to punish, but to prevent the crime; it had not for its object the shedding of human blood, but to render the commission of offences less frequent. When some persons talked of sporting with the lives of others, it might be asked, who sported with the lives of the people? who neglected the general safety? on whom must fall the awful responsibility if a remedy were not promptly applied to evils so alarming? If the law were openly defied, and force opposed to force, thousands must fall victims to the sentiments of a false humanity. That it was of no importance to enquire into the fact, whether, the disturbances had been produced by dis

tress among the workmen; if they had, that might be a good reason for a change in the general policy of the government, but could be no ground for opposing a temporary act, which was so loudly called for by the exigencies of the times.

But the interposition of parliament was required not by the distress of the workmen, but by a conspiracy against the machinery, which had regularly exhibited itself at all times when new machinery had been introduced. Penal statutes had thus been found necessary for the protection of every successive improvement in machinery. The severity of punishment must be adapted not to the enormity of the crime, but to the difficulty of preventing it ;-That there are but two ways of legislating in criminal matters, either by leaving the amount of punishment to the discretion of the judge, or by defining the different species of crime, and fixing separate punishments for each. That the latter mode would be found difficult, if not impossible, while the former is at once practicable and safe. That how sanguinary_soever the language of the laws of England may be, their execution has always been mild. -It argued an ignorance of human nature to suppose that while detection was never absolutely impossible, men would not be more readily deterred from the commission of crimes, in proportion to the severity of the punishment attached to them. The punishment proposed by the bill would thus have a powerful effect in quelling the disturbances which disgraced the country.

It was maintained, on the other hand, that parliament ought to have some documents before it,-something which might appear on its records to justify so serious an interference as that which had been proposed; that a local bill should have been brought in,

preceded by a petition from the magistrates; a committee should then have been appointed to enquire into the circumstances, a course of proceeding which would have shewn the rioters that the eye of the legislature was on them, and manifested to posterity the grounds on which parliament had acted;-That the old laws for the punishment of the offence of framebreaking had not yet been proved insufficient, since no convictions had hitherto taken place; and if the present measure were so pressing as it had been represented by ministers, why had they delayed so long to come to parliament to ask for a remedy? That so serious an alteration was not to be made in the whole police of the country without much deliberation ;--that the punishment of death, so far from operating as a check on crimes, rather increases their number; and that it is a great reproach to the criminal law of this country that capital punishments are so frequently inflicted. How could it be expected that this bill should operate a salutary change on the rioters, among whom there prevailed such a degree of union, concert, and good faith towards one another, that not one of them had even yet been detected?-That the great object to be attained was the detection of the offenders; and that many other measures of a less alarming nature than the present, such as rendering the possessors of the frames responsible for their safety, and amercing the county in the value of those destroyed, would produce a degree of vigilance and perseverance which might afford a chance of putting down the conspiracy; that the alarming extent to which the outrages had proceeded, must have arisen either from a conspiracy to suppress evidence against offenders, or supineness in the magistracy; and on either supposition the present measure would prove altogether ineffectual.—

That the legislature was in great danger of taking a wrong step at a moment when there existed so high a degree of indignation against persons who had committed violent aggressions on private property, and outrages on the public peace ;-that the enactment of the penalty of death for the offence of frame-breaking, could not impress the rioters with a very strong sense of the horror which the legisla ture entertained for the crime, as they must know that by an act of the same legislature, stealing to the value of 40s. had long ago been declared a capital felony-that the laws enacting severe punishments were unfortunately not the result of enlarged views or general principles, but sprung up one by one on some momentary alarm; that general principles, however, were more required in establishing capital punishments than in any other branch of legislation; and that if there were any measure which called for serious and solemn enquiry, it was that by which it was proposed that 10,000 of the people of this country should be rendered liable to the pains of death. It is true we have laws enacting death in similar cases, but these laws ought at once to be expunged from the statute-book if for this reason alone, that they are uniformly resorted to as precedents, when the indolence, the weakness, or the ignorance of the government lead it to increase the severity of the penal code. That the use which had been made of the military on this occasion was disgraceful to the government ;— that the soldiers ought never to be employed except in extreme cases, and then they should be rendered useful rather by the terror of their appearance than by the actual exertion of their power; but in this instance they had been employed in a way most ruinous to their own discipline, and the least efficient for the purpose checking the outrages. That the late

of

excesses were not to be ascribed to the mildness of the punishment enacted by former laws, but to the failure of the magistrates to execute these laws. If the punishment of transportation for fourteen years be compared with the crime of breaking a frame, every man of common sense will declare it to be

more than commensurate. The innovation now proposed was therefore unnecessary, cruel, and impolitic.-The bill proposed by the secretary of state was, however, carried through both houses of parliament, and received the royal assent.

The great engine of the operations of the rioters was the unlawful oath which they were accustomed to administer; and it became therefore a matter of the most serious importance to prevent those misguided persons from entering into a league so detestable. Mr Secretary Ryder brought in a bill for the purpose of declaring that the taking or administering of an oath, binding the party to the commission of a crime, should be deemed a capital felony. He proposed, however, to add this lenient provision, that any person who should have taken such an oath, and should come forward before a charge was made against him, confess his guilt before a magistrate, and take the oath of allegiance, should be saved from the penalty of the act. This measure combined at once the severity which seemed indispensable to check the offence, with that tenderness for the lives of the people which is the best characteristic of a free government. Those who obstinately persisted in the commission of crimes which threatened the peace of society, were to be punished with the most unrelenting severity, while the deluded persons who had been led astray by the machinations of men more designing and more wicked than themselves, were to have an opportunity afforded them of making their peace with the

laws, and of satisfying the insulted authority of the state. The justification of this measure rested on the notorious fact as to the disturbed state of some populous counties, the difficulty which had been felt in suppressing the riots, the progress of the malcontents since the last measure for checking them had been adopted by the legislature, and the important truth, which was known not only to the government, but to every member of the legislature, that the system of organisation which had given that conspiracy its most alarming aspect, was derived chiefly, if not solely, from the administration of the oath taken by the conspirators. It had been suggested by some persons, that milder measures ought to have been tried before resorting to the punishment of death; but this was well answered by asking, whether the legislature should have proceeded with experiments from week to week, and from month to month, to see how much property might be destroyed, or how many persons assassinated? The information which government was daily receiving from all parts of the country of the increasing danger, precluded any delay for the trial of experiments which could not be made but by risking the lives of peaceable persons who had no protection for their property, no security from being murdered even on the highways, but in the vigorous interference of the legislature. That it was easy to talk of delay and enquiry in the House of Commons; but if gentlemen were living in the disturbed districts, and were daily or nightly threatened or attacked by a band of ruffians, they would soon be convinced that this was not a moment for procrastination. That it was right in this case to make the punishment for the conspiracy equal to that for the offence when actually committed, because something more than the crime of

conspiracy alone was committed when a number of persons went from place to place administering, by compulsion, oaths which bound the individual taking them to perpetrate the most atrocious crimes, which could not be exceeded in malice or depravity, and which, indeed, scarcely fell short of high-treason. That the opinions disseminated by some persons who attributed the mischiefs complained of to ministers, might, at the present awful crisis, be attended with the most mischievous effects; that the assertions thus made were wholly unfounded, and that in the districts where the riots were most serious, it had been discovered that those who had been most active were not in want of work, but were animated to their lawless proceedings by other motives than distress. That it was absurd to talk of the law proposed as offering an inducement to those who had already taken the oath to pursue their course of iniquity, since the act was not to have a retrospective operation; and contained, more over, a clause of indemnity by which persons who should take the oath of allegiance might be secured. To those who maintained that the law was too sanguinary to have any good effect, it was answered, that experience had decided against their opinion, that a measure somewhat similar, which had been adopted to prevent the seduction of soldiers from their allegiance, had been attended with the best consequences, although in that case only one individual had been apprehended two days after passing the act, and even, when capitally convicted, had been reprieved. The example, however, such as it was, put a stop to the commission of the offence; and there was every reason to believe that the same effect would follow the execution of the present measure.

A strong opposition was made to the bill. It was asserted that the

proposed law would violate every maxim of English jurisprudence,-that the intention to commit a crime, and the actual commission of it, had in all cases, except that of high-treason, been distinguished from each other; but it was now proposed to make the conspiring to commit a murder an offence of the same magnitude with the actual perpetration of that crime.That by the law as it now stood, persons administering unlawful oaths were liable to seven years transportation, a sufficient punishment for the offence; but if the administering or taking the oath were to be pronounced a capital crime, the offender would naturally argue, that he might as well commit the crime which he had sworn to attempt, as refrain from it, since the punishment would in either case be the same. That the provision for exempting from punishment those who confessed their guilt, and consented to take the oath of allegiance, would be of no use, since the public could have very little security for the good conduct of such persons. It was the business of ministers, before proposing such a law as this, to have tried the effect of those already in existence; a special commission ought to have been sent down for trying the rioters, and when time had been allowed for ascertaining the effect of such measures, ministers, if they had found them ineffectual, might, with some propriety, have come forward with the present bill, which, so long as no experiment had been made, could not, with due regard to the principles of the constitution, be sanctioned by the legislature. That it was highly inexpedient to resort to the ultimum supplicium for slight offences; such a system of legislation renders it impossible to punish the highest crimes with that peculiar and marked severity which they deserve. The measure, however, not withstanding these objections, was

considered indispensable to the safety of the country, and accordingly received the sanction of the legislature.

But still every thing which had been done was found ineffectual; the riots increased; the discipline and organisation of the insurgents assumed a more formidable aspect; the quantity of arms which they collected was every day becoming greater, and more vigorous measures still were imperiously demanded. Lord Castlereagh accordingly brought in a bill for the preservation of the public peace in the disturbed counties, and to give additional power to the justices for a limited time for that purpose. His lordship, on introducing this bill, expressed the deep regret of himself and his colleagues that they were once more compelled to apply to parliament to aid the executive with new powers for preserving the public tranquillity, as they had at one time earnestly hoped that by the ordinary course of law the disturbances might have been effectually put down. The delay in proposing the present law had originated in a great measure in the above considerations, and in the hopes which had been indulged that as several of the disturbed districts (the town of Nottingham in particular) had been restored to a state of comparative tranquillity, no farther measures would be required. But the disturbances had of late assumed a new character, they more nearly resembled military associations; and a strong desire to get possession of arms had been manifested through the whole of the disturbed counties. The danger thus became more alarming; and the communications which had been lately received from the lieutenant of the west riding of Yorkshire, and several other magistrates, not only stated the further and alarming progress of the spirit of disaffection, but asserted that unless some additional powers were grant,