SPEECH

ON MOVING FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE

STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

ON THE 2ND MARCH, 1819.

MR. SPEAKER,

SPEECH.*

I now rise, in pursuance of the notice which I gave, to bring before the House a motion for the appointment of a Select Committee "to consider of so much of the Criminal Laws as relates to Capital Punishment in Felonies, and to report their observations and opinions thereon to the House." And I should have immediately proceeded to explain the grounds and objects of such a motion, which is almost verbatim the same as a resolution entered on the Journals in the year 1770, when authority was delegated to a committee for the same purpose,-I should have proceeded, I say, to state at once why. I think such an inquiry necessary, had it not been for some concessions made by the Noble Lord † last night, which tend much to narrow the grounds of difference between us, and to simplify the question before the House. If I considered the only subject of discussion to be that which exists between the Noble Lord and myself, it would be reduced to this narrow compass;— namely, whether the Noble Lord's proposal or mine be the more convenient for the conduct of the same inquiry; but as every member in this House is a party to the question, I must make an observation or two on the Noble Lord's statements.

If I understood him rightly, he confesses that the growth of crime, and the state of the Criminal Law in this country, call for investigation, and proposes that

This speech marks an epoch in the progress of the reformation of the Criminal Law, inasmuch as the motion with which it concluded, though opposed by Lord Castlereagh, with all the force of the Government, under cover of a professed enlargement of its principle, was carried by a majority of nineteen in a House of two hundred and seventy-five members. -ED.

† Viscount Castlereagh. - ED.

these subjects shall be investigated by a Select Committee; this I also admit to be the most expedient course. He expressly asserts also his disposition to make the inquiry as extensive as I wish it to be. As far, therefore, as he is concerned, I am relieved from the necessity of proving that an inquiry is necessary, that the appointment of a Select Committee is the proper course of proceeding in it, and that such inquiry ought to be extensive. I am thus brought to the narrower question, Whether the committee of the Noble Lord, or that which I propose, be the more convenient instrument for conducting an inquiry into the special subject to which my motion refers? I shall endeavour briefly to show, that the mode of proceeding proposed by him, although embracing another and very fit subject of inquiry, must be considered as precluding an inquiry into that part of the Criminal Law which forms the subject of my motion, for two reasons.

In the first place, Sir, it is physically impossible; and, having stated that, I may perhaps dispense with the necessity of adding more. We have heard from an Honourable Friend of mine*, whose authority is the highest that can be resorted to on this subject, that an inquiry into the state of two or three gaols occupied a committee during a whole session. My Honourable Friend†, a magistrate of the city, has stated that an inquiry into the state of the prisons of the Metropolis, occupied during a whole session the assiduous committee over which he presided. When, therefore, the Noble Lord refers to one committee not only the state of the Criminal Law, but that of the gaols, of transportation, and of that little adjunct the hulks, he refers to it an inquiry which it can never conduct to an end; -he proposes, as my Honourable Friend has said, to institute an investigation which must outlive a Parliament. The Noble Lord has in fact acknowledged, by his proposed subdivision, that it would be impossible

* The Honourable Henry Grey Bennet.-ED. † Alderman Waithman.-ED.

Mr. Bennet. Er.