§ MR. J. HOWARDsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If his attention has been called to a case tried at the recent Bedfordshire Lent Assizes, in which the prisoner, a man thirty-seven years of age, was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for an attempt to upset a Railway train; and, whether he will institute an inquiry into those special circumstances, if any, which led to the passing a sentence which, to the mind of the public, is disproportionate to the enormity of the crime?
MR. BRUCEsaid, in reply, he had no knowledge of the case beyond that furnished by the hon. Member. The sen- 1431 tence of which he complained, as being inadequate to the enormity of the offence, was passed by a learned Judge, and ithad never been the practice of a Secretary of State to call a learned Judge to account for a sentence which, on a due consideration of the circumstances of the case, he had thought it right to inflict.