Mr. Chaplinrose to make some observations respecting the Petition of Mr. Finnerty, which had been presented to the House on Friday. The hon. gentleman said he rose for the purpose of vindicating the magistracy of the county of Lincoln from any imputations which the allegations contained in that Petition might have a tendency to excite. He spoke, then, generally of them as a body of gentlemen every way worthy of the trust reposed in them. He next adverted to the severe and cruel treatment which Mr. Finnerty complained of having received from the gaoler. He affirmed, on the contrary, that the treatment had been most kind and indulgent, till the impropriety of Mr. Finnerty's conduct had rendered a more rigorous sort of treatment absolutely necessary. As to the apartment of which so much had been said, he had been in it. It was a room 22 feet by 11, and 16 feet high. There was one window of 4 feet by 4½ feet; and when ht was there, he did not perceive 742 any offensive smell. He upon that occasion saw Mr. Finnerty in the court-yard.; and he then understood, that until Mr. Finnerty had forfeited all title to any indulgence by the impropriety of his conduct, he not only had free access to the court-yard, but was allowed to walk in the gaoler's garden, and had liberty to read in the gaoler's green-house. He concluded by expressing his belief that the gaoler was not a man disposed to treat his prisoners cruelly, and that the magistrates were a most respectable body of men.
Mr. Howarthsaid, that nothing had fallen from the hon. gentleman to alter at all in his mind the material points of this most extraordinary case. He was not disposed to question the title of the magistrates in general of the county of Lincoln, to the character given of them by the hon. gentleman; but of this he was clear, that if they, or any of them, held with Mr. Finnerty such a conversation as he charged them with having held, they were no longer fit to hold their offices as magistrates—and if the conduct of the gaoler was such as had been represented, he thought that that person should no longer be suffered to abuse a trust of which he must in such case have proved himself so unworthy. What! was it to be endured that a gaoler should turn the sufferings of his unfortunate prisoners into a source of emolument? Mr. Finnerty was suffering the sentence of the law—but was he therefore removed out of the protection of the law? Was this gaoler to be allowed to play the part of his brother in the Beggar's Opera, who had his fetters of all prices, and was loading captain Macheath with an enormous pair, until the captain bribed him to afford him a lighter? He trusted the House would interfere to prevent such unconstitutional oppression.
§ Mr. Broughamsaid that the most serious part of the charge against the gaoler, that of his having aggravated the sentence of the court, which was mere deprivation of liberty, into the infinitely more grievous punishment of solitary confinement—that part of the charge had not been touched upon by the hon. gentleman. This was, perhaps, the most important part of the question, whether a gaoler being entrusted with the charge of two defendants, both sentenced for the same offence to the same term of imprisonment, could, at the suggestion of his own caprice, or for purposes of his own emolument, make those punishments essentially different which the court 743 of King's Bench had originally intended to be substantially the same. Solitary confinement was not so much different from, as opposite to, mere ordinary imprisonment, where a man had free access to his friends, and every accommodation he would have in his own house, with the exception of the restraint upon his liberty. As to the noisome smell in Mr. Finnertys apartment, he had been among the first to vouch for the truth of that fact; at least as far as he could vouch for the truth of any fact which he had not known from personal observation. An hon. and learned friend of his who had been in the ceil assured him that the common sewer passing under the flooring of the cell emitted a most loathsome smell. Were there, how-ever, no other facts than those respecting the gaoler's conduct in changing Mr. Finnerty's sentence into solitary confinement, and that other also respecting the conversation held by the magistrates with Mr. Finnerty—were there no other than those two, he fully concurred with his learned and hon. friend (sir S. Romilly) in thinking that both or either in themselves, not with standing the late period of the session, furnished ample grounds for grave parliamentary inquiry.
Mr. Chaplinreplied, that the coercions sabsequently imposed upon Mr. Finnerty might have been found necessary in consequence of his attempts to seduce the under officer of the prison from his duty. So far from his confinement having been solitary, he was allowed a servant, who was in constant attendance on him.