§ Order of the Day for going into Committee of Supply read.
§ VISCOUNT RAYNHAMsaid, that he wished to put a question to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department with respect to the administration of the law in cases of assault upon females, which he regretted to say appeared to have been on the increase since the rejection recently of his Motion for a Committee of inquiry into the subject. No fewer than three cases of ferocious assaults on women were recorded in that day's paper alone. In one case a man who was charged with a murderous assault upon his wife—having stabbed her in the face with a knife—appeared to be quite indifferent to the charge made against him, and being very properly sentenced by Mr. Combe, the magistrate, to six months' hard labour—being the full extent of the punishment which the magistrate had it in his power to award—he said, laughing, "That's just what I want; that'll serve her out." In another case a man was charged with a ferocious assault upon his wife, and he also treated the matter with great unconcern. Mr. Seeker, the magistrate, in adjudicating upon this case, said—
It was melancholy to see a man in his respectable position of life charged with committing a series of brutal assaults on his wife. From the state of her body it was clear that he was in the habit of continually illusing her. Under all the circumstances he should not be doing his duty to the public unless he put the law in force with some severity. He must therefore be committed to the House of correction for two months, with hard labour.He (Viscount Raynham) trusted, therefore, that the Government would see the necessity before long of making some alteration in the law applicable to such cases; and he would also beg to ask his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary whether, in his opinion, Mr. Secker had inflicted the proper punishment in the second case he had alluded to, and, if in the opinion of the Home Secretary he had 149 not done so, whether any step would be taken to alter the sentence.
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, that, not having seen the particulars of the cases to which his noble Friend had adverted, he should be sorry to express an opinion as to whether the magistrate in exercising the discretion vested in him by the law with respect to the punishment which he awarded, had acted with sound judgment or not. He had not the least reason to doubt that the discretion exercised by the magistrates in question was a sound discretion. With respect to the operation of the existing Act, he would refer to a letter written by one of the police magistrates to the right hon. Gentleman the Chairman of Committees, in which letter the writer states that the Act had had a very great influence in checking the offences against which it was directed; and that in his district the numbers of cases had diminished from eighty-nine in 1854 to forty-three in 1856.