§ MR. DILLWYNsaid, he rose to call the attention of the Secretary of State for the Home Department to the prevalence of aggravated assaults upon women and children, and to urge upon his consideration the necessity of making some alteration in the law relating to such offences. The recent Assaults' Act had done much good, but he could not think it had altogether worked well. By imprisoning the offender, it too often deprived the wife of her means of support and obliged her to go to the workhouse, so that the victim was punished as much as the brutal assailant. In 1856 and 1857 he submitted proposals for inflicting shorter terms of imprisonment and corporal punishment. On those occasions he was met by the objections that the new Act had not yet had a fair trial, and that corporal punishment was not the proper mode of dealing with this or with any other offence. His own belief was, that corporal punishment would very materially check these assaults; but he was not now advocating his own nostrum. All he wished to impress on the Home Secretary was, that the law in its present state did not operate so satisfactorily as could be wished. In 1854 and 1855 there were in this metropolis alone 878 of these crimes, or 439 per year; In 1856 the number was 377; and last year it was 421. From these figures, it appeared that assaults of this kind were on the increase, and that there was an average of more than one a day of those offences. He believed it to be a libel on the English character to say that the minimum could not be brought below that. He earnestly hoped that during the recess the Home Secretary would give his attention to this subject, and would, if he found that these unmanly assaults were not reduced, bring forward next Session a measure to check a crime the frequency and atrocity of which were a disgrace to the country.