§ MR. ARTHUR MILLSsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether the sentence passed at Winchester Assizes, on the 5th instant, on Lewis Francis, in which an expectation was held out to the prisoner of a possible remission of a portion of the said sentence, was in accordance with the instructions conveyed in the Homo Office Circular of the 27th of January last?
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he had no information with respect to this case, except that the convict had been found guilty and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. The Judge had made no communication to him on this subject, which he could have done if he had intended the sentence should be commuted or abridged. The observations alluded to, however, if made, were not inconsistent with the Circular of the 27th of January. That Circular did not say that in no case any sentence of penal servitude should be remitted, but that in future the right of convicts under a sentence of penal servitude to claim a certain abridgment of their sentence on the conditions specified in a notice would no longer belong to prisoners under second sentences of penal servitude. Nevertheless, upon the recommendation of a Judge, or under special circumstances, a sentence of penal servitude might at any time be brought under the consideration of the Home Office.