§ MR. CAVEwished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for the purpose of setting at rest doubts which had been expressed out of doors. Whether it is proposed to grant licences or tickets-of-leave, under any circumstances, to prisoners whose sentence of death had been commuted to penal servitude for life?
§ SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, that he was glad to have an opportunity of stating that prisoners under sentence of penal servitude for life, whether their sentences had been commuted or not, formed a distinct class, separate from the other prisoners, and not entitled to the benefit of those regulations under which the others were entitled to a remission of their sentences. The rule in the case of prisoners under sentence of penal servitude for life was, that any claim to a remission of punishment was considered on its own merits, but that no expectations of a remission of sentence after any definite time were held out to them.