§ MR. E. H. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S. W.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the case of James Bate, 708 who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death at Liverpool Assizes on the 20th November last, and left for execution on Tuesday morning, the 8th December, whether he communicated to the Governor of Walton Gaol his decision that the law must take its course in Bate's case; and, if so, on what day was this communication made; on what day did he order the respite of the execution of Bate; between these two dates did any new facts in the case come to his knowledge; and, if so, what were they; on what day and at what hour was the fact of the respite communicated to Bate; and, upon what grounds did he advise the Crown to commute the capital penalty in this case?
§ *SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEYI should be departing from the course which has been taken uniformly by all my predecessors in similar circumstances if I were to answer in detail the series of questions which the hon. Member has asked me. At the same time I have no desire to keep anything back which I can properly lay before the House. The murder, though committed in a moment of drunken fury and in circumstances of considerable provocation, was in other respects of such a, nature that I felt that the circumstances as a whole, and regarded in themselves, did not justify reprieve, and that the recommendation of the jury to that effect must be disregarded. After my decision was made public, I received such clear evidence by numerous and weighty representations from all quarters of the existence of a genuine and unanimous sentiment in favour of mercy that I was forced to the belief that the execution of the extreme penalty would change indignation at an atrocious crime into compassion for the criminal, and, giving weight, as my predecessors have done in exceptional cases to this consideration, advised Her Majesty to commute the sentence.