§ THE BISHOP OF OXFORD rose to move for a Select Committee on the present mode of carrying into effect capital punishments. He said he did not ask their Lordships to express any opinion whether or not we should maintain the present system of carrying into execution capital punishment, but only so far to agree that it was a matter on which there might be two good opinions as to refer the consideration of the question to a Select Committee. He thought it would take very little argument to show that there was so fair a presumption that a considerable alteration might with advantage be made in the mode in which these punishments were carried out, that it was not unreasonable to ask their Lordships to inquire into the matter. The great question for consideration was not whether executions should be public or private—for private executions, in the proper sense of that word, would be altogether intolerable in this country—but what should be the measure and the nature of the publicity attending them. Upon inquiry he thought it would appear that the present system provided publicity in the sense that it made these executions a public spectacle. That was an evil; and if it were possible to devise a plan by 248 which the present deterring influence which attended an execution should be preserved, while the demoralising influences which must necessarily accompany the making of the violent death of a fellow-creature a public spectacle should be avoided, he thought their Lordships would be of opinion that such a change would be a wholesome and desirable one. He need not argue that great evils arose from the present system. Whether it was attended by a corresponding good was another question. The great moralist Fielding, whose opinion was founded upon his experience as a police magistrate, had declared that he had come to the conclusion that one of the main causes of the increase of crime in the metropolis, especially of robberies, was the moral effect of the spectacle of a public execution, and the way in which among the world a man was, if he died what they called "game," elevated to the rank of a hero. Dramatists, when they wished to produce a moral effect by the death of one of their characters, did not exhibit that death upon the stage, but relied rather upon a narration of the circumstance attending it than upon the actual exhibition of the termination of life. Nor did he believe that any of their Lordships would send their son to a public execution with the view of deterring him from the commission of crime. In America, where the English system at first prevailed, there had been substituted for it a mode of carrying executions into effect before prescribed witnesses, with a sufficient showing of the man who was to suffer, and sufficient provision for their knowing that he actually suffered death; and he (the Bishop of Oxford) had been informed by an eminent citizen of the United States that, although there was at first much prejudice against this system, he did not believe that there was at present in America a single person who would wish to return to that which it had superseded. A similar system had for many years been pursued in Prussia, and there was at present before the Lower Chamber of the kingdom of Bavaria a measure proposed by the Ministers for the introduction of such a system into that country. If public executions were a means of deterring from crime, their horrors ought to be exhibited to the fullest extent; but so far was this from being the case, that the whole course of recent legislation had been to diminish the horror of attending them. These facts showed that there was a probable reason 249 for believing that a change might be made which would secure all the benefits of a public execution, without the evils of the present system. These evils were not confined to so hardening men that they came to regard the death of a fellow-creature as the occasion on which he should exhibit a miserable spirit of obduracy and hardness. There was a wholly different class of evils attending the present system, and arising from the fact that it every year became more difficult to carry into effect the last sentence of the law in cases in which it ought to be carried out. This was a most important consideration. There could be no greater evil in criminal legislation than to have severe penalties fitfully carried into effect. The more you reduced punishment to a certainty the greater would be its deterring influence. As a matter of fact, there had of late years been very few executions of women, even for the very highest offences. It was not for either House of Parliament to examine in detail the cases in which the Royal prerogative of mercy had been extended to criminals. It was of great moment that that prerogative should be reserved truly and really as an attribute of the Crown, to be exercised, of course, upon the advice of the responsible Minister; but he must notice that where in a string of cases of murder, accompanied with every aggravation, mercy was, for no reason which met the public eye, extended to the offender, there must necessarily be held out to the classes disposed to offend in the greatest degree the expectation of escaping the last sentence of the law. Their Lordships would know that it was not without reason that he noticed this. He would not in the least question the exercise of the Royal prerogative, but he must say that he was wholly unable to see why in some cases mercy had been extended to the offender. When a woman appointed a child of five years old to meet her at a certain place, and there dyed her own hand in its blood, with the deliberate malicious intention of thereby inflicting a wound upon the mind of its father, he could hardly conceive a stronger case for the forfeiture of life, if life were in any case to be forfeited to the law. The object of punishment was to deter from crime, but this could not be done unless we declared that by the ordinance of God civil society was to punish the criminal in His behalf. The very foundations of civil society rested upon the declaration that it was God's institution, and our right to 250 punish was based on the same foundation. The civil magistrate bore the sword on God's behalf. If the necessity of making the last penalty of the law a mere spectacle created great difficulty in carrying the sentence into effect in cases where it ought plainly to be carried out, their Lordships would make themselves responsible for that accidental removal and accessory to the fitful execution of the law, unless they inquired into the nature and extent of that necessity. Another question might arise—whether the present mode of execution was the best; but that would be merely incidental. The right rev. Prelate concluded by moving "That a Select Committee be appointed to take into Consideration the present mode of carrying into effect Capital Punishments."
LORD CAMPBELLconcurred entirely in the sentiments of the right rev. Prelate. He had long felt the great evil of public executions. They had been described by Fielding and another novelist not inferior to him, Mr. Charles Dickens, and he hoped the efforts of the right rev. Prelate to mitigate those evils would be crowned with success. Still very great evils might arise from private executions. There was a strong feeling against them in the public mind. He remembered, when in the House of Commons, that a proposal to substitute private for public executions was brought forward by Mr. Rich, who thereby incurred great obloquy. It was said that he wished to smother the criminal or to poison him—in fact, that he would open new scenes of horror which would excite the universal indignation of the country. The proposal met with no sort of support. No doubt there had since been a great alteration in public feeling. Private executions had been introduced into America with good effect. He was not prepared at present to give any distinct opinion of his own upon the subject, but he thought there ought to be an inquiry, and it might, perhaps, turn out that means could be devised to obviate the great objections which were at present made to private executions. It was said that the public would never be convinced, if executions were private, that sentences had been carried into effect. In the case of Governor Wall, the governor of Goree, who was convicted—improperly convicted, in his opinion—of the murder of a soldier, the public feeling was ferociously strong against him; and, as the Government were reluctant to carry the sentence into effect, it was said that if executions had been 251 private, some device would have been resorted to, and that he never would have been executed. If the Committee had been moved for with the intention of substituting some other instrument of punishment—the guillotine for instance—he should not have supported it.
§ LORD REDESDALEsaid, that, though fully aware of the great evils of public executions, he was not so completely convinced by the right rev. Prelate's argument as to admit the necessity of a change. It would be extremely difficult, for instance, to substitute private for public executions in political offences. Much, however, might be done to lessen that feeling of morbid excitement which the spectacle seemed to excite in certain low minds. Means might be taken to conceal the struggles of the criminal from the view of the spectators, and to shorten those struggles when they were likely to be long. The effect of the non-execution of women for the murder of their children, and the consequent encouragement in the minds of a certain class of women, that this was an offence which would not be punished by the last sentence of the law, could not have escaped the attention of any one who was in the habit of reading the daily papers. Scarcely a day passed but there was an account of some woman having murdered her offspring in one part of the country or the other. He believed this arose in a great degree from the desire evinced by judges, juries, and all concerned in the trial to get these women off upon some subterfuge, and from the fact that there had not been a single instance, he believed, for the last few years of the execution of a woman for this offence, even when of the most aggravated description.
THE MAEQUESS OF LANSDOWNEsaid, he should not have consented to the appointment of this Committee if he had thought it was the intention of the right rev. Prelate to substitute private for public executions. He believed it might be very possible, by a different mode of executing the sentence of the law, to produce a greater impression of certainty about it than at present existed in the public mind; for the tumult, the confusion, and the disgraceful circumstances which attended a public execution, and which the right rev. Prelate had described, did sometimes cause a great doubt to exist amongst the lower orders, whether the proper person had really been put to death. He remembered that at a time when he was a 252 schoolboy it was very commonly rumoured that a celebrated criminal, Dr. Dodd, who certainly was put to death, had never been executed at all, but that some appearance of an execution only had taken place; and he quite remembered having heard it said, again and again, that Dr. Dodd had been seen walking the streets of London ten or twenty years after the time when he was supposed to have been executed. In this manner it had happened that the improper publicity of the spectacle had rather served to counteract the proper effect of a public execution, the real publication of the proceeding. He thought the House and the public were very much indebted to the right rev. Prelate for bringing forward this subject, for he had never heard any one express a doubt of the mischievous effects of the existing practice; and he was sure that a more proper and impressive mode of carrying public executions into effect might well be devised. As for the particular mode of putting the criminal to death, that was another question, which he would not then discuss.
VISCOUST DUNGANNONthought every right-minded and reflecting man would be disposed to thank the right rev. Prelate for calling attention to this matter. Recent events had proved beyond doubt, that instead of affording an awful warning, these exhibitions only rendered the vulgar mind more callous and more hardened. It was necessary for the public to know that the sentence had been executed; but there was a middle course between an absolutely public execution and an execution conducted altogether in private and in a secret manner, which would be repugnant to the feelings of Englishmen. The right rev. Prelate had touched with great propriety on the circumstances connected with some sentences for murder lately passed and not carried into effect. Those cases had occasioned great astonishment, no doubt; and there was another case, within his own knowledge, of a most coldblooded and deliberate murder committed by two women upon another female; one of them was convicted on the evidence of her accomplice, and the Judge who tried the case at Downpatrick said it was a very aggravated case; but he had since been given to understand that she had been reprieved by the Lord-Lieutenant. Again, there was that fearful case which had been alluded to, of a mother who deliberately inveigled her own child into a cellar, and destroyed her by cutting her throat there, 253 but whose sentence had been commuted. He agreed with the noble Lord that many of the child murders we heard of were to be attributed to the fact that few convictions for such an offence were followed by executions. Where a crime had been committed which rendered the person amenable to the punishment of death—and especially in cases of murder—the instances ought to be few, rare, and exceptional in which it was not carried into effect; but at present it was the contrary.
THE BISHOP OF OXFORDexplained that he had not intended to express any opinion in favour of any particular mode of putting a criminal to death: indeed, he thought there might be other modes of execution more humane than that which was in use; but he should object exceedingly to any one which involved the shedding of blood. The noble Marquess had mentioned the case of Dr. Dodd as one which left a great feeling of uncertainty among the people as to the fact of his execution; but another remarkable instance of the same kind was the well-known case of the Duke of Monmouth.
§ On Question, agreed to. Committee named.