SECOND READING. (Hansard, 12 April 1864)

THE MARQUESS OF WESTMEATH
, in moving the second reading of the Bill, said, the frequency of the crime to which the Bill referred, particularly in the manufacturing districts, and a case which had been tried at the late spring assizes in the county of Sligo, in Ireland, had induced him to bring forward the present measure. In the case to which he had referred, a young woman had been taken off by some men, who had confederated for the purpose, and extreme violence had been offered to her with a view to get possession not only of her person, but of her money, and in order to prevent any respectable man from having anything to do with her. The punishment inflicted by the Court for that offence was only two years' imprisonment; and he now proposed by the present Bill to 860 give power to the Judge, where more persons than one were concerned in the crime, to order the infliction of corporal punishment, and if that punishment were inflicted publicly, so that it might be known to those who were not in the habit of reading the newspapers, so much the better.

§ LORD RAVENSWORTH
opposed the Motion on the ground that the additional punishment contemplated by the Bill would have no additional deterrent effect. The offence in question was commonly committed by persons who were in company together, upon a casual encounter with their victim, and without premeditated design.

§ EARL GRANVILLE
said, that though he was very much opposed to the increase of the system of flogging, and had much doubts of its efficacy, at the same time he was not prepared, on the part of the Government, to oppose the second reading of the Bill.

§ EARL GREY
said, that there could be no doubt that some of the sentences recently inflicted for this offence were scandalously insufficient; but the fault did not lay with the law, but with the administration of the law, and an expression of the opinion of the Legislature might lead to better results. Different Judges awarded different measures of punishment, and the consequence was a great scandal on the inequality of the sentences awarded. He was afraid that it would be an insuperable difficulty to define by law the exact measure of punishment to be given to different degrees of crime; but still he thought that something might be done, under the authority of the Lord Chancellor, if the Judges were to meet together to lay down some common rule of action in order to establish greater uniformity in the administration of the law.

§ LORD WENSLEYDALE
said, that last year he had ventured to propose that the Lord Chancellor should write to the Judges and ask them to meet together in order that they might come to some common understanding in regard to the sentences which should be passed in cases of a similar kind. Objections were taken to that course; but he agreed to the want of uniformity, and the lenient sentences which were now frequently passed were a scandal and a disgrace and ought to be put an end to. He thought it highly desirable that the Judges should agree to some common principle in passing sentences.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR
said, that the subject was one of very great difficulty. He felt unwilling to take the course suggested by his noble and learned Friend. If he called upon the Judges to define the law with a view of limiting their discretion, he should be calling upon them to do that which would be better performed by an enactment of the Legislature.

§ LORD CRANWORTH
said, that the Bill was open to many objections. The Judges were necessarily intrusted with almost unlimited discretion; but the noble Marquess proposed to add a new element of uncertainty and a new element of difference in the sentences of the Judges. Since the abolition of capital punishments in so many eases, there had been a gradual system of inflicting too lenient punishments in ordinary convictions. He remembered thirty years ago his noble and learned Friend on the cross benches (Lord Wensleydale), remarking that the effect of taking away capital punishment would lead to the diminution of punishment all down the scale. Unfortunately that prediction had turned out to he too true, and it was a great misfortune, in his opinion, that punishments were not more severe in many cases than they now were. He could not, however, concur in the proposal that the Judges should meet and lay down any general rules; because crime admitted of such an infinite variety of shades of guilt that it was impossible to say beforehand what the punishment on any given offence ought to be. The only way in which punishments would eventually be more uniformly inflicted would he through the agency of public opinion. He saw no other means of arriving at that; result.

THE MARQUESS OF WESTMEATH
trusted that their Lordships would pass the Bill through its present stage.