SECOND READING. (Hansard, 31 May 1870)

§ LORD WESTBURY

, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, that, as was well known to their Lordships, under the existing law conviction for treason or felony was attended with forfeiture of lands and goods. It had, however, been long felt that a more merciful view of the consequences of a criminal act was better suited to our present state of civilization; and various statutes had been passed by which the severities of the law had been much mitigated. The present Bill proposed to remove some further consequences, and to place the law upon a footing more agreeable to the times in which we live. The 1st clause provided that hereafter no conviction or judgment for treason or felony should cause any attainder or corruption of blood, or any forfeiture. The 2nd clause, however, provided that conviction for treason or felony should be attended with the forfeiture of any office, pension, public employment, or emolument derived out of any public funds, and also with disqualification, so long as the sentence remained unexpired, 1689 or until pardon, for any public employment under the Crown, whether naval, military, or civil, and for holding any ecclesiastical benefice. The disqualification also extended to sitting in Parliament, and to the exercise of any Parliamentary or municipal franchise. The 3rd clause enacted that persons convicted of treason or felony might be condemned to pay all or any portion of the costs, as to the Court might seem fit; and the 4th enabled the Court to award compensation to an amount not exceeding £100 by way of satisfaction or compensation for loss of property suffered by the injured party. The convict was, moreover, disabled from bringing any action or suit at law, and from alienating property during the time he should be subject to the Act. As he had already stated, the goods and chattels of a person convicted of felony were forfeited to the Crown. But though this consequence of conviction was still in force, its operation had been much mitigated, partly by the operation of various statutes, but chiefly by the practice pursued by the Crown in making grants from the forfeited property for the relief of the convict's family and other purposes. Indeed, in minor cases, it had long been the practice not to seize goods and chattels with a view of deriving any profit from them, but to deal with them in a merciful manner for the purpose of meeting the necessities of the convict's family. He held in his hand a Return of goods and chattels forfeited to the Crown since 1864, which showed that the application of them had been very capricious, and not regulated by any definite principle. In 1864 such property amounted to about £1,500, of which only £407 was restored to the convicts' families; in 1865 to nearly £600, £440 being restored; and in 1868 to £1,800, of which £1,111 was restored. It was very desirable that the disposition of the property of a felon should be placed under some systematic rule; and this Bill proposed that henceforth such property should be vested in an administrator to be appointed by the Crown; that after all expenses incurred by the administrator in recovering the property had been paid it should first of all be liable to defray the costs of the prosecutor, if he had not been otherwise entirely reimbursed. It proposed that the property should next be liable for the payment of debts justly due by the 1690 convict at the time of his conviction—thus remedying the anomalous state of the law under which creditors, unless I they had obtained judgment, were debarred payment, no matter how large the amount of personal property which, the convict had forfeited. It next proposed that the administrator should be empowered to make compensation to a limited extent to any person defrauded or injured by the criminal act of the convict; and, lastly, that he should make allowances for the support of the convict's family, and, indeed, for that of the convict himself if he should be at large under a license. The administration would operate until the sentence pronounced, or any sentence substituted for it, had been fully completed, or until a pardon had been issued. During this period any property accruing to the convict would come within the possession and control of the administrator: who, on the expiration of the term, would be bound to restore to the convict all that remained of his property, and to give him a full account of his administration. In cases where no administrator should have been appointed, the justices of the peace in petty sessions might appoint an interim curator of the property of the convict, upon application of any person who should be able to satisfy such justices that such an appointment would be for the benefit of the convict, or his family. The powers and duties of the interim curator would be generally the same as that of the administrator, and would abate on the appointment of an administrator in due form. There was one other provision in the Bill to which he desired to bring under their Lordships' notice. The 31st clause repealed the barbarous provisions of the statutes still, he was ashamed to say, in existence, by which it was enacted that the judgment required by law to be awarded against persons adjudged guilty of high treason should include the drawing of the person on a hurdle to the place of execution, and, after execution, the severing of the head from the body, and the dividing of the body into four quarters. Henceforth, this relic of the barbarism of our ancestors would cease to disgrace our statute book. The Bill had passed without the smallest opposition in the other House, and was referred to a Select Committee, by whom certain alterations were made; after which it received the marked approval of Her Ma- 1691 jesty's Government through the Home Secretary. He trusted their Lordships would now read the Bill a second time, and he would then postpone the next stage for a fortnight or more, in order that the measure might receive the attention of his noble and learned Friends, and also, as he trusted, of his noble and unlearned Friends.