1821.

SPEECH ON CRIMINAL LAW.

113

"There is no country in which public co-operation is not important to the execution of the law; but in England this concurrence between the people and the law is absolutely indispensable. It is taken for granted, that he who can, will inform that the person aggrieved will prosecute. All this is taken for granted, and was justly so taken, as long as public feeling went along with the law; but now a man's life is at issue, and this at once seals the lips of the man who could inform, pacifies the prosecutor, silences the witness, and sometimes even sharpens the merciful astuteness of the judge. In fact, and in truth, it effects the deliverance of the felon.

"But worse than this, there is a price which we have to pay, of which, if I can prove the existence and extent, no man will deny that in itself it more than countervails every conceivable advantage,-I mean the perjury of jurymen."

After giving a number of instances where juries had clearly perjured themselves in order to save the lives of prisoners,

"I hold in my hand," he says, "1200 cases of a similar description. Is it then policy or prudence—I say nothing of its wickedness- to tamper with what is so very delicate, or even to permit the reputation of that oath to be impaired, or any stain to be cast upon its purity? But when the public see twelve respectable men, in open court, in the face of day, in the presence of a Judge, calling God to witness that they will give their verdict according to the evidence, and then declaring their belief in things, not merely very strange or uncommon, but actual physical impossibilities, absolute miracles, wilder than the wildest legends of monkish superstition what impression on the public mind must be made, if not this that there are occasions in which it is not only lawful, but commendable, to ask God to witness palpable and egregious falsehood?"

Referring to the evidence which had been given by a multitude of persons in very different situations, of

I

very different habits and opinions, as to the pernicious effects of the system of severe punishment upon all classes of society,

"I ask," he said, "how happens it that persons so various -filling situations so various-merchants, bankers, solicitors of the Excise, shopkeepers, solicitors of the Old Bailey, officers of the police, clerks of the police offices, magistrates, and jurymen—men bound together by no similarity of pursuit, no identity of interest,-by no party feeling, political or religious, how happens it, I ask, that such persons should "Weave such agreeing truths, or how, or why,

Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?'

* "Shall we accede to this rational solution of the uniformity of their testimony? Shall we not rather conclude that they all spoke alike because they all spoke the truth, and that the uniformity of the evidence arose from the uniformity of the observation?

"And this opinion of practical men being corroborated by the opinions of men of profound thought and great learning —of Chillingworth, Johnson, Franklin, Pitt, Fox; of More, Bacon, Coke, Clarendon, Ashburton, and Blackstone; I say, when I see that the conclusion at which the wisest men have arrived by dint of reason, is the same conclusion at which the most practical men have arrived by dint of experience; and that this, the speculation of the learned, and the observation of those that gather up their notions from the busy scenes of life, has been put to the test in America and in Tuscany, and that there it has realised more than the most sanguine expectation; and further, that this system is the common law of England, and is common sense: -I say when I have such a body of evidence and argument of fact and authority of reason and experience, and when our adversaries, members of a committee which sat for many months, never once ventured to hint at an authority, or to produce a witness who could gainsay the truth of those doctrines which I am maintaining;

when I have so much in my favour, and so very little

1821.

SPEECH ON CRIMINAL LAW.

115

against me, I cannot but indulge the hope that the noble Lord opposite, and the Government, will do justice to the country by aiding the milder but more efficient doctrines of penal legislation which we have endeavoured to promulgate." He concluded his speech thus:

"My argument then, is this. Our system is before us. The price we pay for our system is, --the loss of public opinion, and the aid (the best, the cheapest, and the most constitutional) which the law gathers from the concurrence of public opinion; the necessity of doing that by spies, informers, and blood-money, which were better done without them; the annual liberation of multitudes of criminals; the annual perpetration of multitudes of crimes; perjury; and the utter abandonment of the first of your duties, the first of your interests, and the greatest of all charities -the prevention of crime. This is what you pay. And for what? For a system, which has against it a multitude of divines, moralists, statesmen, lawyers, an unrivalled phalanx of the wise and good; a system, which has against it the still stronger authority of practical men, who draw their conclusions from real life; a system, which has against it the still stronger authority of the common law of England; which, if wrong now, is wrong for the first time; a system, which has against it the still stronger authority of experience and experiment, in England, on the one hand—in Tuscany, in America, and elsewhere, on the other: and, finally, a system, which in its spirit and its temper, is against the temper and the spirit of that mild and merciful religion, which desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live!""

Numerous were the expressions of approbation which this speech called forth. Sir James Mackintosh said in the House, that it was "the most powerful appeal that he had ever had the good fortune to hear within the walls of Parliament."* And in a subse

Hansard, May, 1821.

quent debate Mr. (now Lord) Denman remarked, that "More of wisdom, more of benevolence, more of practical demonstration he had never heard in the course of his parliamentary career, than was contained in the energetic speech of his honourable friend.”

When, however, the division took place on the question, "That the Bill for the mitigation of the punishment of death for forgery do pass," the Ayes were 115, and the Noes 121: and the bill was consequently lost!

On the 5th of June, 1822, Sir James Mackintosh again brought forward the question, and was again seconded by Mr. Buxton. They succeeded in carrying by a majority of sixteen the motion, "That the House will in the next session consider the means of increasing the efficacy of the criminal law, by abating the rigour of its punishments."

In 1823, however, the resolutions proposed by Sir James Mackintosh were rejected, and he and his friends were still struggling against a superior force, when in 1826, Mr. Peel, on his accession to office, undertook the momentous task of remodelling the whole penal code.

An account will be given, in its proper place, of the final result of the movement for the mitigation of that sanguinary code by which, at the period when Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Buxton brought the subject forward, two hundred and thirty offences were punishable with death!

CHAP. VIII.

117

CHAPTER VIII.

SLAVERY.

1821-1823.

CHOSEN BY MR. WILBERFORCE AS HIS SUCCESSOR IN THE SLAVERY CAUSE. SLAVE

66

-COMMON CONFUSION OF SLAVERY WITH

TRADE. -PREVIOUS IMPRESSIONS ON MR. BUXTON'S MIND.PRISCILLA GURNEY'S DYING WORDS.-HE STUDIES THE SUBJECT. -LONG DELIBERATIONS.- -FEAR OF SERVILE REVOLT.-UNDERTAKES TO ADVOCATE THE QUESTION. LETTERS FROM MR. WILBERFORCE.-REFLECTIONS.—SUTTEES.—THE QUAKERS' PETITION. -LETTER TO EARL BATHURST.-FIRST DEBATE ON SLAVERY.MR. CANNING'S AMENDMENTS. ·AMELIORATIONS IN THE SLAVE'S CONDITION RECOMMENDED TO THE COLONISTS. LETTER TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

THE evening after Mr. Buxton had delivered his speech on criminal law, he received the following letter from Mr. Wilberforce :

"My dear Buxton,

"London, May 24. 1821.

"It is now more than thirty-three years since, after having given notice in the House of Commons that I should bring forward, for the first time, the question concerning the Slave Trade, it pleased God to visit me with a severe indisposition, by which, indeed, I was so exhausted, that the ablest physician in London of that day declared that I had not stamina to last above a very few weeks. On this I went to Mr. Pitt, and begged of him a promise, which he kindly and readily gave me, to take upon himself the conduct of that great

cause.

"I thank God, I am now free from my indisposition; but from my time of life, and much more from the state of my constitution, and my inability to bear inclemencies of weather, and irregularities, which close attendance on the House of