During this session Lord Althorp obtained the appointment of a committee to inquire into the mode of taking the poll at county elections; and Colonel Davies obtained a similar one to inquire into the mode of taking the polls at elections of cities and boroughs. The object of this inquiry was to get rid, if possible, of the enormous expense of electing, whether in county, city, or borough; for in many cases, as matters stood, it was only men of large fortunes who could venture to stand candidates. Lord Althorp likewise brought in and carried a bill for the better prevention of corrupt practices at elections, and for diminishing the expenses. His object was to prevent substantial bribery from being perpetrated under the mask of giving employment, and therefore to deprive all persons of the right to vote who should be employed by a candidate at the election. It was notorious, he said, that at elections different nominal offices were created, to be filled by voters who were classed as plumpers, and received double the pay of split votes. The provisions of the bill, however, were not to apply to any real and fair agent of a candidate, but to those who went under the spurious names of runners, flagmen, and musicians. On the suggestion of Mr. Spring Rice it was further determined to prohibit the distribution of riband and cockades. Both parts of the bill were opposed: the one as being unjust, and the other as frivolous; but the bill passed into a law. By its provision any person who, within six months before an election, or during an election, or within fourteen days after it, shall have been employed in the election as counsel, agent, attorney, poll-clerk, flagman, or in any other capacity, and shall have received in consideration of such employment any fee, place, or office, shall be incapable of voting at such elections; and that a penalty of £10 for each offence shall be inflicted upon every candidate, who, after the test of the writ, or if parliament be sitting, after the seat has become vacant, shall directly or indirectly give to any voter or inhabitant any cockade, riband, or any other mark of distinction. On the whole, therefore, a great step was taken this session towards the purification of elections; a branding mark, at least, was set upon shameless corruption.
THE GAME-LAWS.
During this session Lord Wharncliffe introduced a bill into the lords for altering the system of the game-laws. The provisions of this bill were threefold: first, it removed the absurd and contradictory qualifications of the old law, and substituted in their place the qualification of property, by permitting every proprietor to kill game on his own lands, whether great or small; secondly, it legalized the sale of game, as one great means of diminishing the temptations for poaching; and, thirdly, it mitigated the severity of the punishments provided by the existing law for certain offences against the game acts. This bill was allowed to be read a second time; but on the third reading it was lost by a majority of one. It had, however, scarcely been rejected when the Marquis of Salisbury introduced another, which proposed to empower all persons qualified by law to kill game to take out a licence, authorizing them to sell game to licensed dealers. This bill was likewise allowed to pass a second reading; but it was lost on a motion for the third reading by a majority of fifty-four to thirty-eight. One great alteration, however, was effected by a bill introduced by Lord Suffield, which abolished the practice of setting spring-guns and other engines of destruction for the preservation of game. This bill, which passed into a law, declared it to be a misdemeanour in any person to set a spring-gun, man-trap, or other engine calculated to kill, or inflict grievous injury, with the intent that it should destroy life, or occasion bodily harm to any trespasser or other person who might come into contact with it. An exception was made in favour of gins and traps for the destruction of vermin, and of guns placed in a dwelling-house between sunset and sunrise for the protection of that house. Scotland was excepted from the operation of the law; the six judges of the court of justiciary in that country having recently pronounced, in a case on which they had adjudicated of a man who had recently been killed by a spring-gun, that such killing, by the law of Scotland, is murder.
IMPROVEMENT OF THE CRIMINAL CODE.
Although out of office Mr. Peel still proceeded with his improvements of the criminal code. By his enlightened exertions five acts were passed, which consolidated into one body the whole law regarding offences against property, purified from an incredible quantity of ancient rubbish, and advantageously simplified in all its arrangements. The first of these five acts repealed about one hundred and thirty-seven different statutes, wholly, or in part, commencing with the charter De Foresta of Henry III., and ending with the session of 1826. The second statute removed doctrines which had hitherto been useless lumber in the statute-book, or laid down general rules applicable to the whole criminal code. It abolished in toto the benefit of clergy in cases of felony; appointed certain punishment for offences to which no special statute affixed any particular penalty; relieved discharged prisoners from severe official expenses; and purified the law from a load of obscure and unnecessary verbiage. The third act contained the law of offences against property in its new and simplified form; bringing the various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, as well as in the distinctions of larceny and fraud. It also mitigated the rigour of the penal law, while it recognised four classes of punishments, the offences being distinctly set forth to which each was applicable. The first of these punishments was death: the second, transportation for life, or any term not less than seven years, with the alternative of imprisonment for not longer than four years, with public whipping; the third was transportation for any period under fourteen years, or imprisonment for three years and whipping; and the fourth was transportation for seven years, with the alternative of imprisonment for two years and whipping. The fourth statute comprised those offences which consisted of maliciously injuring the property of another. This act reserved capital punishment for arson, for the demolition of buildings or machinery by rioters, for showing false lights to a vessel, &c.; but left other kinds of injury to be repaid by transportation or imprisonment. Altogether the number of capital offences was considerably diminished; and in many cases a summary mode of proceeding was introduced, which was so far a limitation of trial by jury. The last statute regulated the redress to be sought from the hundred by persons whose property had been injured by rioters, and laid down the mode for applying for such remuneration.
PROROGATION OF PARLIAMENT.
Parliament was prorogued on the 2nd of July. The speech was delivered by commission, and chiefly referred to the assurances of friendship from foreign powers; to directions which had been given for a review of the financial state of the country, with a view to a diminution of expenditure; to the revival of employment in the manufacturing districts; and to the corn-law question. On this latter subject the speech remarked:—“His majesty trusts that, although your deliberations on the corn-laws have not led, during the present session, to a permanent settlement of that important question, the consideration of it will be resumed by you early in the ensuing session, and that such an arrangement of it may finally be adopted as shall satisfy the reasonable wishes, and reconcile the substantial interests of all classes of his majesty’s subjects.”