CHAP. XVI.
On Punishments.—The mode authorized by the ancient laws.—The period when Transportation commenced.—The principal crimes enumerated which are punishable by Death.—Those punishable by Transportation and Imprisonment.—The courts appointed to try different degrees of crimes.—Capital punishments, extending to so many offences of an inferior nature, defeat the ends of justice.—The system of Pardons examined:—their evil tendency.—New regulations suggested with regard to Pardons and Executions.—An historical account of the rise and progress of Transportation.—The expedients resorted to, after the American War put a stop to that mode of punishment.—The System of the Hulks then adopted.—Salutary Laws also made for the erection of Provincial and National Penitentiary Houses.—The nature and principle of these Laws briefly explained.—An account of the Convicts confined in the Hulks for twenty-two years.—The enormous expence of maintenance and inadequate produce of their labour.—The impolicy of the system exposed by the Committee on Finance.—The system of Transportation to New South Wales examined.—Great expence of this mode of punishment.—Improvements suggested, calculated to reduce the expence in future.—Erection of one or more National Penitentiary Houses recommended.—A general view of the County Penitentiary Houses and Prisons:—their inefficacy in reforming Convicts.—The labour obtained uncertain, while the expence is enormous.—The National Penitentiary House (according to the proposal of Jeremy Bentham, Esq.) considered.—Its peculiar advantages over all others which have been suggested, with respect to health, productive labour, and reformation of Convicts.—General reflections on the means of rendering imprisonment useful in reforming Convicts.—Concluding observations.
IMPERFECT in many respects as the criminal Law appears, from what has been detailed and stated in the preceding Chapters, and much as the great increase of capital offences, created during the last and present Century, is to be lamented:—it cannot be denied that several changes have taken place in the progress of Society, favourable to the cause of humanity, and more consonant to reason and justice, in the appropriation and the mode of inflicting punishments.
The Benefit of Clergy, which for a long period exempted clerical people only, from the punishment of death in cases of felony, was by several statutes[127] extended to peers, women, and all persons able to read; who, pleading their Clergy, suffered only a corporal punishment, or a year's imprisonment; and those men who could not read, if under the degree of peerage, were hanged.[128]
This unaccountable distinction was actually not removed until the 5th of Queen Anne, cap. 6, which extended the benefit of clergy to all who were intitled to ask it, whether they could read or not.[129]
In the course of the present century, several of the old sanguinary modes of punishment have been either, very properly, abolished by acts of parliament, or allowed, to the honour of humanity, to fall into disuse:—such as burning alive (particularly women) cutting off hands or ears, slitting nostrils, or branding in the hand or face; and among lesser punishments, fallen into disuse, may be mentioned the ducking-stool.