HOUSE OF COMMONS, Tuesday, April 16, 1833. STEUART, Accounts of the total Sums levied by the Com- itself. He was not prepared to say at this to be read a Second Time this day six moment, that he should go the length of months. voting against the principle of the Bill, and throwing it out at once. On the contrary, he was rather inclined to think that it might be advantageous to let the Bill go into the Committee, where the objections to its machinery might be considered and removed. It might be fit and thus proper to give the noble and learned Lord the opportunity of amending the measure. Such being his general view of this question, he should only observe, that with all due deference and respect for the learned Common Law Judges, they were not exactly the best persons to decide what was fit to be done in Equity; and that though, generally speaking, he should say that their authority was great and overpowering when it was in favour of any measure for the alteration of the practice in their Courts, yet, although it was still to be listened to with reverence, it was not when opposed to such alterations, to be deemed of such overpowering weight. That Petitions presented. By Mr. METHUEN, from the Clergy of arose, no doubt, from their excusable wish not to sanction changes that were not absolutely necessary. With reference to the present Bill, he thought that upon the whole, it would be the most advisable course, especially as a Bill of a similar nature had twice before passed this House, not to agree to the Amendment, and throw out the Bill, but to allow it to go into the Committee without pledging the House to any particular course afterwards with respect to it. He was, Lord Wynford said, that if there were objections to the machinery of the Bill, though he by no means admitted their justice, he was bound to say in his own defence, that that machinery was the work of the Common Law Commissioners-it was not his. That part of the Bill had been recommended by them. therefore, entitled to say, that the Judges were in favour of it, for most of them were now Judges. He did not wish to interfere with the Courts of Equity, but to enable the Common Law Courts to do their own business, and he denied that the plan he proposed would increase the expense to the suitor. On the contrary, if that which now required the suitor to go into a fresh Court, could be done in the Court in which the action was already pending there would be a great saving of expense. The Amendment agreed to, and Bill Wilts; and by Sir ROBERT INGLIS, from the Clergy of Surrey; and from a Place in Ireland,—against the Church Reform (Ireland) Bill.-By Mr. BLAMIRE, Mr. HARDY, Mr. HURST, Mr. STAVELEY, Mr. SHEPPARD, Mr. PHILPOTTS, Mr. THROCKMORTON, Mr. HOULDSWORTH, Mr. METHUEN, Mr. CHARLES BULLER, Mr. WASON, Mr. CHILDERS, Lord DALMENY, Sir WILLIAM CHAYTOR, Sir JAMES GRAHAM, Sir EARDLEY WILMOT, Captain ELLIOTT, and Viscount Howick, from a great Number of Places,-for the immediate Abolition of Slavery.--By Mr. JERVIS, from Bedford; by Mr. J. C. DUNDAS, by Lord HowICK; and by Lord CHARLES FITZROY, from several Places,-against Corporation Abuses.--By Mr. EWART, from Liverpool, for the Abolition of Flogging; and from the Dissenters of that Place, for Removing the Disabilities of the Jews.-By Mr. HAWES, from Lambeth, to the same effect.-By Mr. HARDY, and Mr. CRAVEN BERKELEY, from four Places,-in favour of a Factories' Regulation Bill.-By Mr. PARROTT, Mr. HARDY, and Viscount HowICK, from several Places,--for a Removal of the Disabilities at present affecting the Dissenters. By Colonel LYGON, from Bewdley, for a Repeal of the Sale of Beer Act.-By Mr. FYSCHE PALMER, from Retail Dealers and Brewers in Reading; and by Mr. HUME, from Paddington, against any Alteration of that Act. By Mr. R. OSWALD, from Hand-loom Weavers of Glasgow, and its Neighbourhood; by Mr. J. MAXWELL, from Pollockshaws; and by Mr. HUME, from Newton, near Ayr, for a Board of Trade, and for Relief.-By Mr. J. MAXWELL, and Mr. STEWART MACKENZIE, from three Places,-against the present System of Church Patronage in Scotland.-By Mr. PHILPOTTS, from Gloucester, for a Repeal of the Assessed Taxes.-By Sir ROBERT FERGUSON, from Londonderry, for Providing Counsel to Prisoners tried for Felony; and against additional Duty on Timber brought from the British Colonies; and from the Cess Payers of Donaghadee, for an Alteration in the Grand Jury Bill.-By Mr. HARDY, Mr. HALFORD, Mr. TREVOR, Mr. J. MAXWELL, Mr. PARROTT, and Mr. E. TENNENT, by Captain ELLIOT, and Lord DALMENY, from a Number of Places,-for the Better Observance of the Sabbath.By Mr. CHARLES O'CONNELL, from a Place in Ireland, for the Abolition of Tithes. JUVENILE OFFENDERS.] Sir Eardley Wilmot rose, to move for leave to bring a in a Bill to alter and amend so much of great expense to the public; but the worse the 7th and 8th of George 4th, c. 28, as consequence was, that, by remaining so related to proceedings in indictments long in a prison, as they frequently did, beagainst offenders previously convicted of tween committal and trial, these youthful felony; also to alter and amend so much offenders were exposed to every sort of of the 7th and 8th of George 4th, c. 29, contamination from the society of some of as related to proceedings by indictment their fellow-prisoners; and their morals against persons under seventeen years of often became so utterly depraved, from age charged with simple larcenies. By this cause, as to render their future imthe 7th and 8th of George 4th, it was en- provement, and their subsequent return to acted, that when a prisoner was indicted good conduct, and their duties to society, a second time for felony, upon proof of almost a hopeless matter. They came the former conviction, the Court might out worse than they went in; and thus order an increase of punishment-namely, the great end of punishment-the pretransportation for fourteen years, or for vention of crime-was, in their cases, life. When the clerk of arraigns read the signally defeated. He would not enter indictment to the Jury, in which there into any details, but would merely allude were two counts, the one stating the to one instance, in order to show the effect former conviction, and the other the charge of the early imprisonment of children for to be tried, the Jury acquired a previous trifling offences. In the county which het knowledge of the accused being an had the honour to represent, considerably old offender; and such knowledge pre- more than half the criminal offenders were judicing him in their minds, he might be under twenty-one years of age; and, convicted, not so much for the offence for during the last seven years, 1,300 indiviwhich he was then taking his trial, as for duals had been tried, who were under the the offence for which he had already age of eighteen; and of these one half suffered punishment. Now, it was were under fifteen years of age. A great principle of law, that no man should be portion of them were kept in prison from tried a second time for the same offence; six weeks to two months, to await their and the jury being sworn "to give a true trials; so that, in fact, punishment was verdict, according to the evidence," it inflicted on them before conviction. The followed, that the previous knowledge of system of punishing boys who had done the Jury was injurious to the prisoner, and acts of mischief (for a great number of militated against his having a fair trial for these delinquents had no idea of committhe offence on which he was then arraign- ting felony), by indiscriminate imprisoned. He proposed that the count, stating ment in common gaols, instead of keeping the previous conviction of the prisoner, them on bread and water, and in solitary should not be read to the Jury till after confinement, for a limited period, or of their verdict; when, if it were a verdict otherwise punishing them in a summary of "guilty," proof might be given of the and judicious manner, was highly objecprevious conviction; such proof never tionable. Boys being sent to gaol, for having been intended to affect the verdict they hardly knew what, soon became corof the Jury, but only the sentence of the rupted and depraved; their sense of shame Court after conviction. The second object was destroyed; and they were converted into of the Bill however, was of much import- hardened offenders. It was unnecessary to ance; and he had no doubt would receive state, that the only objects of punishment the attentive consideration of the House. are the prevention of crime and the reforIn his judgment, some change of the law, mation of offenders; and if those objects as it related to juvenile offenders, had were not accomplished, and if punishbecome absolutely necessary. The num-ments, instead of doing good, increased ber of such cases had of late years, greatly increased. It appeared from the Returns on the Table of the House, that a large proportion of the convictions were of perSons under twenty-one years of age. These juvenile offenders were first taken before a Magistrate, and then committed to prison to await their trials. That mode of dealing with them was attended with the evils which they were intended to remedy, there could be no doubt that the system was radically wrong. Such was the case with respect to our treatment of juvenile offenders. It was the object of the Bill to remedy this defect. Instead of allowing boys of tender age to be taken before Magistrates-for petty larceniesto be bailed, or in default of bail sent to gaol, and then tried and imprisoned on conviction, he would have them brought at once to the Petty Sessions, there to be tried by the Magistrates, and summarily punished or discharged, as the case might require. If committed to a house of correction, care ought to be taken of the classification and the religious and moral instruction of youthful offenders. He should have no objection to have a Jury to assist at the Petty Sessions, if it should be thought necessary. If this, however, should not be thought desirable, in order to prevent convictions for felony without the intervention of Juries, it would be proper that many of the crimes now classed as felonies should, when committed by youths, be treated as misdemeanors. This alteration in the law would remove the objection which existed to dealing with such offenders without the intervention of a Jury, and reconcile the mind to summary convictions before Magistrates. The hon. Baronet concluded by making the Motion above specified. Mr. Lamb did not intend to oppose the Motion. He thought the first object which the hon. Baronet had in view was already attained, because the second count in the indictment was seldom read to the Jury, and because Judges did not in the first instance tell the Jury to find whether a prisoner had been before convicted [Cries of "the Jury knew it"]. He agreed it was not right a Jury should be prejudiced by having that knowledge; and if the hon. Baronet could succeed in preventing the Jury from knowing that a prisoner had been before convicted, he should be glad. With regard to the second object which the hon. Baronet had in view, it was certainly very desirable that boys not hardened in crime should be spared the contamination of the associates they usually met with while waiting in gaol to take their trial; but he confessed that he saw great difficulty in the hon. Baronet so framing this Bill, as not to let young experienced thieves, bred up in crime from their cradles, escape. If that were suffered, as it was well known that many boys in London were very experienced thieves, they would escape punishment; and it was of urgent necessity that boys nursed up in the career of crime should not escape punishment under the pretext of their age. There was a great difficulty in fixing the age of what were called juvenile offenders. Should it be under ten, or fourteen, or sixteen? The Committee which had sat on this subject had found it surrounded with difficulties. If the Bill were brought in, it might certainly, under proper management, tend to check crime. He looked upon the object of the hon. Baronet as most desirable, though he doubted if it were easy of execution. Sir Thomas Freemantle supported the Motion. The present system was only fitted to entrap a Jury into a verdict of guilty. He had been a member of that honourable House when Mr. Davenport had introduced his Bill on the subject, and had then supported his propositions. As to the establishment of a separate jurisdiction for the juvenile offenders, he thought the great evil of it would be, that a lighter punishment being by law awarded to persons under a certain age, experienced thieves would, in place of committing depredations themselves, employ those young persons, to the great injury of public virtue. There was a great difference between juvenile offenders in large towns, such as London, and in the country districts; and he thought it would be advisable to give Magistrates the power of summary conviction with regard to boys who should be brought before them in the country. He was ready to admit, as he had already said, that the case was different in towns. The great object was to guard against the contamination of these young offenders in gaol; and he thought that might be effected. Sir Oswald Mosley supported the Motion. As Chairman of the Staffordshire Quarter Sessions, he knew that one half of the offenders who were brought before him were under the age of twenty-one. It was totally impossible, even under the best system of gaol discipline, to keep the juvenile prisoners apart from the more practised offender. At Stafford they had instituted a school for the purpose of instructing the young culprit, but the effects of the instruction were soon wiped out by the company they kept. It was sad to see the trifling offences for which children were exposed to punishment. He remembered the case of a boy who was committed to gaol for stealing three eggs, and he was kept two months in prison before he was tried, and then, for this petty offence, he was exposed to all the solemn proceedings of a public trial. He wished that a distinction were made by the law between large and small felons. He wished also that the hon. Baronet | Minister of the day. In fact, a great porhad proposed to draw a distinction be- tion of the magistracy consisted of the tween minor and greater offences, and to most dependent men upon the face of the give the Magistrates power to try the earth. The hon. Baronet should take minor offences in Petty Sessions. That that fact into his consideration when he would be of great use in preventing crime, proposed to give the Magistrates the power and would save expense to the country. of summarily disposing of offenders withHe would give, if it were necessary, the out the intervention of the Trial by Jury. Magistrates in Petty Sessions the power The independence of the Judges was the to summon a Jury like the Coroners. constant boast of Englishmen; that the With a Jury of that kind, the Petty Ses- King himself could not displace the judges sions would be as competent to try the was a remark repeatedly in the mouths of minor offences as the Quarter Sessions. the people of this country. But just look He would, however, give the criminal the to the Magistrates, and behold the conoption to be tried before the Magistrates trast! The Magistrates were nominated at alone, or before the Magistrates and a the pleasure of the Minister of the Crown, Jury. they held their situations at the pleasure of the Minister of the Crown, and many of them could have their bread taken from them by the Minister of the Crown. They were, in truth, as dependent a set of men, generally speaking, as breathed the breath of life, and yet it was to such men that these powers of summary conviction were proposed to be given. He should be ashamed to sit there as a Representative of the people of England without protesting against such a measure. He should have had no objection to the measure if the hon. Baronet proposed a mitigation of the punishment of young offenders, but then as the hon. Secretary opposite had truly observed, there was the difficulty of discriminating between offenders. It was well known that some boys of five years old were as quick, and as great adepts, as other boys at ten years of age, and that boys of ten years of age were often as accomplished, and indeed more accomplished thieves than other offenders who were ten years older. It was, in fact, impossible to provide for the varieties presented by human nature. He repeated that he would oppose the measure in all its future stages. Mr. Cobbett said, that he would at present give no opposition to the bringing in of this Bill; but that, in every future stage of it, if it extended the power of the Magistrates, or went further to diminish the use of the Trial by Jury, he would divide the House upon it, even if he stood alone. The use of the Trial by Jury had been going on lessening and lessening by degrees during the last forty years; and a bare enumeration of the instances in which by law it had been dispensed with during that period would shock the two hon. Baronets who had spoken in support of this measure. If they should endow Magistrates with the power of trying felonies without the intervention of a Jury, who would then say that they should not hang also without a Jury? [No, no.] Gentlemen may say "No" to that proposition, but some years ago who amongst them would have believed that Magistrates would have got the power of inflicting punishment in so many instances as they now possessed it? Magistrates now inflicted forty times as much punishment as the Judges of the land; and let them bear in mind who those Magistrates were. He spoke with every respect of the two hon. Baronets who had addressed the House upon this subject, he did not take them into consideration when he spoke thus; but there were different Magistrates in the country from them. A great proportion of the magistracy of the country consisted of clergymen of the Church of England, who were looking for preferment; of officers of the army and navy, who were looking for promotion; and of officers upon half-pay, who would not wish to be scratched out of the half-pay list by doing anything displeasing to the Mr. Hardy supported the Motion. He complained of the attack which the hon. member for Oldham had made upon the general body of the magistracy of England. That hon. Member had spoken of officers of the army and navy and of clergymen of the Church of England who were Magistrates, as if they were ready to sacrifice the ends of justice to the basest and most interested purposes. It was too much to hear such an unjust attack made upon them in that House. He was aequainted with many clergymen of the Church of England, and with many officers of the Mr. O'Connell said, he was sorry to take up the time of the House, but every alteration whatever in the law was, in his army and navy who were Magistrates, and | He would suggest the propriety of referhe would say this for them, that he never ring the subject to a Committee up stairs, saw men who were more disposed to do who should examine the whole question of their duty firmly and impartially, with as secondary punishments. The question much regard for the interests of justice as was one which had attracted attention the hon. Member himself could possibly lately, not only in this country, but across evince, and without any of those base the Atlantic. ideas of promotion or preferment from his Majesty's Ministers which that hon. Member had attributed to them. Mr. Cobbett said, that he did not pre-opinion, of the greatest importance. He tend to say, that Clergymen of the Church of England, and officers of the army and navy were worse than other men, he had only contrasted their dependence with the independence of the Judges. In doing so he meant to cast no imputation upon them. He could not, therefore, allow the subject to pass without protesting against the deprivation of the juvenile offenders of the benefit of Trial by Jury. He was friendly to the principle of inquiring into the previous character of prisoners. Nothing could be of more importance than to imMr. Charles Buller, in illustration of press upon persons the idea that character the trifling offences for which boys were constituted a species of castle. In his committed to gaol in the country, men- opinion, many of the proceedings on critioned an instance which occurred at the minal trials were the most farcical that Assizes for Devonshire last summer. A could easily be imagined. Nothing, for boy was committed for stealing a mackerel, instance, could be more ridiculous than whose imprisonment and trial cost the the scruples which were made about county 40%., and yet when he was con- allowing allowing a prisoner to convict himself. victed the Judge sentenced him to only The prisoner, in his opinion, ought to be one day's imprisonment. He stated that called upon to explain any circumstance he knew of another case, where two boys which might appear by the evidence to be who had stolen a few potatoes on a Sun- of an equivocal nature. Lord Mansfield day out of the open window of a store-deserved great credit for the good sense house, and had roasted them at an ad- of his remarks upon the subject. joining lime-kiln, were taken up, and hoped he should live to see the time when brought twenty miles to the county gaol. every criminal should be interrogated as They were afterwards tried and convicted, to the particulars of the transaction reand those boys, both before and after specting which he was accused. He their conviction, were confined amongst a would not advocate the subjecting of a parcel of felons, some of whom were in prisoner to any duress, to any imprisonprison for an offence that he would not ment, to any torture, in order to extort a name. Would not a jurisdiction on the confession from him; nor would he desire part of Magistrates to try such petty that a prisoner should, as in a neighbouroffences with the assistance of a Jury, ing country, be subjected to all the ingeremedy such evils? He certainly should, nious cross-questioning on the part of the with the hon. member for Oldham, object Judge, which was usual in a case conto the taking away the Trial by Jury in ducted by counsel; but nothing could be any case, and the Magistrates might be more preposterous than the caution freempowered to empanel a Jury for the quently given from the Bench to a pritrial of such trifling offences as he had soner, not to criminate himself. Instead alluded to. The retaining the Trial by of using every method in order to reach Jury in such cases would gratify the feel- the real facts of the case, it was not unings of the people, and would in every usual, upon a prisoner pleading guilty, respect promote the ends of public justice. for the Judge to point out to him the Mr. Lloyd said, that in no case of mis- favourable point in the evidence, and to demeanor, much less in a case of felony, advise the prisoner to withdraw his plea, should a Magistrate have the power of and take the chances of a trial. He had summarily convicting without the inter-known that caution given in the case of a vention of a Jury. The honest and well- very bad murder. The criminal took the founded prejudices of the people of Eng-Judge's advice, and was successful in obland would not endure a contrary practice. taining a favourable verdict; but he died |