forged notes "with a view to defraud." The solicitor for this society has been so active in the performance of his duty, that many cases of his have come before juries at the Old Bailey, and a strong prejudice has in consequence grown up in the minds of juries, and, we may add, of the public, against the society. The consequence is, that prisoners prosecuted at the instance of the society, have a much greater chance of acquittal than prisoners prosecuted by private individuals. Nevertheless, with this fact within his knowledge, Mr. Wakefield suggests the appointment of a public officer, to whose charge should be committed the prosecution of all the prisoners confined in Newgate. Does he not see that in the course of a single year, prejudices would be generated against this public officer, to the same injurious extent as they have already been, with respect to the solicitor of the society just mentioned? He was to all purposes a public prosecutor, within a limited sphere, yet his very character rendered his proceedings so distasteful to juries, that we believe he and his employers, the society, have been compelled to abandon their project altogether. It is in truth, against prosecution, that the prejudices are entertained, rather than against prosecutors, and this chiefly, if not solely, on account of the infliction, in so many instances, of the extreme penalty of death.

It is undoubtedly a hardship upon individuals to be obliged in most cases to conduct their own prosecutions; it costs them money, and, what is sometimes much more inconvenient, it causes them the loss of time. But we do not see how any alterations of the system could altogether dispense with the attendance of the person, whose house has been broken into, whose property has been abstracted, whose person has been maimed, or whose relation, friend, or fellow being has been murdered before his eyes. Any change that would have the effect of rendering individuals less careful of their houses, goods, and persons, by placing them, as it were, under the safeguard of a public officer, would not be, we suspect, a change for the better. But besides the payment of all actual expenses, prosecutors ought also to be allowed a reasonable compensation, according to their profession and station in life, for their loss of time incurred, as well in all preliminary proceedings, as before the grand jury, and in the court where the trial takes place.

It cannot be denied that the effect of the general system to which we have just alluded, the reluctance of prosecutors to come forward, of grand juries to find bills, of petty juries to convict, and of judges to sentence, on account of the too frequent infliction of death by our law, is to produce great uncertainty of punishment. This the practised and unpractised thieves well know. 'I have,' says the author, talked with hundreds on the subject; and the result of my inquiries is a conviction, that the average period of perfect impunity amongst regular thieves, that is, persons who live

wholly by crime, is at the least two years.' Then even when they are convicted, if they have the good fortune to be convicted in London, they have still, as it were, two more trials to undergo before they can be punished. The King's prerogative of mercy is the brightest jewel in his diadem; but the application of it to the ordinary course of crime in the metropolis, by insisting that within its whole extent no capital convict (murderers excepted) shall be put to death without the King's express fiat, is in the first place a peculiarity that does not occur in any other county than that of Middlesex, and, in the second place, it is the cause of great delay, and an additional cause of the uncertainty of punishment, which is the last thing that ought to be permitted in the administration of criminal law. When sentence of death is passed in London, the cases in which it is passed are all, with the exception above noticed, referred to the King in council, and after that, as Mr. Wakefield expresses it, to the King out of council, that is to say, to his Secretary of State for the Home Department; thus allowing prisoners, who, if they had been convicted in Wiltshire, would have had no appeal at all, the benefit, not of one, but of two appeals, first from the court that tried them to the privy council, and secondly, from the privy council to the Home Office. One of the effects of this practice, which, if good for Middlesex, ought to be equally good for Wiltshire, is described by Mr. Wakefield.

It must not be supposed, however, that the keeper of Newgate, or his servants, treat prisoners under sentence of death with peculiar harshness. On the contrary, a stranger to the scene would be astonished to observe the peculiar tenderness, I was going to add respect, which persons under sentence of death obtain from all officers of the prison. Before sentence, a prisoner has only to observe the regulations of the jail in order to remain neglected and unnoticed. Once ordered to the cells, friends of all classes suddenly rise up; his fellow prisoners, the turnkeys, the chaplain, the keepers, and the sheriffs, all seem interested in his fate; and he can make no reasonable request that is not at once granted by whomsoever he may address. This rule has some, but very few exceptions; such as where a hardened offender behaves with great levity and brutality, as if he cared nought for his life, and thought every one anxious to promote his death. Speaking generally, prisoners under sentence of death are, I repeat, treated with peculiar tenderness; and the only distinction made among those who behave with common decency is, that persons convicted of forgery excite an extraordinary degree of interest in all who approach them. By observing this distinction, I was led to suppose, that the interest which is felt for every capital convict, except murderers, must be created by a sense of repugnance to the punishment about to be inflicted upon him; for there can be no doubt, that those who object to the punishment of death generally, are especially opposed to its infliction for the crime of forgery.

The absence of distinction as to all other cases must be accounted for as follows:-During the early part of my confinement in Newgate, I used frequently to ask questions of the keeper and chaplain as to the probable fate of certain convicts, whose appearance in chapel had attracted my notice; and for some time I was astonished, by always receiving for answer,

in words to this effect-" it is impossible to say; the Council decides; we know some to be more guilty than others, and more deserving of the severest punishment, but it so often happens that those escape whom we think most guilty and those suffer whom we believe to be least guilty, that we can never give an opinion on the subject." I afterwards discovered that persons under sentence of death in Newgate are engaged in a lottery, of which the blanks are death, and that an attempt to foretell the result in any case would be mere guesswork.'-pp. 93–95.

He subsequently adds, that in Newgate, 'every one who comes in contact with a man whose death by the hangman is probable, treats him not as a criminal, but as an unfortunate. Why is the capital convict so favourably distinguished? Because the punishment of death shocks every mind to which it is vividly presented, and overturns the most settled notions of right and wrong.'

We cannot coincide altogether in the reasoning which the author makes use of with respect to the decisions of the privy council, and afterwards of the Home Secretary. He thinks that they are too often influenced by mere report, and by other classes of evidence which would not be received in a court of justice. It must always be remembered that the guilt of the prisoner is already decided by a competent tribunal, before it comes under the cognizance of the privy council, and that to the latter, strong grounds must be presented before it can altogether reverse, or even modify the sentence which has been passed. Inquiries are most industriously made in many cases, with regard to the character of the prisoner, the answers to which are conveyed in an unofficial form, and may therefore be, to a certain extent, looked upon as mere rumours. But, generally speaking, they are well founded; and although upon the whole we are inclined to think that no substantial injustice is ever done, either by the council or the Home Secretary, still this conviction does not at all reconcile us to the anomalous nature of these courts of appeal. If they exist in the metropolis, they ought also to exist in the counties; or rather we should put the converse and say, that as they do not exist in the counties, they ought not to be permitted in the metropolis, for life is just as precious in one place as it is in the other, and ought to be equally respected in Cornwall, or the Orknies, as it is at St. James's. There certainly is nothing in the mere proximity to royalty that ought to make any difference.

We have no hesitation in saying that had we a voice on the subject, we should decidedly vote for the abolition of death as a punishment in every case, save that of deliberate murder. We are not convinced that even in that excepted case death would be an adequate penalty; but it seems the only one that is suited to the nature of the offence, as the common sense of mankind forbids that a murderer should again be received into that society, of which he has by his own act proved himself an enemy. But for all other offences of a capital nature, we entertain little doubt that solitary

imprisonment would be the most effectual penalty to which a culprit could possibly be subjected. As to transportation, it has become a mere farce, or rather a material benefit to the offender. When it was originally devised, our colonial possessions were wholly uncultivated, and their insalubrity, the want of all the comforts, and of many of the necessaries of life, rendered them exceedingly disagreeable to new settlers, so that they were justly looked upon as places of real exile. But since that period the colonies have undergone most material changes. Labour has risen in them to a high price, the convicts are sought for with the greatest eagerness, and in the course of a few years they are enabled, by moderate industry and good behaviour, to acquire their freedom. Hence transportation is now looked upon as a favourable change of situation, easily to be obtained at the expense of the country by the commission of a crime, calculated to draw down a nominal penalty of that nature. It is high time that it should be altogether abandoned as a judicial instrument for the suppression of practices injurious to society. It does not suppress, on the contrary it increases them; and among the lower orders of distressed families it really requires many efforts of honesty and virtue, to resist the temptations which the law holds out, of conveying individuals to distant climates, at the expense of the nation. The only punishment that deserves the title will ultimately be found to be that of solitary imprisonment. Experience has proved that it is the only one of which culprits are afraid. It appals the stoutest heart, and it is known that prisoners who have been condemned to the solitary cell, have implored death itself, rather than be subjected to the terrible feelings which inform him that he is cut off for ever from the converse of his fellow beings; that he is still to live, but doomed never more to see the "human face divine." Of all sorrows, this is the most intolerable for a guilty mind; juries would never hesitate to justify, or judges to pronounce it by way of sentence, and it would afford to society an infinitely better guarantee than all the mock terrors of the gibbet, or the still greater humbug of Botany Bay.

ART. VII.-The History of Poland, from the earliest period to the present time. By James Fletcher, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge. With a Narrative of Recent Events obtained from a Polish Patriot Nobleman. 8vo. pp. 428. London: Cochrane and Pickersgill. 1831. "A SANGUINARY and obstinate struggle is prolonged in Poland. This contest has already awakened the most lively emotions in the breast of Europe. I have felt bound to hasten the termination of it. After having offered my meditation, I have provoked that of the Great Powers. I wished to arrest the effusion of blood, to preserve the south of Europe from the plague of the contagion which war propagates, and, above all, to assure to Poland, whose courage has resuscitated the ancient affections of France,

that nationality which has resisted time and its vicissitudes." Such is the animating language in which the king of the French has recently alluded to the noble cause, in which the Poles are engaged for the liberation of their country from the iron yoke of Russia. It is glorious to France that she has taken upon herself the initiative in this difficult and dangerous negotiation, for from the terms of the speech little doubt can be entertained that she is prepared to risk the chances of war itself, rather than allow the brave people, whom she has thus openly taken under her protection, to be again subjected to the sway of the Northern Autocrat. These hardly can be considered as idle words, when we know that they have emanated from the portfolio of Casimir * Perier, a man of moderate but determined principles, who would hardly stake his reputation and his ministerial existence upon a negotiation of this important character, if he had not also been resolved to carry it through to a successful issue.

year,

So far it is cheering to observe the prosperous career of liberty in different quarters of Europe. It would really seem as if on the same day on which Charles X. signed his fatal ordonnances last a decree had also gone forth from the hand of Providence, directing that the old freedom of the nations should be once more restored in all its primitive strength and beauty. Within the twelve months that have intervened between the last Julys, what surprising and permanent changes have we not seen;-a revolution, an extended charter, a new sovereign, elected by the people, reigning in France: -a revolution, a new system of constitutional liberty, and a new monarch, also elected by the people, reigning in Belgium :-the apparently settled and invulnerable ministry of the Duke of Wellington overthrown in England, and a new charter, granted by his successors, with the king's consent, whereby our ancient liberties are restored, enlarged, and secured against future spoliation. But the greatest miracle of all has been the revolt of the Poles, at the very moment when the war in Turkey having terminated in the complete triumph of the Czar, his hordes of armies were prepared to pour down at his command upon the territory of the insurgents, to overwhelm them, as it were, "at one fell swoop" with the speed and fury of a thunderbolt. The Decree of a higher Power had, however, directed otherwise. The courage of the Poles was able to withstand the first mighty shock of the enemy without quailing before them, and a thousand accidents have since operated in their favour. They have proved themselves in battle, hand to hand, well deserving of the liberties for which they are fighting; and fortune, or rather we should devoutly say, Providence has been upon their side. The "Passer of the Balkan," as he was proudly styled, has

* Casimir is a Polish name. Who can say what effect this single accident may not have had upon the councils of France with respect to the Polish question?