On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
which a man , Far above the weaknesses likely in most cases to interfere , decided /' Sir J \ Newport ' s Speech on Sir S . Romilly ' s Bill , May 2 , 1810 . Ci
It happened to me , my lords , about four or five years since , to leave my house in town for the purpose of going into the country . An old and faithful servant was left in care of it till my return . In about four or five days , I came
to town again , and found , to my surprize , that my servant had fled during my absence , carrying off with her a considerable quantity of plate and other property . Now , my lords , there were many causes which operated with me to abstain from prosecuting this unfortunate
woman . She was aged ,-and the course of nature had already marked her by many infirmities for a speedy but natural dissolution—she had been the dupe of a designing villain , who instigated her to the theft—she was friendless
and she was poor . My lords , public duty pointed out the course I ought to take . I knew I ought immediately to go before a magistrate , who would have committed her for trial—I must have appeared in a court of justice , as the
prosecutor against her , and have embittered my own life by the consciousness of having shortened her ' s . My lords , humanity triumphed over justice and public duty . I was constrained to turn loose
upon the public an . individual certainly deserving of punishment , because the law of the land gave me no opportunity of visiting her with a castigation short of death /* Earl of Suffolk's Speech in the House of Lords , May 30 , 1810 . " Three times , let fine confess , X hfcve myself suffered fhfc most
Untitled Article
painful struggles between the sense of private and of public duties ; and three times dreading theseverity of our law / 1 have yielded to my humanity conspiring with my reason , when they forbad me without
real necessity , to shed the Blood even of the unrighteous . One of the offenders ^ after leaving my family ventured upon other crimes in other places—a second by my suggestion entered into the army . I have not been able to trq . Ce the conduct or the fate of the third
—But under a deep conviction of my responsibility to the tribunal of heaven , I shall ever look back with approbation to my own forbearance . " Characters of Fox , by Philopa ~ tris Varvicensis- ii . 402 , 4 O 3 .
Lc About fi ve years since , the county of York was deeply interested in the trial of the father of a large faipily , who when living in the greatest respectability , was accused of highway robbery . The trial was in York Castle ; the prosecutor was a yonth of abduj 20 years of age , the son of a banker , and the prisoner a stout athletic man , of 50 . Thq . prosecutor had transacted his business as usual at
the market-town ; he had received several sums of money in the presence of the prisoner , had dined , and about 5 o ' clock had set out on his return home : it was a fine evening in summer , and he rode gently on : in a solitary lane , he was overtaken by the prisoner , who seized hifn and demanded his
pocket-book ; in the first agony of surprize and fear , the pfos £ putor gave him a violent blow with his vvhip ; but the prisoner , who was a very powerful man , dragged him from his liorse , knelt down upon him Arid todk from ftinti his thoney
Untitled Article
» < Facts relating to Criminal Law . jg
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 29, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/29/
-