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Between fifty and sixty of the subscribers and other friends to the society afterswards dined together $ Mr . J . T . Rutt in the chair . Among the sentiments proposed to the meeting as toasts , and prefaced with the chairman ' s accustomed ability * were the
following : — The Reform of our Criminal Code ; Mr . Richard Taylor , and the friends of justice and humanity in the corporation of London i Dr . Lindsay , and the
extension of knowledge by the education of the poor . Mr . Talfourd gave a short but appalling description of our numerous and sanguinary penal statutes , but confidently anticipated a groat , and no very distant , reform of the Criminal Code of this
enlightened country . As a ground of his hope , he stated that , animated by the example and the benevolent intentions of the great man whose loss all parties have recently had to deplore , many professional gentlemen were rising superior to longcherished prejudices and interested considerations , and were ready to join the national call for a nearer assimilation of
our criminal laws to the dictates of philanthropy and the precepts of the Christian religion . Mr . Taylor observed , that he and the friends of humanity and justice with whom he acted , had had the satis *
faction of seeing a greater progress made during the last twelve months , than during twelve preceding years , in the opinion that punishment should be proportioned to crime , and that the end of punishment should be the reformation of the offender .
Dr . JLindsay expressed his cordial concurrence with the objects o £ this society , and his convietion that fts tracts would have a tendency to restrain the young from the commission of those crimes , which the demoralizing system pursued in this country for a period of twenty years , has
unavoidably and naturally produced . He rejoiced in the dissemination of knowledge among the poor , not only in Great Britain , but on the Continent , and particularly in France ; where , he stated , that he understood there were already 880 schools established for the education of ally without distinction of sect or party .
In the course of the evening , the secretary announced that the committee had another tract under consideration , which , if approved of , would shortly be published . This , it is understood , is now in the pve&s ) and , that it is an abridgment of Mr . Hanway ^ s popular work , entitled , Advice from Farmer Trueman to his Daughter Mary ,
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$ 00 Intelligence . - * -Right of Appeal .
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MMN ^^^ Hfl ^^^^^^^^ M MiaCBJLLAWteOOS . Right of Appea l * Tub Attorney-General , availing frimself of the sensation caused by a Trial by
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Battle having been claimed , and , strange to say , allowed by the Court , in a late case of Appeal of Murder , has attempted an alteration in the Constitution of the greatest magnitude 5 namely , to take away from the subject the right , which has existed from the earliest times , of prosecuting
in his own name ^ in criminal cases , for redress of injuries $ and to give to the Crown a new and uncontrouled power in all such cases of preventing the execution of the laws . So that , under pretence of abolishing a mode of trial which had long been obsolete , an occasion is taken
of giving the king a dispensing power , by which he can prevent any murderer from being brought to justice or even to trial 5 leaving the lives and property of the people wholly in the hands of the executive , without power of obtaining redress against any ruffian under the projection of the Court .
An attempt was made by the Corpora * tion of London to excite attention to the subject , by a petition presented to the legislature , founded on the annexed Reso-Lotions , proposed by Mr . R . Taylor , who cited the authority of Holt , Dunning * , &c , in favour of the Right of Appeal Jeantended that it had no connexion with
Trial by Battle , explained its nature , and asserted its use and importance . Under the latter head we extract the following from his speech : —^ That pardons have been abused by governments , we find from Blackstone , in a passage which he
considered an approbation of this limitation of the power of the crown in the English constitution : —in treating of murder , he said , Our law has provided one course of prosecution , by Appeal , in which the king himself cannot pardon murder ; so that he could not imitate the Polish monarch
who remitted the penalties of murder ta all the nobility . ' From this it appeared , Blackstone thought that in an arbitrary government mischief might arise from pardons ; and it seemed evident that the learned judge meant to pay a compliment to our constitution , by shewing our possession of this controul over the crown . He
observed another instance of similar tendency in a Jacobite writer , who could not be suspected of wishing to lessen the powers of the crown . —Dr . King , in his Anecdotes , says , * During the minority of Louis XV ., a prince solicited th £ Duke of Orleans , who was Regent , to pardon a murder he had committed , after having
been pardoned for n similar crime once or twice before . He assented , but gave him notice that he would certainly pardon whoever killed him t which , ' says fcbW I > oetor ' put a stop to the barbarities of thi * Bourbon prince . '" 1 * o those who remember the outrages committed by military af&cevs at Yorkj ( wjiere ttie brother of one
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1819, page 200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1770/page/62/
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