passage above quoted seemed to the Executive Government to imply rather a temporary objection than a positive prohibition, I was induced to carry the sentences of transportation into effect, and to commute the sentence of death to transportation, as the only alternative at all adequate to the crimes. The receipt of Your Lordship's later despatch, of course, deprives me of the power of exercising any further discretion on the point.
I lost no time in reporting upon this very difficult and embarrassing subject, hoping that Your Lordship may be induced to give it a particular consideration. I entertain considerable apprehensions that no new punishment can be devised, at once consonant with English prejudices, and calculated to supply the absence of transportation as a legal penalty.
I am unavoidably led to anticipate an increase in the number of capital punishments, from the want of a secondary punishment at all calculated to act as a dissuasive from atrocious crimes which deserve death, but which from merciful considerations might be commuted for transportation, did the alternative present itself. I fear that any substitute for capital punishment, within my power to devise or execute, must be considered as an inadequate commutation for death, and as leaving a chasm in the scale of penalties attended with two evils; first, that the same punishment must often be extended to crimes of very different character.
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