CO885-(2-3) — Page 414

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.8

Reference :-

.885

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

3PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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have the further discretion of passing, should he think fit, an alternative sentence of whipping or other specified portion of punishment to be sub- stituted for whipping at the choice of the person1 who is to suffer it; say, for example, twenty-five lashes, or a specified addition to severely penal labour, or a specified term of solitary imprison- If different individuals ment on bread and water. differ in the amount of suffering undergone from the same punishment, the individuals will be themselves the best judge of their own idiosyn- cracies. The adoption of this method would prevent Judges and juries from flinching; but, on the other hand, there will be some objection to it on the general ground that an optional punishment might tend to relax the notion which it is desirable to cherish, of convicts being con- signed to a condition of absolute submission and inexorable control, excluding every exercise of choice and free will. The question is one of some difficulty: but it deserves consideration.

certain offences.

Passing from the subject of commensuration Disproportionate punishments for and proximity in reference to comparisons of one punishment with another punishment, I proceed

The only option which the English law allows to au offender, is that of fine or imprisonment. This is, I think, a very objectionable option, and in the way in which it is often called into exercise in our summary jurisdictions, lends itself to a grossly unequal and deplorably inefficient administration of justice. Fine may be properly added to imprisonment in some cases; but should not, I think, be substituted for it in any.

Panishment of drunkennes.

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to questions concerning the proportion borne by punishments to offences in some provisions of English penal law.

Of the errors of this class with which English law is chargeable, I should say that the first and most flagrant is to be found in its provision for the punishment of drunkenness. It appears to be now a notorious fact, ascertained by various methods of investigation, and through divers investigating agencies (amongst which a Com- mittee of Convocation is not the least important) that in this country drunkenness is accountable; directly or indirectly, for more crimes than ar referable to all the other sources of crime put together. I have myself been informed by one of our highest judicial functionaries that it is accountable for three-quarters of the crimes brought before him on Circuit. The law in regard to it presents a singular contrast between its denunciations on the one hand and its indul- gencies on the other. For on the one hand the law distinctly recognizes the dreadful conse quences which must occasionally, and not seldom, result from drunkenness, and theoretically charges them upon the drunkenness at their full value in criminality. A man, not perhaps particularly ill- disposed when sober, unhappily gets drunk and commits an assault, a manslaughter, or possibly even a murder, and he is told that drunkenness is no excuse. Morally, the offence is, or may be, simply the offence of drunkenness, whatever that amounts to. Jurisprudentially, to hang the