CO885-(2-3) — Page 421

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

IT.CO.885.

Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į Į |

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

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

56

with fraudulent offences.

The mismeasurement in respect of attempts to Measurement of violent compared murder ou the one hand, and some fraudulent delinquences on the other, is, I think, only a specimen of the like mismeasurement in respect of offences against the person, as compared with offences against property, which pervades much of English law and administration of justice.

It may be that there is something in English popular sentiment which falls in, to a certain extent, with this state of law and with the even

more than necessary effect given to the law's obliquities by some of those by whom penal laws are put in force, It may be that English love of money is stronger than English love of personal immunity, or even of life, and that more tolerant of English popular feeling is

cruelty and violence than of fraud. The preya- lent respect for bodily strength and contempt for bodily weakness carries with it some leaven of the like toleration. What is brutal is supposed to cherish what is manly, and boxing matches and steeple-chases and the exhibition for money of feats of strength and agility involving danger to life and limb in men women and children as well as in animals, are countenanced and applauded, and not by the dregs of the people or the scum of the aristocracy only, but by Within the last twenty years, other classes.

it is true, there has been a growing toleration of fraud also; but chiefly, if not entirely, of commercial fraud, owing to the Limited

Procedure.

Public prosecutor.

57

Liability Act, which involves the interests of the uncommercial classes in the condonation and concealment of commercial frauds, and thus corrupts that public opinion external to the commercial classes which was formerly brought to bear upon those classes in unbroken force. But this toleration of dishonesty has not yet affected legislation or the administration of justice in the range of such offences against property as, being committed by the same classes as those which commonly commit offences against the person, come naturally into comparison with them.

If it be the fact that the public mind errs on the side of indulgence towards crimes of cruelty and violence, as compared with others, I do not think that the law is under any necessity of con- forming itself to the error. I believe that if the law and the administration of justice were to maintain true standards, the conformity would be the converse way and the public mind would adjust itself accordingly.

I have now no more to say respecting crimes and punishments, and it is very little that I have to say as to procedure, my knowledge of that portion of penal law being even less than my knowledge of other portions.

As to a public prosecutor, I have no remark to make upon the Bill just brought into the Ilouse

Q [254]

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

TALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

f