Wednesday, May 5.

The petition was ordered to lie on the table. The following is a copy thereof:

"The Petition of William Cobbett, of Kensington, in the County of Middlesex,

"Most humbly sheweth—That there is now a bill before your Honourable House, intituled 'A Bill for more effectually repairing, widening, and improving the Road from Hyde-Park-Corner to Counter's Bridge, and certain other roads in the County of Middlesex, and for lighting, watching, and watering, the said Roads.'

"That, in the preamble to the said bill are the following words: 'And whereas the Trustees appointed by or in pursuance of the said two recited acts (meaning the two local acts) have repaired and. improved the said roads, and have made great progress in carrying into execution the powers and authorities thereby vested in them, and, although they have discharged and paid off part of the monies borrowed on the credit of the tolls authorised to be taken upon the said roads a considerable sum remains undischarged, and cannot be paid off, and the said annual sum of one thousand pounds be paid to the said committee of Paving for St. George Hanover-square; nor can the said roads be effectually amended, widened and im proved, and maintained in repair, unless the term and powers granted by the two first-recited acts be continued, and further provisions be made for that purpose:'

"That these words contain a barefaced falsehood, as will be seen by your honourable House in the following statement of the pecuniary affairs of this Road. That this statement has been obtained by your Petitioner, agreeably to the Act, from the Clerk of the Peace of the County of Middlesex; that your Petitioner is ready to prove at your Bar the authenticity of this statement, which is in the following words, to wit:—

"That, according to the foregoing account, these roads owe but 1,500 l., while the treasurer has now in his hands 4,503 l. and that he had, at the settlement before the last, upwards of 3,000 l. in his hands, while he was charging the road for interest of borrowed money.

"That, therefore, the above quoted part of the preamble of this bill is wholly false; that the principal pretence for passing the bill is unfounded; that the present local act does not expire for two years yet to come; that a new act is not yet wanted; that if this bill pass, it will contain a flagrant falsehood, and will be greatly injurious to the public, and will encourage and foster a most scandalous job; and that, therefore, your petitioner most humbly prays, that the said bill may not pass. And your petitioner will ever pray.

"WM. COBBETT."

The following is a copy of the petition.

"The Petition of the Parishioners of the Parish of Blackrath, in the Diocese of Ossory, and County of Kilkenny:—

"Humbly sheweth—That in Ireland the tithes of every parish are valued by two tithe-proctors, who, instead of being respectable persons indifferently chosen, one by the parson and the other by the parish, are, in general, persons of the lowest description and worst characters, selected solely by the more wealthy and powerful of the two parties interested, whose wages they receive, and at whose pleasure they may be discharged. Your petitioners leave it to your honourable House to judge how far tithe-valuations, made by such sort of persons so circumstanced, ore likely to be fair and impartial, in a country where corruption is carried to a height which, in England, would be scarcely credible:

"That by law the clergy themselves are bound to defray all the expenses, and incur all the risks of saving in the field, drawing home, preparing for sale, and carrying to market, the tenth of the crops; but, in point of fact, they contrive to impose all those risks and expenses on the farmers, in consequence of which two legal tenths, instead of one, are exacted from the poorest people in Europe by the richest clergy in the world:

"That the tithe owners, instead of informing the tithe payers of the amount of tithes charged against each of them, immediately after the view, which always takes place before harvest, keep it a profound secret till the settlement, which generally takes place after new-year's day, and then the parsons, instead of charging their parishioners the actual prices which the new crops bore in the next market at the time of severance (as bound by law), charge them the highest prices which either new or old had brought in any market of the county, from the day of the view till the day of the settlement, contrary to every rule of tithing, and every principle of justice, and, after the settlement, procure them to pass their promissory notes for the sums so illegally and unjustly charged:

"That though, in point of law, each and every cultivator in a parish has a right, from time immemorial, to set out the tenth of his crops in kind, yet, in point of fact, not one clergyman in a hundred allows his parishioners the general exercise of that ancient and undoubted right. On the contrary, should even twenty or thirty persons in a parish, containing five-hundred or a thousand tithe-payers, attempt to pay him in kind, the tithe owner refuses to receive the tenths under some captious and frivolous pretext, and when they have rotted in the fields, commences a suit for the recovery of the amount in the Bishop's court; and, whatever may be the pretext so alleged for refusing the tithes, it almost invariably happens, that the clergyman who presides in that court in all such cases, decrees in favour of his brother clergyman who brings the action, by which means the impoverished landholder is obliged to pay the same tithes twice over—once in kind, and again in money. And these facts your petitioners are ready to prove by evidence at the bar of your honourable House; or (which they would prefer) on oath before commissioners; or in any other manner which your honourable House may think proper to appoint. Your petitioners respectfully submit to your honourable House, that when the cultivators of the soil are thus deprived of that right which constitutes their protection against tithe extortion, there remains no restraint, save a regard to prudence, to prevent the tithe owners, lay and ecclesiastical, from plundering the landholders at pleasure:

"That the consistorial courts, instead of remedying any of the abuses above stated, are themselves the great source of tithe grievances. It is only necessary to remind your honourable House, that in those courts the vicar-general, or his surrogate, a clergyman chosen, not by the Crown, but by the bishop, is, in tithe causes, at once judge and jury. How far such a person is likely to possess the necessary qualifications to fill properly the important office he undertakes, is sufficiently apparent. He is to decide on legal difficulties without having made law his proper study, and therefore cannot be a competent judge. He is to determine tithe causes in the very diocese where he is himself generally a tithe owner, and therefore cannot be a disinterested judge. In fact, so gross is the mal-administration of Irish justice in those tithe causes, that the peasantry of Ireland hold the court Christian in as much detestation as the scarcely less wretched people of Spain hold the Holy Inquisition. These tithe courts are, in fact, the great cause of tithe disturbances; and your petitioners submit to your honourable House whether some excuse is not to be allowed for a high spirited population, long remarked for their ardent love of equal and impartial justice, whether it be for or against themselves; if, instead of thus eternally submitting their unredressed wrongs to an appeal to law, they have sometimes sought to vindicate their violated rights by an appeal to arms.

"That this bad system is rendered still worse by rarely allowing any appeal in practice to a superior tribunal. It is true there exists an appeal in theory, but it is such an one as is a mere mockery of justice, an appeal, the costs of which are so enormously disproportioned to the sum in dispute, that no poor man could, and no rich man would, encounter the expense; more especially as it is only an appeal from one Irish ecclesiastical tribunal to another. Your honourable House may form some faint idea of the administration of justice in tithe causes from this single consideration, that the decision is in all cases left virtually without appeal, to the breast of a sole judge, at once interested and incompetent, who knows no control but his conscience, no law but his will:

"That any composition for tithes, however equitably intended, if founded on the system of extortion above described, cannot but be unfair and oppressive. But the tithe composition act of last session is objectionable in the highest degree, because it is at once unjust to the people and injurious to the government. It is unjust to the people for a double reason. First, because the annual incomes of the clergy at the commencement of the term of composition, are fixed at the amount of the respective averages of their annual receipts for the seven years, from 1815 to 1821, a period during which those reverend personages reduced not the rates of their tithes, even so much as one per cent, although a reduction of 300 per cent had in that interval taken place in the prices of tithable produce. And next, because the average price of wheat in the Dublin market (which is to regulate the future triennial increase or diminution of clerical income) is directed to be struck for these seven years, when the prices of grain had sunk nearly to the lowest, though the rates of tithes still continued fully to the highest; instead of the act directing the average income and average price to be fixed, as in justice and equity they ought, when tithe and grain were both at the highest, or both at the lowest. By this most inequitable provision, the average price of wheat affixed to every composition, is not much more than 30 s. a barrel, a price which leaves every probability of a rise in favour of the clergyman, and scarcely any possibility of a fall in favour of the farmer. Whereas it should, according to the above equitable rule, be considerably more than 60 s. a barrel, a price which would ensure, even at the end of the first three years, a reduction of tithes to their just and proper level. But the late tithe composition act is not less injurious to the government than unjust to the people. In fact, few laws can be found, even on the Irish Statute-book, so well calculated to unite all classes of the

landed interest in one general confederacy against the established government in church and state. In the first place, the great proprietors must feel highly indignant that the parson should be allowed to make their rent a security for his tithe, and to claim, for his demand of a single year's standing, a precedence over their most ancient family settlements. In the next place, the extensive farmers must feel extremely incensed to be compelled, by the enormous increase of their tithes, to break down their large farms into small holdings, and instead of continuing to occupy their lands themselves at a moderate profit, to be obliged to let them to hordes of miserable tenants, in all probability at a ruinous future loss, in order to avoid, in the first instance, the certainty of a serious addition to their present ecclesiastical burthens. And lastly, the small tenants must become even more disaffected than they are at present, because this wide extended, and unexpected subdivision of lands will greatly and suddenly increase the population, and of course the poverty, of this egregiously misgoverned country. The consequence of all this your petitioners apprehend will be, that the whole confederated people of Ireland will make, at no distant day, as universal an effort for the relief of their agriculture, as they made at the time of the volunteers for the relief of their trade:

"That the church lands of Ireland in the hands of ecclesiastical corporations, sole and aggregate, amount to nearly one million and a half of English acres. These lands, which were originally some of the best, are now, by a long course of mismanagement, some of the worst in the kingdom, the occupying tenants being called on generally every three years, to pay all the little capital they can accumulate for renewal fines, instead of being allowed to expend it to their own benefit, and that of the community, on the improvement of their respective farms. Of those territorial domains of the church, far the greater part are bishops lands. These lands the bishops lease to their tenants, not as they ought to do, without renewal fines, at the full and improved value, for the benefit of the church, but at a gross undervalue on large renewal fines, to the public injury of the church, and the private gain of their own families. Of these renewal fines, each primate receives, on an average, about 200,000 l. each.; of the three other archbishops, about 100,000 l.,

and each of the eighteen bishops about 50,000 l. If your honourable House calculate how much each succession of prelates must at that rate cost this impoverished kingdom for renewal fines, and if you add to this the immense annual revenues of the twenty-two prelacies, the enormous sums drained from the beggared people every year in the shape of tithes, the large parliamentary grants levied on the community at large for building churches, and other purposes, which the clergy themselves should, in honesty, and justice, and decency, pay for from their first-fruits; and the considerable sums wrung from the wretchedness of the peasantry for parochial church rates, you may easily comprehend how the church in this country makes bankrupt the state, and why the exactions of the Protestant clergy destroy amongst us the Protestant religion.

"Your petitioners beg leave respectfully to represent to your honourable House, that if the territorial revenues of the Irish hierarchy, instead of being improperly diverted to the enrichment of the families of particular churchmen, were honestly managed for the general emolument of the church; and if the Irish episcopacy, instead of being kept up to an establishment sufficient for a population of ten millions of Protestants, were reduced to the number necessary for half a million members of the established religion, the ample rents of these extensive church lands would form not only a sufficient fund, but a fund much more than sufficient to maintain the reduced number of six or seven prelates, and the full number of 1,275 beneficed clergymen in a proper and becoming style of christian competence. Were this desirable and necessary arrangement adopted, our oppressed and beggared peasantry might then be relieved entirely from the intolerable grievance of tithes; a grievance, if not the sole, at least the principal cause, of all that distress, disturbance, disaffection, and insurrectionary horror, which now renders Ireland a source of constant expense, as well as of incessant terror to England.

"Your petitioners therefore implore your honourable House in the first place to repeal the tithe composition act of last session; an act which, professing to lighten the heavy ecclesiastical yoke under which the people of Ireland groan, doubles its weight, and rivets it on their necks for ever.

"In the next place, your petitioners supplicate your honourable House, that the abuses of the tithe system be promptly and effectually reformed; that the two tithe valuators be appointed indifferently, one by the parson, and the other by the parish; that, as soon as the proctors shall have valued any person's tithes, they be obliged to give him a field ticket copied from their Held book, specifying the number of acres of tithable produce, the number of barrels or other measures in common use, of such produce valued to the acre; the prices charged both by the acre and by the barrel, and the total amount of the year's tithe; that, in all cases where tithes shall be set out in kind by the one party, and refused by the other, the tithe owner be obliged at the time to state in writing the reason of his refusal, and the tithe payer be authorised, in cases where the tithes so set out and refused shall not exceed the yearly value of 10 l., to bring his action of trespass and damage in the Civil Bill court, at the same moderate costs as in other cases of Civil Bill process, instead of being compelled, as at present, to resort for redress to the superior courts of justice at costs so enormous as to amount to an absolute prohibition of justice to the Irish peasant; that it be lawful for the Civil Bill court, in all tithe cases that come before it, whether brought on promissory notes, or on monitions, to hear evidence as to the value of the tithes sued for, before it decrees for the amount, any statute to the contrary now in force notwithstanding; and that in all cases for subtraction of tithe, where the yearly value of the tithes exceeds not 5 l., the jurisdiction be transferred from the Consistorial court to the Civil Bill court, with the same right of appeal, and in the same cheap terms as in other civil bill cases; or at least, if a clerical tithe owner is to be suffered, contrary to the plainest principles of justice, to continue to try tithe cases, that the tithe payer be allowed a cheap appeal from him to the judge of assize, or some other lay judge, not chosen by the church, nor personally interested in tithe property.

"And lastly, your petitioners conjure your honourable House, that after the demise of the present incumbents, whose life properties in their benefices your petitioners religiously regard as sacred and inviolable, their successors be paid entirely, from the ample revenues of the church domains, and the people be thus relieved gradually and completely from the oppressive and intolerable burthen of tithes; a relief which England is alike bound to grant to Ireland in gratitude and in prudence—in gratitude, because during the late war, when Europe and America were both leagued against her, Ireland supplied her with nearly one hundred millions of money, with abundance of soldiers for her armies, of sailors for her fleets, and of provisions for her population, at a time when she could not possibly have any supply from any other quarter, and by those ample and well-timed succours enabled her, after a long and desperate struggle, to triumph over the formidable power and mortal hostility of prance:—in prudence, because Ireland, which now contains only between seven and eight millions of people, will, in the course of 80 years more, probably contain a population of between ten and twelve millions; a population equally hardy and intrepid, so inured to privation, that they would enjoy the coarsest ration as a rare luxury, and so prone to war, that they actually delight in fighting as an exhilarating amusement. During all that period, tithe extortions and tithe disturbances must both continue to advance with rapid and equal pace. New White Boy acts, new Riot acts, and new Insurrection acts must be passed, and barbarous outrages be punished by still more barbarous, but under the present system, necessary laws. Such an expensive military establishment must be maintained to keep in subjection that numerous and discontented population, as will render the possession of the country a burthen instead of a benefit. And your petitioners greatly fear, that if the crying grievance of tithes be not abolished before the people shall have increased in knowledge and in strength, Ireland can scarcely, by all the power of government, be retained as a part of the empire, even in time of peace; and that in time of war, she will without risk, and almost without effort, separate herself from England for ever."

Ordered to lie on the table.

The petition was then read, as follows:—

"The humble Petition of sir John Cox Hippisley, baronet, an acting magistrate in and for the county of Somerset, and of other counties, in which the subject of prison discipline has undergone much inquiry and practical investigation by the resident local magistracy; also of John I. Briscoe Esq., an acting magistrate of the county of Surry,

"Sheweth, That a considerable degree of expectation has been excited in the public mind, and which the petitioners, in their official characters, cannot but regard with the deepest interest, in reference to the progress of a bill now in your honourable House, having for its object an amendment of the general gaol act of the 4th of his present majesty, chap. 64.

"That the petitioners, in common with many other individuals with whom they have had communication, entertain a serious apprehension that the introduction, for the first time by name, of a novel method and machine of punishment into our Statute-book, may be construed into an implied recognition of tread-wheel labour, as a legalized employment for all prisoners who are not the subjects of particular exemption. And this apprehension is still more strongly awakened, by a practical adoption of the tread wheel in many of the gaols and prisons of the kingdom, as appears in the official communications addressed to the home department of his majesty's government:

"That the petitioners humbly entreat the attention and consideration of your honourable House to the extraordinary and important circumstances, that the punishment of the tread-wheel is altogether unknown to the common law of the land, and is neither named nor in any way designated in the Statute-book—the only authorities throughout the realm that can justify the use of any specific punishment or penal infliction; and that hence it never has, and, till some change take place in the law, never can form a specific part of any sentence passed by the judges at any assize upon a criminal; yet that this severe, and as they are ready to substantiate, painful and dangerous penalty, has been for several years past very generally inflicted on almost every class and description of offenders by local justices of the peace, who, in numerous instances, have sat in debate on the propriety or impropriety of employing this new punishment; in some instances have decided in favour of it, and in others against it; thus assuming to themselves a power equally unprecedented and alarming, and one which places magistrates on a supposed level with parliament, in which alone is vested the constitutional right of deciding and establishing the law of the realm, and elevates them above the judges of the land, whose inferiors in office, agreeably to the principles and provisions of the constitution, they have always been esteemed.

"That the petitioners, as magistrates and members of society, regard it further to be their bounden duty, in the present crisis, to lay before your honourable House some of the practical and weighty grounds of objection which exist against this novel punishment, introduced by many of his majesty's justices of the peace, and which, in the opinion of the petitioners, seem to call for an immediate interference of the legislature. In the first place, they cannot but submit to your honourable House, that the tread-wheel, as a mechanical engine, is an unsafe, and even on this account, an unconstitutional mode of punishment; from the complication of its construction, the frequent irregularity of its revolutions, the extent and formation of its shafts, especially as applied in the most considerable prisons in the kingdom, and the enormous weight which it often has to sustain, in consequence of which it has actually broken, and that repeatedly in short periods of time, in various houses of correction: in some instances (where precaution is assigned to have been expressly taken) without accident, as stated by a visiting magistrate of Shepton-Mallet, in the last official returns to the office of the home department; in others, occasioning severe sprains and bruises to those prisoners who had been thereby thrown off the wheels, and precipitated to a depth of some feet, as at Coldbath-fields, which fact, though not appearing upon the face of the returns, the petitioners are prepared to verify. In one instance, the machinery has been the cause of a fractured limb, and in others of immediate loss of life, to such of the workers as have not been aware of its dangers, or not sufficiently on their guard against them. The former instance occurred at North Allerton, in the case of an untried prisoner, whose arm was shattered so as to render amputation necessary; and the latter cases at Leicester, where two men were killed while engaged at the wheel, and at Swaffham, where another prisoner was instantaneously crushed to death. And the petitioners beg also to observe, that from the evidence of engineers of the highest reputation, there appears to be no possible mode of obtaining an adequate security against many of these casualties, from the insuperable frangibility of the iron, whether cast or malleable, that enters so largely into the construction of the tread-wheels, whence such calamities must be regarded as inherent in the discipline, and consequently as likely to recur as long as it continues to be enforced.

"The petitioners submit next, that this instrument of punishment is further objectionable from its injurious effects on the health of those who are sentenced to it. They are able to prove on oath before your honourable House, from a large mass of evidence from medical practitioners of name and reputation, from prison attendants, and very extensively from those who have suffered as prisoners from its infliction, but who are now at liberty, that it can rarely be employed at the usual rate of exertion for more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour without causing some or all of the attendant symptoms of a prejudicial excitement and dangerous exhaustion of the animal powers, and particularly so violent and morbid an acceleration of the pulse, as to quicken its beat to nearly double its natural range, raising it from the ordinary rate of from sixty to seventy strokes in a minute, to an average of one hundred and twenty-three in the male, and one hundred and forty-four in the female prisoners, as has been proved by different medical practitioners of high respectability, and is confirmed by a minute entered on the prison journal at Brixton, by those represented to be magistrates favourable to this species of labour, and who therein refer to an experiment made on their own persons; that, together with so baneful an excitement it causes pains and aches in different parts and organs of the body, according to the peculiarity of different constitutions, or the circumstances under which the labour is inflicted; that women, who, from the comparative weakness of their sex, suffer with additional severity, have in many instances dropped off from the wheel in a swoon, have had their natural indispositions profusely and painfully aggravated, sometimes forced prematurely, and at others suddenly and totally obstructed; that when in a state of pregnancy, which, in its earliest and most dangerous stages, is not unfrequently undetected, they are in imminent danger of abortion, of which an instance occurs in the official report from the prison in Coldbath-fields; and that, as nurses, they cannot, without manifest injury and suffering to their infants, as well as to themselves, perform the office of suckling on descending from the tread-wheel, though they are generally called upon to do so by the cries of their children, exposed in the wheel-galleries to the cold, and confided, while their mothers are performing their turn upon it, to the care of strangers; on all which accounts female prisoners have in many houses of correction been humanely allowed a general exemption from the tread-wheel.

"The petitioners beg leave also to submit, that a familiarity with this labour, instead of rendering it lighter and less mischievous, augments its injurious consequences to the health and strength in almost every instance, as well in men as in women: such effects increasing with the increasing debility of the frame. That the petitioners are aware that a different account of this penal infliction has been given in most of the official communications addressed by order to the home department of his majesty's government but they humbly beg leave to represent that they are unable to place the confidence they could wish in these communications, not only from the wide discrepancy of their own experience, but from the partial and irregular nature of the reports themselves, which contain no ac-count of the average proportion of labour, of the intervals of its cessation, of the rate of revolution of the wheels, of their dimensions or space between the treadles or steps, though all these circumstances materially influence the nature and effect of the task-work; and which are likewise returned from several places, as Pembroke and Haverford west, with the signature of a single magistrate, without any statement on the part of a surgeon, or notice of consultation with him on the subject, although such consultation is expressly directed in the official letter addressed by the secretary of "state to the visiting magistrates of the several gaols and houses of correction; while only twenty-one returns are printed, as laid before your honourable House: though it is capable of proof, that at least in fifty-three prisons, there are tread-wheels erected, or actually in operation, at the period of official inquiry.

"That the inability of the petitioners to confide in the above reports is not a little augmented by the utter and irreconcileable conflict which exists between their several statements, some of them admitting, by implication, the labour to be of so severe a nature, that the infliction for women has either never been allowed, or has actually been abandoned, or reduced, both in time and degree, to so short a period, as to leave the greatest part of the day unemployed; while it is elsewhere described, even when maintained at its highest scale, as of so harmless and pleasant a nature, that untried prisoners have expressed a desire to go upon the work, have volunteered to do so, or would be glad to be so employed if allowed. In addition to which, it is contended, that there is nothing in the employment repugnant to common delicacy. All which assertions, your petitioners beg leave to observe, are incompatible with that necessity of a greatly increased diet of meat and beer, which, though accompanied with an enormous augmentation of expense, is now found indispensable in every establishment where the tread-wheel is in use, in consequence of the exhausting nature of the labour as before stated.

"The petitioners beg further to submit, that the only medical committee (as they understand) which has hitherto been consulted by the home department of his majesty's government, has been limited in its inquiry to the effects of working female prisoners on the wheel; and that the report of such committee, in the opinion of the petitioners, recommends what is equivalent to a virtual renunciation of the punishment, by restricting its application, even for the young and robust, to two hours and a half of actual labour daily, and allowing intervals of entire rest to all for a whole week, once in every month, (exemptions unknown to, and unnecessary for healthy females in any of the usual species of hard labour performed by their sex, and which indisputably decide in the affirmative the question proposed by Mr. Secretary Peel to the committee—namely, whether the effects on the female constitution are greater than result from the ordinary occupations of women in the lower classes of society); while the same committee still further recommend a total prohibition of the wheel to the very great numbers who are in any respect infirm or diseased.

"The petitioners humbly represent, that the indiscriminate employment of an ignominious and corporal punishment, degrading to the mind and hurtful to the body of the prisoner, which destroys all due classification, and implies the same kind and measure of infliction to every degree of crime, and difference of age, sex, and habit of life, appears to them equally [hostile to justice, humanity, and sound policy; and that, to subject to the tread-wheel correction, as is done at present, the felon, the misdemeanant, and the vagrant—the robust and the weak—men afflicted with ruptures, and women with infants at their breast, is contrary to every principle of discriminate subdivision and moral improvement, which the genera) provisions of the statute now before your honourable House for the purpose of amendment are principally designed to promote. That soldiers who have hazarded their lives in defence of their country, and whose feelings of honour, and sense of shame it seems peculiarly important to cherish, form another description of prisoners frequently consigned to the tread-wheel, in pursuance of the orders of courts-martial; and that in the house of correction at Brixton, some of this class of individuals have been actually fastened to the wheel by chains attached to the arm, and suspended from the face-board above the wheel, being from such an extraordinary exercise of severity exposed to the casualties resulting from a false step, or a sudden paroxysm of disease, or exhaustion, by which their limbs, and even their lives, are put in imminent peril, while they are deprived of every possibility of extricating themselves.

"That the petitioners, after extensive and cautious investigation, have reason to fear that the great and important hope at first indulged, that the discipline of the tread-wheel would materially diminish the aggregate of offenders, has completely failed; and that while it is fully ascertained that it promotes no habit of industry or means of earning a livelihood when discharged from gaol, they believe it both hardens the heart and demoralizes the mind, at the same time that it injures and enfeebles the body; and thus, by lessening the means and opportunities of amendment, by preparing the prisoner for crimes of greater magnitude, and rendering him indifferent as to the future, has a natural tendency to fill rather than empty our prisons, and to render them schools of growing crime and desperation, rather than of reformation and moral discipline. And in proof of this, the petitioners refer to the greater number of recommitments, that seem almost uniformly to take place where the tread-wheel is established, compared with those in houses of correction where it is not yet introduced, so as to give fearful and abundant evidence of the resistance opposed in the former to the influence of that moral and religious instruction which is so wisely and wholesomely attempted to be introduced into the economy of our prison establishments.

"The petitioners beg leave to submit, on the other hand, that Mr. Howard, whose considerations and recommendations of the subject of prison discipline were formerly matter of parliamentary discussion and approbation, has enumerated no less than fifty-eight modes of prison employment, which are capable of being rendered subservient to the health and morals of a prison population, of engendering habits of industry, and consequently of promoting the means by which prisoners may be enabled to provide for themselves when liberated, and thus of carrying into effect the important and salutary remarks advanced by Mr. Justice Bayley in his late impressive charge to the grand jury at the Durham Assizes, in which he says—'he had always thought that the employment of prisoners ought to be as far as possible so regulated, that they could, afterwards obtain a livelihood by it.' Whilst at the same time it should be observed, that most of the methods of employment alluded to by Mr. Howard, may be rendered contributary to the severest degree of hard labour, in the proper and legitimate acceptation of the term, and will be found sufficiently to weary the workers without wasting their constitutional strength, as has been amply established in various houses of correction, which have had recourse to them long prior to the use of the tread-wheel, and particularly (as stated in the reports of the Prison Discipline Society) in those of Preston, Knutsford, and Maidstone, while the committee of this society has, with great truth and candour, remarked, in their publication 'On the Government of Gaols,' that 'preference should be given to those trades which require hard labour, the knowledge of which may enable the prisoners to earn their subsistence on their discharge from prison'—an observation which is followed by an enumeration of corresponding employments little short of that by Mr. Howard.

"And here the petitioners hope they may be permitted to remind your honourable House, that both the spirit and letter of the laws of our country have, from the earliest times, provided that no infliction of punishment ought to endanger the health of the body, or expose it to casualties, beyond the strict intent and bear- ing of a prisoner's sentence, insomuch, that in the statute of the 51st of Henry III., intituled 'Judicum Pillorie,' it is expressly enacted, that the penalty should be fulfilled, 'without bodily peril of man or woman'; while another statute of a date not long subsequent, provides that the pillory should be of convenient strength, so that execution may be done upon the offenders without peril of their bodies'

"While the petitioners thus presume to avow their own humble opinions and conscientious fears, with reference to the adoption of the novel discipline herein objected to, they cannot observe without deep regret, the strenuous efforts which are making to extend its introduction into almost every considerable state of Europe. Whatever, indeed, is connected with the good of civil society, ought not to be confined within the boundaries of a single nation; but before experiments upon this important subject are lavishly recommended to the world, it seems most reasonable, that incontrovertible proof should be furnished, that the benefit of the community is thereby likely to be promoted. It does not, however, appear that the tread-wheel, with all the fostering support it has derived from the well-intentioned society that first brought it into notice, instituted in our metropolis and its vicinity under the auspices of many of the most distinguished characters in the kingdom, has been hailed with an equal approbation by various illustrious foreigners engaged in the same laudable pursuit, and availing themselves of every means of inquiry afforded by the institutions of our own country. The petitioners, in proof hereof, may be permitted to advert to the interesting report on the state of prisons in France, by M. le Marquis dc Barbé Marbois, as the organ of a similar society, constituted by an ordonnance of the king of France, of the 9th of April, 1819, and composed of twenty-four members, under the presidency of the Minister of the Interior, the majority of which are peers of France, while the rest are appropriately distinguished by their official stations in the government. Speaking in this report of the application of the tread-wheel, after a minute examination of this machine, by a deputation from the society in France, directly charged to observe its effects in England, and to obtain all practical information from our own Prison discipline Society, the noble marquis thus expresses himself—'The introduction of a new kind of torture in France appears to me an evil of greater magnitude than even indiscipline itself, which demands other remedies. The tread-wheel is a real torment. This is evident from the description given of it; from the acknowledged falls and fractures caused by this machine; and, lastly, from the dread with which it inspires the prisoners. If physicians have been found capable of asserting that this horrible exercise strengthens and preserves health, they have indulged in a cruel mockery.' The distinguished writer of these remarks, who is a minister of state and first president of the 'Cour des Comptes,' also dwells with particular emphasis on the mischief of such punishments as stamp lasting disgrace; and he shows that a very large proportion of crimes is committed by convicts returned from the galleys. 'The degraded man,' observes the noble marquis, 'thinks he has the right to become the enemy of society, because it disowns him.' The appearance of such a report at such a crisis as the present, may be considered as offering in itself an excuse for introducing it before your honourable House; and to none is the value of this royal establishment in France better known or more energetically acknowledged than by our own corresponding institution, expressly organized as it is for the promotion of similar objects, and which in successive reports of its own has placed at the head of its foreign correspondence the proceedings of this very society, with a detailed account of its institution, and various references to the reports it has presented to the Due de Rochefoucault, together with an antecedent report of the Marquis de Barbé Marbois.

"From the circumstances already adverted to by the petitioners, and none are mentioned but what they consider they have the most satisfactory means of proving at the bar, or in the committees of your honourable House, together with other weighty reasons which press upon their minds, they are themselves convinced of the inefficiency of any discipline founded on a principle of unmixed terror and degradation. They also feel great anxiety in respect to the interpretation of the clause respecting untried prisoners introduced in the bill now before your honourable House, as indirectly sanctioning a mode of punishment, against which, as magistrates and as Englishmen, they humbly protest, from its inherent evils, mechanical, medical, and moral; and the more so, as the same instrument of terror has, for some time past, been introduced into a considerable workhouse in the country, containing an incorporated aggregation of eighteen parishes; and unless restrained by the interposition of parliament, may be adopted in all such establishments, under the denomination of hard labour.

"And your petitioner, sir John Cox Hippisley, begs leave to observe for himself, that he has individually under-taken, from the obvious exigency of the occasion, and stands also individually engaged to the county in which is his principal residence, for the completion, by prison labour exclusively, of one of the most considerable Houses of correction in the kingdom, situated in the vicinity of considerable manufacturing towns and villages, which are but too often in a state of great insubordination—and of a considerable colliery district, which has more than once called for exertions beyond the ordinary means of the civil magistrate: and consequently, that, should the principle at present so much encouraged and promoted by the majority of the magistracy charged with a visitation of prisons, find any countenance by a concurrent enactment of the legislature, every effort to persevere in the completion of the provincial house of correction at Shepton Mallet, by prison labour, must unfortunately be abandoned: concerning which prison, however, so far as it has advanced, the Society of Prison Discipline has been pleased to affirm, 'That it has afforded many instances of the reformation of individuals—that great benefits have arisen from the instruction there supplied, particularly in respect of juvenile prisoners—that a classification has long been adopted there to manifest advantage, and that many persons have been taught to work as masons, carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers, who are now maintaining themselves by the trades they have so learned.' To this testimony, and which is no other than the fact, the petitioner, who has long been occupied in the superintendence of the said prison, and is yet responsible for the execution of the works undertaken for its extension and completion in the terms of his contract, can add, from long experience, that an adoption of similar measures would be found to save, in the public disbursements of counties, an amount of expense, which, if particularly cited, could hardly be credited; exclusive of all the advantages hereby derivable to the health and habits of prisoners.

"To render such efforts still more advantageous, and trusting that in the wisdom of parliament, such resources will not be abandoned, the petitioner ventures also to suggest, the great advantages derivable from a re-enactment of the act, chap. 56, of the 24th year of his late Majesty, the practical operation of which has expired, and by which one justice of assize, or two or more justices of the county, might remove any prisoners under sentences, and orders made by one or more justice or justices of the peace at their sessions, or otherwise, upon conviction in a summary way, without the intervention of a jury. If such a power were revived, and extended to convictions, when capital punishments did not attach, it is humbly conceived that great public benefit might result, by the visiting magistrates of prisons being empowered to concert with each other for the arrangement of removals for any of the purposes of the act, passed in the last session for the consolidating and amendment of the several laws relating to gaols and houses of correction.

"The petitioner also having presumed early to solicit the attention of some members of the committee of your honourable House to the restrictive clause, respecting the tread-mill, as it originally stood, ventures further to submit, that some practical inconvenience may eventually arise, should the enactment take place, even as it now stands, on the amendments ordered to be printed on the 15th of April; as, from a cursory reference to the bill, the title will still be found not to correspond with the enactment, nor to have any application whatever to the state of the largest house of correction in this kingdom, namely, that of Cold-bath-fields, where there are no tread-mills, as well as to many other considerable prisons.

"Under these circumstances, the petitioners beg leave to close this intrusion upon the patience of your honourable House, with humbly praying that for the reasons already stated, namely, the utter inutility of the work, as exercised in some places, the pain, the peril, and inequality of the punishment, its impropriety, inde- cency, and cruelty, in various circumstances and situations, its inefficiency in all, to answer the intent and purposes of correction and reformation, while it debilitates the body, and demoralizes the mind, without inculcating any habit of useful industry, together with its impolicy and illegality, as at present administered—that from the comparatively short period of its approbation as a mode of discipline, the irregular, partial, and discordant communications officially made upon its nature and effects—the particular exceptions and limitations carefully recommended by the medical committee, appointed to examine into its action on one class of the inmates of a single house of correction—and the increase of committals and re-committals in most establishments where it is in use, the tread-wheel may not be sanctioned, adopted, or in any way designated or included in our Statute-book as an instrument of punishment, or means of hard labour or employment of prisoners, without further investigation by your honourable House, and that magistrates be restricted from enforcing its use till such investigation shall be made, and such sanction and adoption on the part of the legislature obtained.

"And the petitioners further pray, that the bill, as at present before your honourable House, may not pass into a law, and that such other relief may be granted in the said matter as to your wisdom shall seem expedient.

"The petitioner, sir J. C. Hippisley, begs leave further to observe, that while the preceding observations were drawing up, an incident occurred which seems to render the present application to your honourable House a duty of the most imperative necessity; and the more especially, as it is now occupied with a revision of the existing Gaol act. Under the 17th section of this act, it is provided, 'that any Justice of the peace, of any county, or other division, whether a visitor or not, shall, at his own free will and pleasure, and as often as he shall see fit, enter into and examine any prison of such county or other division; and the act requires of him, if he shall discover any abuse or abuses therein, that he shall report the same in writing, at the next General or Quarter Sessions; and that the abuse or abuses so reported, shall be taken into immediate consideration, and the most effectual means adopted for inquiring into and certifying the same.' In which enactment it is obvious, from the report being required to be set forth in writing, without any demand of a personal attendance, that parliament designed to provide for a speedy and effectual redress of any known abuses, even in cases in which the magistrate acquainted with them should not be able to be present personally at such sessions, from indisposition, or attendance in parliament, or any other cause.

"Under the authority of this provision, the petitioner, sir J. C. Hippisley, being at the time suffering under much indisposition, reported in writing, to the magistrates assembled in the late General Quarter Sessions of the peace for the county of Surrey, of which county he is an acting magistrate, the existence of certain abuses in houses of correction under their jurisdiction, which, in his judgment, demanded such a report to be made. His report was delivered in due time to the clerk of the peace; and from him he has received a letter, dated the 1st of the present month, informing him as follows:—'I laid your statement, or report, on the subject of the tread-wheel, before the court on the first day of the session, and was proceeding to read it, but the court declined hearing it, on the ground that it was contrary to the practice of the court to receive written statements from magistrates who did not attend themselves. I have therefore returned your paper. (Signed) C. J. LAWSON. So that while by the penalty of the tread-wheel the magistrates are introducing into our prisons, and even our poor-houses, a punishment unsanctioned by either common or statute law, by the practice of the above court of sessions they are directly contravening a distinct parliamentary enactment. It will hence, perhaps be felt necessary by your honourable House, that some measure should be adopted to ensure compliance with the enactment of so important a part of the statute, especially at a moment when the consideration of the House is drawn to a revisal of some parts of the act in question."

Ordered to lie on the table.

The House divided—For the motion 10; Against it 26; Majority 16.