Irish Insurrection

Bill.

considerable majority. I took no part in the debate, and did not vote. If I had voted, it would have been against him; but, as I arrived at the House only time enough to hear but a small portion of his speech, I did not think it right to take any part. I do not see any reason to doubt his being guilty, but great reason to doubt his having been impartially tried; and the sentence upon him has been inordinately severe a fine of 1000l., a year's imprisonment, and the pillory. The enormity of this punishment has excited an interest in Lord Cochrane's favour, which would never have appeared if his sentence had been at all proportioned to the offence. Many persons have expressed a wish that the punishment of the pillory should be abolished; and it unquestionably ought to be abolished. There is not, however, the least probability that, if a Bill were brought into Parliament for that purpose, it would pass into a law.

13th, Wed. I opposed, with a very few other persons, the Bill* lately brought into the House by Peel (the Irish Secretary), which is to give extraordinary powers to the magistrates in Ireland, and to enable them, without a jury and without any bill of indictment found against them, to transport as felons persons who, in counties proclaimed as disturbed, shall not be found in their houses after a certain hour, and shall not be able to prove that they were absent on some lawful occasion. There has not been any committee appointed, nor any

*This was a revival of the Bill of 1807, which was repealed in 1810, on the motion of Wellesley Pole (the Secretary for Ireland), a short time before it would have expired, and had never since been revived.

evidence produced of the facts which are stated as the grounds for bringing in this Bill.*

Cochrane.

16th, Sat. Lord Cochrane was re-elected to re- Lord present the city of Westminster. Many persons have persuaded themselves that he is innocent. No other candidate was put up. Sheridan had announced an intention of standing, but withdrew his claims, and told several persons that Lord Cochrane was the only man in the kingdom he would not oppose.

Sussex and

of Wales.

17th, Sun. I called this morning on the Duke Duke of of Sussex at his request communicated to me about Princess a week ago. It was respecting the Princess Char- Charlotte lotte of Wales that he wished to speak to me. After his message sent to me, her Royal Highness, having all her attendants dismissed, and being told she was immediately to remove to Carlton House, had run out of her house, and getting into a hackney coach, had driven to her mother's. The Duke of Sussex and Brougham had persuaded her to go to Carlton House. The Duke told me that he had already decided what step it would be proper for him to take; and that he had accordingly written a letter to Lord Liverpool, remonstrating upon the treatment the Princess had received, desiring to know whether it was by the advice of the Ministers, and requiring that he might have access to the Princess; and that he was then waiting for an answer to it. He put a few questions to me respecting the time when the Princess would be of age, the Prince her father's power over her, &c.; and related some curious facts respecting the late

Freehold

Estate Bill.

Corruption

intended marriage of the Princess with the hereditary Prince of Orange; but he asked me no advice.

18th, Mon. The Princess was removed this morning to Cranbourne Lodge in Windsor Park.

My Bill to subject freehold estates to the simple contract debts of persons who die seised of such estates, was thrown out by the Lords on the third reading without a division. It was opposed by the Chancellor, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Redesdale, and by the Duke of Norfolk. It was supported by Lord Erskine and Lord Holland.

19th, Tu. The Duke of Sussex gave notice, in the House of Lords, of a motion on the subject of the Princess, he having put several questions to the Ministers relating to her, which they declined answering. *

20th, Wed. I again opposed the Irish Insurrection Bill.

25th, Mon. The House of Lords having re

of blood. turned my two Bills to take away corruption of blood, and to alter the punishment of high treason, with amendments, I this day moved in the Commons that the House should agree to the amendments, which was carried as of course. The alterations in the Corruption of Blood Bill are, to substitute in the place of taking away corruption of blood the taking away all the effects of corruption of blood, except with respect to the attainted person during his life only; and to prevent the Bill operating in cases of accomplices in murder.

*He afterwards, by the advice of Lord Grey, abandoned his intended motion.

ment of treason.

The Treason Bill has many alterations of form, Punishbut the only substantial alteration is, to preserve as part of the sentence, that the body of the criminal after he is dead shall be severed into four quarters. When I moved to agree to the amendments, I stated my strong disapprobation of this amendment. I said that either this punishment was not to be executed, and then it ought not to continue part of the formal sentence, or it was intended that in some cases it should be executed; and, if so, that, in my opinion, such horrible spectacles as that of mangling a body from which the vital spirit had just departed before a crowd of spectators tended only to deprave their minds, and to harden their hearts: that, however, I proposed to agree to the amendments, because, as the Lords had consented that it should no longer be the law that the heart and bowels of a man convicted of treason should be torn out of his body while he was yet alive, I thought that what the Lords had allowed us to pass was worth obtaining.

The Lord Chancellor, in a note he wrote me some days ago, seemed to intimate that he should propose this alteration. He afterwards told me in conversation that it was Lord Ellenborough who meant to propose it. Who did propose it I do not know, for the whole matter passed in the House of Lords without debate, and I believe without any but the law Lords knowing what was done. The Chancellor's doubts and difficulties about this and the other Bill expressed in his note The law so remains in the present day.―ED.

Punishment of treason.

to me are so curious that I have thought the note worth preserving.*

26th, Tu. The Lord Chancellor this morning, in court, wrote a note and sent it down to me from the bench in these words: "I was sur

prised to read in my paper what you said last night as to quartering. In my Bill I had left it out, and

*The following is the note alluded to.

66

Upon the Treason Bill

"Is the enactment, that the judgment to be awarded against any person or persons convicted or attainted of the crime of high treason' quite accurate? (See below. Vide 4 Black, 380, 381.) Attainder, he says, commences upon, and not before, judgment pronounced.

"I entertain a doubt whether the sentence should be farther changed than merely taking away the cutting down alive and drawing, without a hurdle. The King can pardon the quartering; and if he does not, the sentence, if the party is hanged till he is dead, is not more severe than in murder.a

"Is the last clause necessary? Cannot the King do what it is here enacted he may do, by his prerogative? If so, the clause is improper.

66

Attending to the first observation, I wish to know the form of awarding execution upon attainder by Act of Parliament, to which the term attainted may apply. I will have Dealtry furnish this from the Baga de Secretis.

"In the Bill to take away corruption of blood, will the words used give the benefit of it to aiders, abettors, and counsellors of petit treason or murder-persons convicted as such, and not of the petit treason or murder? The stat. 30 Geo. 3. c. 48. has introduced these by express mention. If the blood is to remain corrupted after convictions and attainders of petit treason and murder, ought it not to be the same as to those convicted of aiding, abetting, and counselling? Is it necessary to consider this as to the High Treason Bill? I incline to think not, after reading Foster, as referred to by Blackstone, who holds, on Foster's authority, that the doctrine that there are no accessories in treason does not hold in the inferior species of high treason. The result of Foster's doctrine, that there may be accessories in treason, seems to be, that the forms of indictment must, in some cases, treat them as such, but yet that they are principal traitors.

"Q. Whether the words of the Act of 7th Queen Anne, c. 22. sec. 10., had not better be used in this Bill? Is it necessary or expedient to name Scotland?

a "By Act 30 Geo. 3. c. 48., all the sentence for murder is to be pronounced against women convicted of petit treason; and the Judges, according to Foster, soon after the 25 Geo. 2. c. 37., agreed that the like must take place where men are convicted of petit treason."