under his official superintendence, has, however, the merit of having been done well. The direction, method, and execution, are all good. This little consists of the consolidation of some of the principal chapters of our criminal statutory law, carefully collated and judiciously compressed by Mr Gregson. A much more delicate and important labour is behind, in the revisal of our common law, and its hundred anomalies. But, instead of a real survey of the whole system, an examination of its several principles, an analysis, comparison, and arrangement of its several parts, this partial redaction has, up to 1831, answered the idea of perfect criminal legislation on the part of English statesmen, and almost of the English public. intent to injure or defraud any person. But a bigoted and most anomalous exception withdraws the protection from dissenting chapels, wherever they may happen to be not duly registered or recorded.' The policy, as well as morality, of the rule by which a party, wherever the subject-matter of a wrong is tainted with illegality, loses his civil remedy even against a mere wrong-doer, has been and is seriously questioned. But that in such a case society also should lose its remedy for one of the most alarming of all possible outrages on the public safety, is a gratuitous and most mischievous refinement. The injustice of this is aggravated by comparing the original offence with that which it thus covers with impunity. The law has a right to make its own conditions, and in case they are not complied with, to enforce a penalty on the omission, besides depriving the party of the civil privileges, to which, by a compliance with the conditions, he would have become entitled. The omission may be punished; but it is the law which ought to keep the punishment in its own hands, and not transfer it to an incendiary. A government has no right to disorganize society, by offering the encouragement of impunity to a Sacheverell and his mob, or to any malignant ruffian in the parish, who may be wicked enough to act on the permission or excitement of so scandalous an exception. A thief who was to clear Carlisle's shop-window, could not, when indicted for the larceny, plead the tendency of the writings. A purist who should set fire to a brothel, could not save his neck by proving, through its degraded and captive priestesses, the worship to which the premises were dedicated. But a scoundrel who applies the torch of fanaticism or of malice to a chapel, whose minister has accidentally (there can be no other assignable cause in our times) omitted to register it, is enti tled to plead this new sort of benefit of clergy' in his behalf. The omission to register a schismatical conventicle, is an offence of that atrocity, that Sir Robert Peel cannot wait for the ordinary course of justice. The terms on which its warfare against murderers and highwaymen is carried on, the commercia belli of criminal law, within which even nominal outlaws are included, must be superseded. Every one may take out for himself, upon the spot, immediate and personal At the M. Rossi is no friend to wholesale codification. same time, he considers the criminal law to be a division in which codification, proceeding piecemeal by successive statutes, might, where it was required, be easily and advantageously pursued. However, the only instances in which it is surmised that this will ever actually take place, are those where either there happens to be no criminal law at all, or where it is thoroughly and irremediably bad. England is placed by him under the latter of these predicaments, in honourable companionship with Piedmont and part of Switzerland. Therefore, with whatever truth the co-operation of a popular assembly and of a jury may be stated to be indispensable conditions to a sound state of this branch of the law in any country, according to this supposition, these two institutions may exist without producing so desirable a result. The successful division on the Forgery Bill, where Sir Robert Peel displayed so much peevish zeal for the continuance of a capital felony on the statute-book, after it had become clear that public opinion, whether wisely or unwisely, had, at all events, made it impossible to enforce it, was the first hint given by the House of Commons, that an enlarged view of its duties on this subject, might comprise something more than simple registration of the edicts of the Home Office. But Parliament must look farther than the people have yet had the means of looking. It cannot stop with feeling here and there a scruple at the extreme severity of the specific punishment for this or that offence, or with an exclamation of disgust at the folly and inequality of a system which, on a clerical error in an indictment, from time to time turns loose a murderer on society. An attempt to collect materials for forming a comprehensive estimate of the different points contained in the public duty of a legislature on this solemn and intricate question, will be a vengeance for so irreparable and unpardonable a wrong. A disgraceful and demoralizing alliance with Swing himself, is a less evil than that of an unregistered and unrecorded meeting-house amenable only to the law. Before a chapel, under c. 29, s. 10, can acquire the marginal protection of sacrilege,' so that it will be a capital felony to break, and enter, and steal thereout any chattel, must it be one similarly consecrated by registration? Protestant zeal is here again extravagant. Roman Catholic legislation confined the notion of sacrilege to vessels consecrated to religious uses.' See the point in Matthæus de Criminibus, as to whether it be sacrilege to steal the parish bell. It is but a word, to be sure, in this case; but why give delusion, and mystification, and bigotry, the benefit even of a word? matter at first of some embarrassment and surprise. The experiments carried on over extensive periods and regions are within our reach; and an application of something like the comparative anatomy of legislation, may be expected to arise in a science of which the subjects are property, liberty, and life. Such numerous and important variances will be found to exist in the different laws of different countries, as must demand a patient consideration, in order to warrant a choice between them. What is the ordinary course and everyday practice of one place, is looked upon as the height of injustice in another. Acts which the law of one country undertakes to repress with exemplary severity, are allowed to be committed by its next door neighbour with complete impunity. A still more extravagant, and apparently wanton inconsistency, obtains in the nature and degree of punishments inflicted for offences otherwise recognised as the same. Again, in some states no discretion whatever is left with the judge; in others, he is scarcely subjected to the least control. In above half Europe, criminal proceedings are conducted by writings, in secret, and without a full and free defence. On consulting the text writers and criminalists of different nations, their pages swarm with similar contradictions. If statesmen differ among each other concerning what they make the law of life and liberty, jurisconsults are in noways more agreed on what it ought to be. In all this, there is something surely very unreasonable, or worse. The real want of the present times, a growing sense and conviction of this want, and such strange confusion in the senates and the lecture-rooms of civilized empires on a point of deep and common interest, seem to show that there is yet room for such a book on criminal law as would be a blessing to mankind. That its author would appear perhaps little better than a visionary mystic in the eyes of an Old Bailey lawyer, is no presumption against the possibility (some day or other) of this Avater descending in Europe, and even among ourselves. The presumption, indeed, must be veering round from day to day more in this direction, when we think of what the administration of criminal justice ought to be, both in fact and in opinion, and see what it is in both. In proportion as neither our judges nor our juries are responsible for this result, would it seem probable that the time is come for asking whether the blame lies not in the thing itself. Criminal justice, as carried on among us at that her most celebrated temple, has contrived to work so disastrous an impression on the public mind, by the combined influence of its creed, ceremonies, sacrifices and assistants, that a name which ought to describe a priesthood, dedicated to the joint guardian ship of innocence, misfortune, and public order, has become the lowest by-word of scandal and reproach. Something more, however, is required to constitute the book which we are in quest of, than that it should be a matter of astonishment at the Old Bailey; otherwise, we certainly could want nothing beyond the present volumes. Unfortunately, it is not only by the purity and elevation of the spirit with which they glow, or by the great variety of useful, and still greater variety of ingenious remarks with which they abound, that these volumes are calculated to astonish. They are written on a scheme which would most undoubtedly, as we have heard boasted, work a thorough revolution in the science; at the same time, we see no reason, from so much of the scheme as is developed in the portion of it now published, that it would effect any change at all, much less any change for the better, in the art. The theory will not more startle Mr Bentham in his closet, than any attempt to carry it into practice would convert, as it appears to us, legislative assemblies and courts of justice into so many labyrinths of interminable confusion. And all for no ultimate public benefit. Since, when we had toiled to, and elaborated out as pure a result as the process seems capable of giving, the best thing which we can possibly hope is, that the result should agree (as we believe it would) with that obtained from the theory which it is its object to explode. Two metaphysical assumptions furnish, in the shape of axioms, the basis of the system now evulgated by M. Rossi. It is assumed, first, that there is a moral order pre-existing to all things, immutable and eternal. Next, that as a part of, and for the maintenance of, this moral order, absolute justice has fixed in exact proportion the retribution of evil for evil. It is further declared to be a fact, (the proof of which by appropriate evidence, is, we perceive, deferred,) that the revelations of conscience are our sole but ample guarantee for the discovery in all cases of this exact proportion. The practical corollary from these assertions is delivered with all the eloquence and zeal attendant on the conviction, that in it is announced a new gospel of jurisprudence to mankind. Whatever may be the demands of public peace and safety, unless every party individually concerned in the creation, interpretation, and execution of the law, has satisfied himself that this proportion is observed, woe be to him! He is only playing at the game of who is the most cunning and the most strong.' M. Rossi justly enumerates among the obstacles which have been hitherto opposed, à la conquête de cet ideal dans la justice hu'maine,' a generally imperfect civilisation, partial political systems, and the real difficulties of the science. At a period when a prospect is opening upon us, that the opposition from the two first causes may be possibly reduced within manageable limits, men of genius are called upon to be doubly cautious not to aggravate the inherent difficulties of the science. It is urged that we must apply to questions of criminal law, some constant and universal principle, purer and loftier than the nature and necessities of society. A principle cannot be called constant and universal, which is to be applied by individuals, and which must vary with the character and condition of the individual. Now, conscience is no compass-the same in all hands-but that fabled girdle, whose operation principally depended on the qualities of the wearer. Before the indispensableness of any such principle is insisted on, it should be clear that such a principle exists; before any thing is selected as complying with these conditions, proof of the fact ought to be forthcoming; otherwise, the cause of truth is not advanced by the eloquence of personal conviction, which pours indeed a brilliant hue over every subject that it touches. This sort of Claude-colouring is lovely in a landscape for a looker-on; but the beautiful baze has all the consequences of a fog for the traveller who has a journey before him, and is seeking for the road. The more striking the natural and acquired endowments of our author, the deeper becomes the disappointment which every page leaves upon the mind. We feel that we are on board a gallant vessel, admirably appointed, but beating about from reef to shallow; and all through the Quixotic confidence of the pilot in a hypothetical chart of his own constructing. Regrets in such a case are useless. There is no country to which we should have more gratefully acknowledged the obligation of a new light in jurisprudence, than the country of Filangieri and Beccaria. It is the obligation which Europe owes it in almost * The mines of thought which have been worked in Italian literature, even for the purposes of this science, (for the study of which one should think the density of the actual political atmosphere of Italy offered little opportunity and encouragement,) may be judged of by two facts. M. Rossi has come forward with what we in this country should consider a new theory-that of criminal jurisprudence being founded upon conscience; not indeed as its end, but as its measure, strictly definable and defined. Forti, in his review of this work, in the Artologia Italiana, refers the student to Instituzioni di Diritto Criminale del Carmignani. The first book contains M. Rossi's principle, except the chapter on objective and subjective evil. There have been six Pisan and one Roman editions of it. All the jurisconsult world is well acquainted with Mr Bentham's labours, as comprehending the |