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The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser
Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island
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British House of Commons debate on May 23 on mitigating forgery punishments: Buxton calls transportation a privilege; Londonderry notes efforts to reform Botany Bay as punishment site; Lushington shares anecdote showing death penalty's failure to deter.
Merged-components note: These two components are sequential in reading order and continue the same article from the National Gazette on the British House of Commons debate regarding forgery punishment.
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In the House of Commons on the 23d of May, in the course of the debate on the mitigation of the punishment for forgery, Mr. Buxton said-"He did not contend nor did his friends think of contending, that transportation was a punishment; they rather thought it a privilege or such of his Majesty's poor subjects as might properly qualify themselves, by committing a transportable offence, for such an enjoyment." In reply to this the Marquis of Londonderry (Lord Castlereagh) observed that "There was now on its return home a commission sent to Botany Bay, for the purpose of ascertaining the best means of making that colony a place of punishment, instead of being a place of refuge anxiously sought for by criminals."
FROM THE SAME PAPER.
In the debate of the British House of Commons, of the 23d of May, on the mitigation of the punishment of forgery, Dr. Lushington related the following anecdote:
"About 18 years ago, a boy between 15 and 16 years of age, passed by the Old Bailey while a man was executed for forgery; the boy's character up to that period was free from all blame; he asked what the man was executed for, and was informed; and in the course of that same day he went home and committed forgery himself. Having been tried for the offence he was convicted, but afterwards saved upon a certificate from the Ordinary that he was not fit to take the Sacrament-so little effect has the punishment of death upon the human mind."
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Foreign News Details
Primary Location
London
Event Date
23d Of May
Key Persons
Event Details
In the House of Commons debate on the mitigation of the punishment for forgery, Mr. Buxton stated that transportation was not a punishment but a privilege for criminals. The Marquis of Londonderry replied that a commission was returning from Botany Bay to make it a place of punishment rather than refuge. Dr. Lushington related an anecdote of a boy who committed forgery after witnessing an execution for the same crime, was convicted but saved from punishment due to unfitness for the Sacrament, illustrating the ineffectiveness of the death penalty.