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1 Henry Brougham, Review of Romilly's Observations on the Criminal Law of England, as It Relates to Capital Punishment, and the Mode in Which It Is Administered 389 (1812)

handle is hein.agopinions/rorocl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 1812. Sir Samuel Romilly on English Criminal Law. ART. VII. Observations on the Criminal Law of England, as it relates to Capital Punishments ; and on the Mode in which it is administered. By Sir SAMUEL RomILLY. 8vo. pp. 76. Cadell & Davies. London, 1810. WE owe an apology, we believe, both to our readers, and to the distinguished author of the work before us, for Having so long delayed to enter upon an examination of the subject to which it relates. Various accidental circumstances, and several interruptions, of a nature alluded to in our last Number, have occurred to prevent us: Nor do we purpose, at this time, to at- tempt exhausting the topics which it presents for our consider- ation, but rather to introduce them, and lay the foundation of a series of discussions, which we may pursue at a future period. The honour of cooperating, in how humble soever a path, with such a man as Sir Samuel Romilly, in so grand a cause, is suf- ficient to gratify a far loftier ambition than ours. There is a tendency in man, connected with some of the least unamiable weaknesses of our nature, to reverence with an undue observance established practices and existing institutions, mere- ly because they have been handed down through a succession of ages, and owe their origin to a period of society, in which, as Lord Bacon sagaciously remarks, the world was by so many ages younger and less experienced than it is in our own times. 'his feeling, while it resists the changes by which customs, and sys- tems of polity, would otherwise be insensibly adapted to the changes which, in spite of us, are constantly going on in the circumstances of society, persuades us, at the same time, that there is a virtue in those very incongruities, rendered every day more apparent, between ancient arrangements and the state of things, wholly unforeseen by their authors, to which they are now applied. Thus, by a strange refinement of self-coimplacen- cy, we ascribe to design, effects produced, not by human contri- vance, but in spite o it,-nay, in counteraction of it,-and ac- tually give our ancestors credit for having intended that the same plan should work for some ages in one direction, and then for so many more in the very opposite. It is not easy to ima- gine, that any thing but the most entire thoughtlessness could, for a moment, so far supersede the evidence of facts, and the authority of common sense, as to impose such dreams upon our belief. The most noted example of this delusion meets us in the great question of Reform, in both its branches. Broach the subject of Parliamentary Reform, and you are sure to be met with an inflated panegyric of the present system of representa- tion,-contrived by the wisdom of our forefathers to attain the VOL. xix. No. 38. C c utmost 3$9

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