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1 Meliora, Quarterly Review: Report of the Capital Punishment Commission 125 (1866)

handle is hein.death/qrrcpc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: (125)
ART. II.-THE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
COMMISSION.
1. Report of the Capital Punishment Commission. 1866.
2. The Law on its Trial, or Personal Recollections of the Death
Penalty, and its Opponents.  By Alfred H. Dymond.
London: Alfred W. Bennett. 1865.
3. Capital Punishment, based on Mittermair's 'Todestrafe.'
Edited by John Macrae Moir, M.A.    London: Smith,
Elder, and Co. 1865.
4. Report of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punish-
ment. 1865.
5. The Substitute for Capital Punishment. By Frederic Hill,
Esq. London. 1866.
6. Private Executions. By Humphrey W. Woolrych, Serjeant-
at-Law. 1866.
7. Analysis and Review of the Blue Book of the Royal Com-
mission on Capital Punishment. Reprinted from the
'Social Science Review.' May and June, 1866.
THE appointment of a Royal Commission to Inquire into
Capital Punishment was a virtual surrender on the part
of the Government of the whole question. Up to that time
Sir George Grey had always held that the punishment of
death must be retained for the crime of murder, and he
uniformly rejected all proposals for inquiry. In the debate
on the 4th May, 1864, he took the same ground, but conceded
that there were reasons for inquiring whether an improvement
could not be effected in the administration of the law, and he
acceded to the motion to recommend to Her Majesty the
appointment of a Commission. The appointment was made
on the 8th July, 1864, and the report was published in
January, 1866. The evidence by which it is accompanied is
most instructive and important. The public generally have,
and not without reason, a distrust of Parliamentary reports;
such reports are sometimes one-sided, and the examinations
very often stifle as much information as they elicit. The
majority of blue books may be regarded as so many monu-
ments of great industry, but they become at the same time
mausoleums of the facts and evidence which that industry has
accumulated.

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