corresponding decrease, but for the crimes of violence too, tending
to murder, such as are many of the incendiary offences, and such as
are highway robbery and burglary. But another return, laid before
the House at the same time, bears upon our argument, if possible,
still more conclusively. In table 11 we have only the years which
have occurred since 1810, in which all persons convicted of murder
suffered death; and, compared with these an equal number of years in
which the smallest proportion of persons convicted were executed.
In the first case there were 66 persons convicted, all of whom
underwent the penalty of death; in the second 83 were convicted, of
whom 31 only were executed. Now see how these two very different
methods of dealing with the crime of murder affected the commission
of it in the years immediately following. The number of commitments
for murder, in the four years immediately following those in which
all persons convicted were executed, was 270.

"In the four years immediately following those in which little more
than one-third of the persons convicted were executed, there were
but 222, being 48 less. If we compare the commitments in the
following years with those in the first years, we shall find that,
immediately after the examples of unsparing execution, the crime
increased nearly 13 per cent., and that after commutation was the
practice and capital punishment the exception, it decreased 17 per
cent.

"In the same parliamentary return is an account of the commitments
and executions in London and Middlesex, spread over a space of 32
years, ending in 1842, divided into two cycles of 16 years each. In
the first of these, 34 persons were convicted of murder, all of whom
were executed. In the second, 27 were convicted, and only 17