a petition to Parliament entreating the
repeal of the statute which made it such on the ground that,
practically, it had been found not to strike terror into the thieves,
but almost to secure them impunity from the reluctance of juries to find
a verdict which would sentence a fellow-creature to the gallows for such
an offence.

Nor was this by any means the only instance in which the barbarity of
the law defeated its object. And its combined impolicy and inhumanity
had some years before attracted the notice of Sir Samuel Romilly, who
had been Solicitor-general in the administration of 1806, and who,
shortly after its dissolution, began to apply himself to the benevolent
object of procuring the repeal of many of the statutes in question, and
in the course of a few years did succeed in obtaining the substitution
of milder penalties for several of the less flagitious offences. He died
in 1818; but the work which he had began was continued by Sir James
Mackintosh, a man of even more conspicuous ability, and one who could
adduce his own experience in favor of the changes which he recommended
to the Parliament, since he had filled the office of Recorder of Bombay
for eight years, and had discharged his duties with a most diligent and
consistent avoidance of capital punishment, which he had never inflicted
except for murder; his lenity, previously unexampled in that land,
having been attended with a marked diminution of crime. He procured the
substitution of milder penalties in several additional cases; and at
last, in 1822, he carried a resolution engaging the House of Commons
"the next session to take into its serious consideration the means of
increasing the efficacy of the criminal law by abating its undue rigor."
And this success had the effect of inducing the new minister to take the
question into his own hands. Peel saw that it was one which, if it were
to be dealt with at all, ought to be regulated by the government itself,
and not be left to independent members, who could not settle it with
satisfactory completeness; and therefore, in 1823, he introduced a
series of bills to carry out the principle implied in Mackintosh's
resolution of the preceding year, not only simplifying the law, but
abolishing the infliction of capital punishment in above a hundred
cases. He was unable to carry out his principle as fully as he could
have desired. The prejudice in favor of still retaining death as a
punishment for forgery was too