before.... My mind has not recovered this affair of Lord Sidmouth,
and finding that the bank directors are also affronted with me
added to my trouble, more particularly as there was an appearance
of evil in my conduct; but, I trust, no greater fault in reality
than a want of prudence in that which I expressed."

The Society of Friends had always been opposed to capital punishment.
Ten years previously, Sir Samuel Romilly had determined to attack these
sanguinary enactments, one by one, in order to ensure success. He began,
therefore, with the Act of Queen Elizabeth, "which made it a capital
offense to steal privately from the person of another." William Alien
records in the same year, 1808, the formation of a "Society for
Diffusing Information on the Subject of Punishment by Death." This
little band worked with Sir Samuel until his painful death in 1818;
while Dr. Parr, Jeremy Bentham, and Dugald Stewart aided the enterprise
by words of encouragement, both in public and in private. In Joseph John
Gurney's Memoirs, it is stated that Dr. Lushington declared his opinion
that the poor criminal was thus hurried out of life and into eternity by
means of the perpetration of another crime far greater, for the most
part, than any which the sufferer had committed.

The feeling grew, and in place of the indifference and scorn of human
life which had formerly characterized society, there sprang up an eager
desire to save life, except for the crime of murder. In May, 1821, Sir
James Mackintosh introduced a bill for "Mitigating the Severity of
Punishment in Certain Cases of Forgery, and Crimes connected
therewith." Buxton, in advocating this measure, says truly:

The people have made enormous strides in all that tends to civilize
and soften mankind, while the laws have contracted a ferocity which
did not belong to them in the most savage period of our history;
and, to such extremes of distress have they proceeded that I do
believe there never was a law so harsh as British law, or so
merciful and humane a people as the British people. And yet to this
mild and merciful people is left the execution of that rigid and
cruel law.

This measure was defeated, but the numbers of votes were so nearly
equal, that the defeat was actually a victory.

Time went on. In 1831, Sir Robert Peel took up the gauntlet against
capital punishment, and endeavored to induce Parliament to abol