n of vermin, and
of guns placed in a dwelling-house between sunset and sunrise for the
protection of that house. Scotland was excepted from the operation
of the law; the six judges of the court of justiciary in that country
having recently pronounced, in a case on which they had adjudicated of a
man who had recently been killed by a spring-gun, that such killing, by
the law of Scotland, is murder.

IMPROVEMENT OF THE CRIMINAL CODE.

Although out of office Mr. Peel still proceeded with his improvements of
the criminal code. By his enlightened exertions five acts were passed,
which consolidated into one body the whole law regarding offences
against property, purified from an incredible quantity of ancient
rubbish, and advantageously simplified in all its arrangements. The
first of these five acts repealed about one hundred and thirty-seven
different statutes, wholly, or in part, commencing with the charter _De
Foresta_ of Henry III., and ending with the session of 1826. The second
statute removed doctrines which had hitherto been useless lumber in
the statute-book, or laid down general rules applicable to the whole
criminal code. It abolished _in toto_ the benefit of clergy in cases of
felony; appointed certain punishment for offences to which no special
statute affixed any particular penalty; relieved discharged prisoners
from severe official expenses; and purified the law from a load of
obscure and unnecessary verbiage. The third act contained the law of
offences against property in its new and simplified form; bringing the
various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain
description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had
frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished
the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature
of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the
conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, as well as in the
distinctions of larceny and fraud. It also mitigated the rigour of the
penal law, while it recognised four classes of punishments, the offences
being distinctly set forth to which each was applicable. The first of
these punishments was death: the second, transportation for life, or any
term not less than seven years, with the alternative of imprisonment
for not longer than four years, with public whipping; the third was
transportation for any period under fourteen years, or imp