ABSTRACT
Sir James Mackintosh was called to the bar in 1795. In 1813, he became the leading spokesman for the Whig Party. He supported parliamentary reform, advocated law reform, and sought to make prison the principle mechanism of punishment. In the debate on 21 May 1823, Mackintosh proposed to take away the punishment of death from, first, the three classes of offences, larceny from shops, from dwelling houses, and on navigable rivers; second, all the felonies contained in the Black Act of 1723, except wilfully setting fire to dwelling houses, and maliciously shooting; and third, the five felonies created by the Marriage Act. The hon. and learned gentleman had adverted, not very fortunately, to the opinion of foreigners upon this circumstance in our laws, and wrongly imagined that they would infer a disposition to barbarity which the tribunals would not dare to put in execution.
