“_Second Class._--A return of the number of EXECUTIONS which took place in England and Wales during the three years ending the 31st day of December, 1836, and also during the three years ending the 31st day of December, 1839, together with the number of _commitments_ in each of those periods respectively for offences _capital_, on the 2d day of January, 1834. Also, the total number of _convictions_ for the same offences, together with the _centesimal proportions of convictions to commitments_ in each of those periods respectively. “The facts set forth upon the face of these returns furnish very strong evidence, indeed, to prove the utter _inutility of_ CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS as a means of preventing or repressing crime. “What are the facts? “We find that in one county (Stafford) in the year 1834 the sentence of one convict for _murder_ was _commuted_. In that year the commitments for murder were six, and in the following year the commitments for that crime were also six. Thus the commutation of the sentence in that instance was followed by neither a _diminution_ nor an _increase_ of commitments for murder. “It is sufficient for the argument of the advocates of abolition of capital punishment to show that the suppression of the barbarous exhibitions of the scaffold would _not_ necessarily cause an _increase_ of heinous offences; for if the amount of crime were to remain the _same_ under laws _non-capital_ as under those which are _capital_, to prefer the latter to the former would evince a passion for the wanton and unavailing destruction of human life, unspeakably disgraceful to the Government or Legislature of any civilized country. “In Derbyshire, in the year 1835, we find a similar result following a commutation of sentence for murder to that which followed a similar commutation in the county of Stafford in the preceding year; namely, the same number of _commitments for murder_ in the year following the commutation as in that in which it occurred,--being two in each; thus, also, in this instance, there was neither increase nor diminution of the crime of murder in the year following that of the commutation, judging from the number of commitments. “In Warwickshire, in the year 1835, the sentence of a convict for murder was commuted, the number of commitments for the crime in that year being five, whereas in the year following there was but one commitment. In this instance, then, we have not only _no increase_ of the crime of murder, but an actual _diminution_ amounting to four. “In Westmoreland, in the year 1835, there was one commutation; and the commitments in the year following showed neither an _increase_ nor _diminution_, being two in each.