I think that we all recognise that the enormous growth in crimes of violence is one of the most disturbing social phenomena of our time. In 1948 there were just over 5,000 such crimes committed in this country. In 1958 there were more than 12,000 such crimes and I understand that the figures are keeping up well in the current year. That means there has been an increase of over 100 per cent. on the 1948 figures. I would observe that in 1938 there were well under 3,000 such crimes; so there is an increase of over 400 per cent, on that figure. How—and this is a very pressing problem—how are we going to control and contract this wave of crime that threatens to engulf us and threatens the life and limb of so many ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizens?

There is a school of thought that considers that the reintroduction of corporal punishment is the answer. As you know, corporal punishment was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act of 1948 on the recommendation made by the Cadogan Committee in 1938. It is said that, if we can reintroduce corporal punishment, that will play a large part in overcoming this wave of crimes of violence. There is undoubtedly a very considerable popular clamour in favour of reintroducing corporal punishment. Now, that clamour is, I think, caused by an instinct for revenge. It is not surprising at all that our passion for revenge should be aroused.

Avoidance of emergency legislation

“The people had a right to free discussion. It was free discussion which elicited truth. They had a right to meet.” In these words at a civic reception in Liverpool on October 3, 1838, Lord John Russell proclaimed his belief in one of the basic freedoms of democracy, at the very time that Chartists were mobilising their forces and spreading their doctrine at meetings held throughout the country. This was an untimely declaration which drew upon him the deserved reproof of Sir Robert Peel; it unfortunately seems to have been put later to some rather unscrupulous use by the Chartists, an example of which went to furnish Sir James Graham with offensive material for his attack on the Government during the debate of January 29, 1840, on a motion of no confidence. None the less, even when the Chartist gatherings had attained an advanced stage of organisation, Russell with undaunted singleness of purpose affirmed the Government's resolve not to ask Parliament for additional powers or extraordinary measures, but to rely on the existing laws: “It would be very inadvisable to make any sudden change in the laws of the country and to introduce laws, the same as in some foreign countries, of exception for certain parties; because those laws have two bad effects—the one is that they excite the sympathy of a number of persons who otherwise would have no feeling in common with ill disposed and designing persons; and in the next place, because the people of the country in general, and even those who appear to be the worst disposed, do feel that there is a power and supremacy in the law, to which they are ready to yield obedience; and if a new law were introduced merely for the suppression of those societies, they would not feel that they were treated with the same justice with which they would have been treated if the ordinary laws of the country had been resorted to for their suppression and punishment.”

In the formulary system of classical law the praetor prescribed the form in which the issue should be submitted to the judex, in the sense that he approved the issues agreed by the parties. These issues would be embodied in a formula, but the praetor was under no duty to see that it correctly stated the dispute between the parties, and the possible defences. A judex having been appointed and the formula having been issued and accepted by defendantlitis contestatio took place, and the parties were bound by the formula as by a contract. The judex was instructed or authorised to proceed in accordance with the formula.