32 
THE LATE MR. BARRY. 
energies. Correspondence with the provinces had to he maintained, statistics pre¬ 
pared and arranged, members of Parliament to be addressed through their consti¬ 
tuents, and every possible pressure brought to bear on the legislature in order to 
secure the success of the amendment. None but himself could ever really know the 
actual extent of the efforts by which Barry, almost single-handed, strove to accom¬ 
plish his end. The philanthropist kept a list of friendly legislators who conld be 
relied upon for ‘franking’ his voluminous correspondence, and estimated that his 
anti-forgery law agitation alone required ‘ franks ’ in lieu of postage to the value 
of one thousand pounds. The most remarkable evidence obtained by Barry of the 
growing opposition to the death-punishment was a petition from more than a thou¬ 
sand bankers presented by Brougham to the House of Commons on the 25th of May, 
1830. To such testimony the legislature could not turn a deaf ear. Macintosh’s 
amendment was carried against the Government by a majority of 13. The Lords, 
however, took alarm at this innovation, and re-enacted the capital penalty. 
“In 1832, Sir Thomas Denman, then Attorney-General, brought in a measure 
totally to abolish death-punishment for forgery. Again Barry was at work with 
his correspondence, petitions, and statistics, and lie had the satisfaction to see the 
Bill go up to the House of Peers. It was near the end of the session when the Lords 
took up the Bill. After much discussion it came back to the Commons altered by 
the re-enactment of the capital penalty for the forgery of wills and powers of 
attorney.” 
By a singularly sagacious use of circumstances, Mr. Barry obtained, as the 
Bill was passing through its last stage in the House of Commons, assurances 
from the minister which rendered the Lords’ amendment inoperative, and no 
person after this ever suffered death for forgery. 
“We must not omit to mention that at this stage of his career Mr. Barry was 
nobly supported by the eloquent pen of John Sydney Taylor in the columns of the 
‘ Morning Herald.’ A close intimacy existed between them. After Taylor’s death, 
Barry edited a selection of his Avritings, and never ceased to the close of his own life 
to speak with affectionate admiration of the talents and generous nature of his de¬ 
parted friend. From the report of the committee, Barry’s course for some years 
appears to have been marked by splendid triumphs. The year 1832 had witnessed, in 
addition to the passing of Denman’s forgery Bill, the abolition of capital punishment 
for false coining, and also for horse stealing, sheep stealing, cattle stealing, and 
stealing in a dwelling-house, the last four measures being carried by Mr. William 
Ewart. In 1833, Mr. Barrett Lennard carried his proposition to exempt house¬ 
breaking (as distinguished from burglary) from the extreme penalty of the law. In 
1834 and 1835, on the motion of Mr. Ewart, returning from transportation, stealing 
letters from the Post Office, and sacrilege were removed from the catalogue of offences 
punishable with death; and in the former year the disgraceful provision for ‘ hang¬ 
ing in chains ’ was erased from the statute book, attempts having been made to re¬ 
vive that odious practice at Leicester, and some other assize towns. In 1836, a Bill 
passed into a law, on the motion of Mr. Aglionby, for putting an end to the custom 
of executing within forty-eight hours after sentence all persons convicted of murder, 
—a custom which had occasionally cut off, with cruel precipitation, those wffiose 
innocence was discovered too late. In 1837, a large number of capital offences was 
at once swept away by Lord John Russell’s Acts. They included ‘cutting and 
maiming,’ and rick-burning, for which the punishment of death was altogether 
abolished; and attempts to murder, robbery, burglary, and arson, where it was re¬ 
served only in cases of extreme aggravation. The importance of these Acts is best 
illustrated by the fact that the number of persons sentenced to death, which in 1837 
amounted to 438, had fallen in 1S39 to 56. In 1840, for the first time in the history 
of Parliament, a resolution for the total abolition of the punishment of death was 
moved by Mr. Ewart, and no fewer than ninety-four members voted in its favour. 
In 1845, the committee of the Society could congratulate itself upon the fact, mainly 
the result of its labours, that whereas in 1829, the year after its formation, twenty- 
four persons had been hung in London for offences other than murder, for twelve 
years preceding 1844 not one execution for any offence but murder had disgraced 
