“Our penal code has occupied a hundred sittings, each four hours long, without reckoning the time it took me to prepare it. It now goes to the Great Commission: thence to the Council of State;—then there will be an inquiry: and then it will go to the representative body, which will nominate another commission; all the discussions will be resumed—and there will be three debates in the Assembly: this is the enfer through which I have to pass. * * *
“I am far from satisfied. I have been compelled to make many sacrifices. The expositive part is mutilated. The instructions of the Council of State required that a maximum of punishment should be established, which the judges may diminish. And this has enervated the whole law. Yet it is based upon your views. Every crime is defined—there is an exposition, such as it is,—aggravation and attenuation are introduced,—private and public offences follow the appropriate order. This is a great point: it shows the practicability of your plan—that it is not, as the reporters of the Penal Code in France decided, ‘a beautiful speculation of a study.’ It is evident that this manner of treating Penal Law, is the most complete and the most compact. The punishment of death is preserved, but almost only in terrorem, and for cases so grave, that the public sentiment would scarcely be wounded by its infliction.”
“A letter was read, which had been directed, by his Excellency Joze da Silva Carvalho, to Senhor Sepulveda, (a deputy,) accompanying the works presented by the illustrious J. Bentham to the august Congress. Senhor Sarmento proposed, that out of respect to the illustrious Jurisconsult, an exception should be made from the rules of the House, and an honourable mention made of that present. Senhor Moura was of the same opinion, adding, that the Regency should be directed to order that those works be translated into Portuguese. Senhor Malgalhaés advised, that a copy of the Act should be sent, by the same channel, to the Patriarch of the Constitutionalists.—All which was agreed to.”
Titles (by Subject) 