JB/116/326/002

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N.S. Wales

28 May 1802

5. Ends
3. Incapacitation

If so much as one single man individual
If whose had sentence consigned him for
these seven years to the Hulks were to be confined by the
Hulk-keeper, with or without an authority from the
Secretary of State for though it were/for no more than for for any additional authority, which
length of time, though it were no more than a month,+ what
an outcry and we should hear! would be heard!—and certainly not
without cause. Here in the instance of hundreds or even thousands a length of punishment declared
by legal sentence to be for three seven years, is converted
by a Secretary of State the servants of the Crown+
into a punishment sentence, virtually for life to a sentence intended at least to for life
to a lease of the punishment
of punishment for ninety nine or any greater number of years (to
use the phrase employd by lawyers on a different occasion)
if the wretch should so long live.

+1 a stretch of power
never yet I suppose
so much as
dreamt of

+2 converted
in an underhand
way, by secret
a sort of
fraud upon the legislature,

A power to render the punishment endless under the pretence
of changing the place scene of it—a power to augment the quantity
and to augment it to infinity on under the pretence of a
mere change of place—a power to level all distinctions level equallize at a stroke
and reduce stoke/screw up to one tyrannical line of uniformity all
those distinctions which the training of which had for
near a century and a half been affording occupation
to the legislature a power to of this sort not so much
obtained from stolen as it were from Parliament by a pretence true to the
ear, false in substance a power of working oppression
by wholesale on pretence of thus defeating the intentions
of Parliament the legislature, on pretence of providing continuing to provide for the fulfilment of them in the
accustomed mode—a power of exercising oppression and
upon the largest scale, on pretence of containing the administration
of justice on the ordinary channel established footing+—such is
the power which the on this |^^^| occasion the servants
of the crown contrived to steal as it were from Parliament.

+ the power of working
all these enormities by
means which if eventually
fallacious, were
supposed at least to
be effectual.

For such a surprize for such a fraud upon the legislature
in what part of our history shall would a parallel be to be found?
I know not—unless it be in the act statute of Henry the 8th which gave
to the proclamations of that tyrant the force of acts of Parliament
or the act statute of Richard the 2d which |^^^|

The power in the least enormous of these two ancient cases is in itself certainly
much more enormously extensive: but the disproportion would almost vanish
upon any correct
upon comparison a due and
attentive consideration
of the difference of
the times.

Identifier: | JB/116/326/002"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 116.
Date_1	1802-07-09	Marginal Summary Numbering	16-18
Box	116	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	326	Info in main headings field	n. s. wales
Image	002	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	b14 / b2
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	37859
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