Volume III
|
WILLIAM DELLICOT Convicted of Petty Larceny, in July, 1751, and his Estate forfeited for stealing a Penny Sessions, July, 1751, for Salisbury (Wiltshire), of petty larceny, for stealing one penny, whereby his effects, consisting of bank-notes of one hundred and eighty pounds and twenty guineas in money, were forfeited to the bishop as lord of the manor; but his lordship humanely ordered one hundred pounds of the money to be put to interest for the benefit of the wretch's daughter, twenty pounds to be given to his aged father, and the remainder to be returned to the delinquent himself. Thus have we shown the punishment for stealing a single penny. Now then let us look at that of a public defaulter, to the amount of thousands and tens of thousands of pounds. The following, taken from the term's notes, is the sentence passed upon this wholesale peculator:-- " In the Court of King's Bench, on the 19th of June, 1809, Valentine Jones, Esq., late Commissary-General in the West Indies, was brought up to receive the judgment of the Court, having been found guilty of fraud and peculation, to the amount of eighty-seven thousand one hundred and seventy-nine pounds, being but a moiety of the sum of which the country had been defrauded by his collusion with Mr Mathew Higgins. Judge Gross, after commenting upon the enormity of the offence, said that whatever other proceedings might be instituted, it was the duty of the Court to pass such sentence as would be likely to prevent future peculation, and therefore adjudged him to be imprisoned three years in his Majesty's jail of Newgate, and be incapacitated from serving his Majesty in future." |