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10 BURKE, Edmund. Autograph letter signed. 16 September 1775 “this shocking crime”: Burke as enemy of wreckers Autograph letter signed from Edmund Burke, representing his merchant constituents as MP for Bristol in the sentencing of a wrecker in Glamorgan in 1775 – a rare instance in which Burke demonstrated support for the death penalty. While not unreservedly opposed to capital punishment, he generally sought to limit its use. The letter concerns the sentence to be handed down to Lewis Williams, a farmer of “considerable property” who was convicted of plundering a wreck on the Glamorganshire coast and later executed at Hereford that year. Wreckers had been subject to the death penalty since 1753, but despite the severity of the law there were few convictions for wrecking, and even fewer who received the death penalty. In 1775, Glamorgan became one of the few counties to try to prevent plunder by exemplary executions. “The judge, when he passed sentence, in the most pathetic language, told [Williams], that he must expect no mercy in this world, as he had shown himself insensible to the most affecting misfortunes of his fellow creatures” ( The Scots Magazine , Vol. 37, p. 458). With the case then at appeal stage, Burke requested the verdict and punishment be upheld, conveying the views of his constituents that a clear message needed to be sent to wreckers. Burke writes: “Dear Sir, I enclose to you a letter for Lord Suffolk [Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk, secretary of state for the northern department] in consequence of a very strong representation from several of my constituents. You will I am sure without my solicitation look carefully into the matter. The species of the offence is of the worst. The people of Bristol have long experienced the ill effects of it”. The enclosure, a modern copy of which accompanies this letter, is now in the Bristol Archives; in it, Burke deplores the “barbarous
practice”, noting that though “it is extremely against my natural disposition . . . all legal and just methods should be pursued for the discontinuance of this shocking crime now grown common on the Welsh and Western coasts, and which hardly admits of alleviation even from poverty and ignorance in the offenders, neither of which however, as I understand can be pleaded in this case”. Although records are unclear, just two other individuals are known to have been executed for wrecking: one in Cornwall in 1767 and one in Wales in 1782. Burke had attempted to pass a further law against wreckers earlier the same year. He presented a bill to the Commons for his Bristol merchant constituents “that argued that the hundred was more capable of controlling wrecking within its borders, much more so than they could control other more ‘minor’ offences, such as the killing and maiming of cattle, cutting trees, and destroying hedges and gates, which under existing law already held the hundred liable” (Pearce, p. 71). However, the bill foundered, as the issue of local culpability proved too contentious. The following year, Burke “angered the landed interest by his campaign to make local ratepayers foot the bill for the plundering of vessels wrecked at sea by coastal communities. He had also joined critics of capital punishments to denounce ‘the Butchery which we call justice’” (Correspondence, 3.252–3). Single leaf, quarto (227 × 186 mm), writing on recto only, old paper guard at verso inner edge. Very light handling creasing, ink smudge to date, else in excellent condition. ¶ Bristol Archives ref. 8020/3; Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640–1790 , 1983; Cathryn J. Pearce, Cornish Wrecking, 1700–1860: Reality and Popular Myth , 2010. £2,000 [140299]
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