# Manx Primary Source Archive — Transcription

**Source image:** `20260219_143458.jpg`  
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-25 19:26  
**Method:** Automated (Claude Batch API — claude-opus-4-6)

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10

nouncing sentences on convicted prisoners, where
the punishment is discretional, the Govern-
or, or Lieutenant-Governor, the Council, and
the Keys, have invariably consulted together
before deciding; and when, in the year 1817,
a considerable and general alteration of their
criminal law was effected by an act of Tynwald,
the several members of the Keys who concurred
in that enactment, and whose names are to this
Petition subscribed, do severally and solemnly
declare, that unless their House possessed, as
they then conceived, and do still maintain, the
right of tempering justice with mercy, and con-
curring in the discreet modification of the sen-
tences passed, and had they not acted under
this persuasion, no human consideration could
have induced them to pass that law in its pre-
sent shape, or to grant that discretionary power
to the Court as by their exclusion it would
remain constituted.

That your Petitioners have very recently,
and by accident, discovered, that in December,
1821, the Duke of Athol, officially as Governor,
put to the two Deemsters several questions, to
one of which they replied severally, " that the
Court of Gaol-delivery is constituted of the
Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor, the Council,
Deemsters, *and Keys:* that the opinion of that
Court must be collected in the same manner in