"We are sure," observes Dr. Hamilton, " all things being equal, that the least tutored mind will be the most addicted to grosser vices. Knowledge, like every blessing, may be abused to evil; ignorance can never be turned to good.” * "Ignorance and crime," says the Bishop of Bath and Wells, "were almost synonymous terms." + "That bad training and ignorance are powerful causes of crime," remarks Mr. Frederic Hill, late Inspector of Prisons, "none who are at all familiar with the general state and history of criminals can for a moment doubt. Sometimes, certainly, wellinstructed and apparently well-trained men are found among criminals, but they stand out as rare exceptions; the great majority of those that have come under my observation have been found to have been either greatly neglected in childhood and to be grossly ignorant, or, at best, to possess merely a quantity of parrot-like and undigested knowledge."+ "That the increase of crime is in no way connected with the increase of education," writes the Rev. Henry Worsley, "is evident. The proportion of criminal offenders able to read and write well is * On Popular Education. + Speech at the Anniversary Festival of the Philanthropic, Red Hill, held at the London Tavern, April 30, 1856. Crime; its Amount, Causes, and Remedies, p. 36. exceedingly small as compared with the large sum of those who cannot read at all, and of those who read imperfectly. The sum of these two lastmentioned classes yields a proportion of 90·17 per cent. to the whole number of offenders."* Again, Mr. John Foster, the essayist, defending education from the attacks made upon it as affording greater facilities to crime, observes :— "The result of special inquiries of extensive compass into the wretched history of juvenile reprobates has fortified the promoters of schools with evidence that it was not from these seminaries that such noxious creatures were to go out, to exemplify that the improvement of intelligence may be the greater aptitude for fraud and mischief. No, it was found to have been in very different places of resort that these wretches had been, almost from their infancy, accomplished for crime. Indeed, as if Providence had designed that the substantial utility should be accompanied with a special circumstance to confound the cavillers, the children and youth of the schools were found to have been more generally preserved from falling into the class of premature delinquents than a moral calculator, keeping in sight the quality of human nature, and the immediate pressure of so much temptation, would have * Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity, p. 1 7. I ventured to anticipate upon the moderate estimate of the efficacy of instruction." Finally, Jeremy Bentham remarks:-"The dissemination of knowledge has not augmented the number of crimes, nor even the faculty of committing them; it has only diversified the means of their accomplishment. And how has it diversified them? By gradually substituting those which are less hurtful."t I now conclude the present chapter; and if I have been too prolix in citing authorities favourable to my individual views as regards ignorance and crime, it has been with a laudable desire to rebut and refute opinions most unwarrantable, unpopular, and injurious. * Essay on Popular Ignorance. CHAPTER V. INTEMPERANCE. Crime legally considered, and intemperance in its ordinary acceptance, are the concomitants of each other."F. G. NEISON, F.L.S. "It is drunkenness that mainly fills our gaols with young transgressors."-REV. F. BISHOP, late Minister to the Poor, Liverpool. 66 Intemperate parents are great producers of juvenile delinquents.. Nine-tenths of the poor miserable outcasts of our streets are their children."-ALEXANDER THOMSON, of Banchory. INTEMPERANCE must be classed not so much among the fluctuating and proximate, as the permanent and remote causes of juvenile delinquency. Here is the fountain-head from which flows the mighty torrent of crime that rolls through our land-the great moral plague which scatters more ills about the universe than ever were contained in the fabled box of Pandora, leaving not even Hope behind, but realizing the prophecy of Milton :Intemperance on the earth shall bring Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew Before thee shall appear." Could but imagination picture to itself the frightful host of crimes and miseries created by this vice, what a horrible and horrent vision would immediately be conjured up before it! The very thought is painful-so painful, indeed, that the mind instinctively recoils from the dreaded and dreadful fancies which it awakens. Whatever differences of opinion may exist with regard to other topics discussed in preceding chapters, I think it will be unanimously admitted that inebriety is a most fruitful source of juvenile crime; that intemperate parents are the creators of vicious and criminal children; and that a very large proportion of the prisoners who fill our gaols belong to the drinking and drunken classes. The coincidence between drunkenness and crime is but too clearly apparent from the various statistics that have been prepared with reference to this subject, and the many painful confessions that have been elicited from criminals themselves by prison inspectors and chaplains respecting the causes of their delinquency; in a great number of instances the admission being "drink,” “drink !”* "Intemperance is the history," to quote the language of Mr. Worsley,† "of far more than half the malefactors who have ended an abandoned * Vide Twelfth Reports of Inspectors-General of Prisons, England and Scotland. Essay on Juvenile Depravity, p. 146. |