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munity, is beyond computation. The Chaplain of Pentonville Prison says, that 1,586 children of convicts were ascertained to be inmates of union workhouses in one year.

Then, again, we have a class of criminal lunatics who must be principally maintained out of the public funds. In the year 1856, the cost in this particular branch of our criminal department was 18,7937. 15s.; viz., county, borough, and parish rates, 10,8997. 15s. 2d.; her Majesty's treasury, 6,2707. 14s. 3d.; private funds of lunatics and their friends, 1,6231. 5s. 7d.; making a total loss to the country of 17,170l. 9s. 5d. for 597 criminal lunatics.*

There is likewise an annual expenditure of about 55,000l. for prisons in Scotland, and of 83,4947. for penal establishments in Ireland, not included in the statistics previously given; to which several items, in all justice, must be added the dead loss to the country sustained by the abstraction of each prisoner's industry, assuming him to be what he ought—an honest, self-sustaining labourer. Taking into consideration the amount of property stolen, the costs of apprehension, prosecution, and punishment of offenders, together with the expenses incurred by the several unions in maintaining the wives and other dependents of prisoners, with the

* Judicial Statistics (Part I.), 1857, pp. xxii.-iii.

money value of their abstracted labour, it may safely be concluded, that the total loss sustained by the nation through our criminals is little short of 9,000,000l. sterling annually, or about 3,000,0007. more than the total cost of the whole pauper population of England and Wales.* Upon contemplating the prodigality of crime and the treasures it exhausts, I cannot help exclaiming with the Roman poet :

"Sævior armis

Luxuria incubuit totumque ulciscitur orbem.

Nullum crimen abest facinusque libidinis, ex quo
Paupertas Romana perit."

But, vast as is the cost of crime, it has far worse and more deplorable evils. When it assumes, as it does in the majority of cases, the form of theft, an attack is made upon the social order of things; which, if unchecked, would end in destroying the whole social fabric by the disruption of those bands which bind a nation together. Dr. Brown, after eloquently describing the sad social condition of a country where each individual of the State would act as the robber, proceeds to observe with reference to the thief:-" He contributes whatever a single heart and a single arm can contribute to make of this social and happy world around us

* Mr. Thompson, of Banchory, computes the annual cost of our criminal population at 6,000,000l.—Social Evils, p. 129.

that unhappy and miserable world which we vainly labour to conceive. His crime is not perpetrated against an individual only, but against the very union that binds society together; and the abhorrence with which his crime is considered is not the mere wrath that is felt by the aggravated individual; it is the sympathizing resentment of all mankind."

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* Philosophy of the Human Mind, lect. lxxxiii.—Of the Negative Duties relating to the Property of others.

CHAPTER X.

CHIEF PREVENTIVE CHECK TO CRIME.

"The duty of society is not only to resent and punish the crimes committed, but also carefully to seek out their causes, and, so far as it is in human power, to remove them."-KING of Sweden.

"It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them." -BECCARIA.

"It will be allowed to be a matter of more importance to remove the causes of evils, than to remedy evils when they have transpired."-REV. HENRY WORSLEY, M.A.

THERE is a striking analogy perceptible between the body politic and the physical microcosm. If the organism of the one be seriously impaired by disease, disordered action, or accident, death ensues as a natural consequence. On the other hand, if social corruptions and distempers multiply within the other, decay and dissolution must inevitably succeed. Our social and physical systems seem to be operated upon alike, and to be governed by

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similar laws. Hence the necessity for wholesome vigilance, wise precaution, and vigorous efforts on the part of the community.

It cannot be denied that as a nation we have suffered an unsightly, ulcerous mass of crime, misery, and vice to accumulate around us. Eager to grasp wealth, achieve conquests, advance commerce, and obtain renown, we have fairly disregarded the claims of the "dangerous classes," and never thought of employing a remedy for those evils which our very successes and advanced civilization may be said to have indirectly produced. Not until these have assumed formidable appearances, and threatened the destruction of the whole social fabric, have we betaken ourselves to the work of amelioration. Foreign historians have painted the panorama of English life, its social anomalies and abnormal condition; and some of the most gifted minds in Europe have entertained melancholy forebodings, and uttered prophetic warnings with reference to England's doom and England's duty-not, I trust, to be verified. Legislators, political economists, and philanthropists are now impressed with the opinion that, if such evils as are now growing up in our midst be not timely checked and finally repressed, untold calamities must indubitably follow. Hence the desultory efforts now being made to suppress crime, reform the criminal, reclaim the outcast,

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