1827.] Notes for the Month. 283 



This increase in the amount of offenders against the law is distressing ; 

 but few persons who are in the habit of observing what goes on before 

 them, we think, will be astonished at it ; on the contrary, it would have 

 been surprising to us, and we dare say to a great many others, if, under all 

 the circumstances of the country, crimes against property (the species 

 of crimes .which has so largely multiplied) had remained stationary. 



The average gains of an able-bodied labourer in England, according to 

 a late grand jury charge (which was very deservedly applauded, and will 

 be not at all attended to) of Lord Chief Justice Best, are very little, if 

 any thing, more than the smallest amount upon which, at English prices, 

 such a labourer can support existence. If he has a wife and family, for 

 him to live is impossible : he must come upon the parish as a pauper. 

 It is difficult for him, if he strolls abroad, to move three yards in any 

 direction off the king's highway, without being a trespasser. If he is seen 

 with a gun, he is likely to be apprehended, or the weapon taken from 

 him, as a poacher. His youth is passed in very hard labour and in ex- 

 ceeding penury ; his old age has no hope of refuge but the workhouse ; 

 and we are just now giving him what we call " education" and per- 

 haps doing wisely in giving it to him; but one of its first results must be 

 to make him feel completely the misery of his own condition, and see the 

 absence of all prospect of his improving it. Now men who have know- 

 ledge enough, to understand the value of those comforts and advantages 

 in others, of which they themselves are destitute and which they have no 

 chance of obtaining, are not subject to any violent temptation to be honest; 

 especially if they happen to perceive that they have nothing at all to fear, 

 and a great deal to hope, from being otherwise. And, although it is 

 difficult to quarrel with a charity that benefits any creature in distress 

 even the undeserving, still the care and pains which are so sedulously 

 bestowed by some sectarians upon the souls and bodies (peculiarly) of 

 criminals, are ill examples to many who are not criminals ; and who 

 equally on necessity find their souls or bodies little cared about, 

 while they remain without the larcenous or felonious qualification. The 

 conversions to piety and fatness of burglars and highwaymen and the 

 bestowals of bibles and breeches by preference upon utterers of base 

 coin and stealers in dwelling-houses, must raise strange misgivings occa- 

 sionally in the minds of the fw-conderaned, who are not fatted, or petted, 

 by any body. And the superior joy over the "one sinner" that "repents" 

 to the ten thousand "just men" who " have no need of repentance," is 

 a better religious maxim than a political one. But the most unfortunate 

 part of the affair is, that any distressed man who can read, may very 

 speedily satisfy himself that the transportation for life which is the worst 

 sentence that he has to apprehend at the close of a career of crime 

 that is, of the species of crime which he desires to commit, the crime 

 of robbery will place him in a condition far more desirable in a distant 

 country, than the best conduct could ever have given him a chance of, if 

 he had stuck to honesty, and remained in his own. 



Mr. Cunningham says of our convict colony of Australia (we must 

 extract the result of his statements rather even than abridge them, for our 

 limits will not admit of much detail) " New South Wales is a rich and 

 fertile country, possessing a climate more salubrious than that of England, 

 and, even to Englishmen, more agreeable. The settlers (these are the 

 convicts, and the descendants of convicts) are already surrounded with all 

 the comforts and appliances of civilization. The single town of Sydney, 



202 



