1828.] General Increase of Crime. 



answered, that these were the crimes this the rapacity of an invading 

 power towards a conquered, or at least a foreign state. It was not this : 

 it was much more. The invaders discoverers whatever they are to 

 be termed when the natives, who were common spoil, could no longer 

 be robbed or murdered, robbed and murdered each other. These were 

 not the crimes of the " lower classes :" men who, from their gifts, might 

 have been heroes who stand almost worthy of that name in the com- 

 mencement of the story scarcely perceive the means of plunder and 

 the excuse for availing themselves of it when we find them transformed 

 into traitors, pilferers, and assassins. But a case still stronger than that 

 upon the side of wealth, presents itself on the side of poverty. Distress 

 where it really exists disdains and repudiates the spurious license 

 which is attempted to be bestowed upon it. How stood the case twelve 

 months since with the manufacturers of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of 

 Glasgow? when hundreds of thousands of weavels worked sixteen 

 hours a day for a shilling ? and hundreds of thousands more were " out 

 of employ" assisted by public subscription for the means under the 

 poor-laws failed altogether ? Did robberies increase a hundred-fold in 

 these districts for, if there be any truth in the position that we are com- 

 bating, they ought to have done so when half-a-crown a week was the 

 highest allowance to any unemployed individual ? The increase of crime 

 at this time was scarcely any thing. The difference between the com- 

 mitments of 1826 and 1827, in Lancashire, was not worth naming.* At 

 that very moment, for every thief that reduction to oatmeal, and potatoes, 

 and salt herrings, was raising up in Manchester, the desire to drink 

 gin-and- water, and sit in the galleries of the Circus or the Cobourg 

 Theatre, in London, was generating a dozen. The short truth is and 

 no one before the days of philosophy ever doubted it that men commit 

 crime, every where, six times more frequently for the gratification of 

 their desires, than for the relief of their necessities. The play-house and 

 the public-house not the poor-house are the intermediate stages 

 between honest labour and the hulks, or the treadmill, or the gallows. 

 Crime and the commonest description of crime crime against property 

 is not confined to any peculiar class of individuals ; and the motives 

 which lead to it operate upon particular minds in all. A peer will 

 cheat some suckling at the gaming-table ; a merchant double a capital 

 of twenty thousand pounds, by a fraudulent insurance, or a packed 

 bankruptcy ; an actress, who wins a thousand a year by her lawful trade, 

 chooses to be a strumpet. All this dereliction proceeds neither from a 

 love for vice, nor " from the pressure of necessity ;" but it is the same 

 " necessity" the desire to possess a good, or a fancied good with a 

 regardlessness of the means that makes a London shoemaker pick 

 pockets, or a farmer's labourer rob hen-roosts or corn-bins, in pre- 

 ference to ploughing fields, or a London maid-servant insolently quit 

 a competent and honest service, and take to red ribands and the pave for 

 a livelihood ! It is a desire to obtain a certain end, for which we are 

 disposed to hazard certain consequences : the thing gained being, in our 

 view of the chances, and of the condition of society, of more value than 

 the thing given. 



Assuming then that which we think stands sufficiently proved that 



The distressed people committed no crimes, but a few, of violence : scarcely any (be 

 yond the ordinary average) in the way of theft. 



M. M. New Series VOL. V. No, 28. 2 Y 



