1828.] General Increase of Crime. 347 



from resorting to it, unless in cases of very pressing necessity, as a sub- 

 stitute for death ; while, unfortunately, a well-founded opinion has, at 

 the same time, been gaining ground among the people, that it amounted, 

 de facto, to little or no punishment at all. 



Now, without meaning to infer that the increase of crime to which we 

 allude, has proceeded entirely, or even mainly, from the diminished seve- 

 rity of punishment that has taken place, yet it is certain that the two 

 facts have been coeval : and we take it to be mere nonsense to talk of 

 the non-effectiveness of severe punishment in restraining men from 

 crime. Every man carries within his own breast, we rather think, a 

 consciousness which gives the lie to that assertion. When we hear 

 such speculations vented and such matters have been talked by gaolers 

 and turnkeys before Committees of the House of Commons as that . 

 " Criminals fear this punishment, or the other punishment," but are 

 " never afraid of the punishment of death !" we believe some people con- 

 nected with the London magistracy, have been so deluded, or have 

 truckled so far to the cant of an influential party, as to utter these miser- 

 able absurdities when we hear all this, what becomes of the little fact 

 presented to us every day, that criminals are glad to plead " guilty" - 

 guilty upon any minor charge whatever may be the penalty when 

 actually brought to the Old Bailey, rather than take their trial for a 

 capital offence, where they think there is a likelihood that the punish- 

 ment will be inflicted ? To look back to a complete proof of the truth 

 of this position the time of the prosecutions for the forgery and uttering 

 of the one-pound notes ! we find every culprit we don't think there is 

 an exception whom the Bank of England would consent to transport 

 for life, upon a plea of " guilty" to the minor offence the having forged 

 notes in possession gladly availing themselves of that alternative, and 

 most earnestly soliciting it, in preference to meeting the prosecution upon 

 the capital charge ? And, in the same way, with reference even to the 

 minor punishments of which men are undoubtedly less apprehensive- 

 Mr. Cobbett proses about the " desire" of offenders to be transported, or 

 to be sent to the hulks, or to be imprisoned : where are the thieves, in 

 town or country, who, in executing their robberies, fail to take every 

 precaution in despite of this ' ' desire" to escape detection ? We 

 believe that few horse-stealers, or shop-lifters, or sheep-stealers, or 

 housebreakers, when they go away from a man's premises, leave their 

 cards behind them. A gentleman who finds, on getting up in the morn- 

 ing, that his garden or hothouse has been stripped in the course of the 

 night, seldom finds the thief waiting at the door to be taken into cus- 

 tody. That a few rascals, when taken, or convicted, or otherwise 

 without hope of escape, should express satisfaction at the prospect of 

 going to Botany Bay or even that some one individual, every twelve 

 months, should be really desirous of being transported thither, and com- 

 mit some offence for the direct purpose are cases not impossible; and 

 cases, indeed, familiar enough to all men conversant with the adminis- 

 tration of criminal justice. But the first case proves nothing more than 

 the vulgar fact, that a man can afford to make light sometimes of the 

 evil which there is no avoiding ; and to attempt to draw any inference 

 from the second, would be about as reasonable as to conclude that men 

 in general in England, find life a burthen, because one individual in every 

 five hundred thousand perhaps gets rid of it by suicide. All silk breeches 



2 Y 2 



