1828.] General Increase of Crime. 339 



Society is only kept together by the law, or understanding, that the 

 privations which a man cannot remove by his industry, or his ingenuity, 

 he shall be content to submit to. No doubt, the mere wants of nature 

 render this a principle subject to some limitation : but, protected as we 

 are by the system of the poor-laws, no man can very well reach that 

 extent of distress in England which a legislative inquiry should hold a 

 justification of his infringement upon the property of his more fortunate 

 neighbour. Poverty, indeed, is a relative, not a definite or positive 

 term. We call a given state of things no matter what " the exceeding 

 distress" of the lower classes of England. But, in the very same breath, 

 probably, we are calling out for measures to prevent the British lower 

 classes from " sinking to a level with the lower classes of Ireland !" In 

 England, we find the condition of the lower orders bad. In Ireland it 

 is a great deal worse. If we go to Poland or Russia, the state of things 

 is still worse. In China, so bad, that men may be hired to suffer death 

 for a small sum of money. Heaven forbid, therefore, that the condition 

 of the lower classes of England should be farther deteriorated, or that we 

 should be suspected of not desiring to improve it as far as it is capable of 

 being amended ; but still the case must be an extreme one in which we 

 will admit poverty to be an excuse for crime ; because poverty ever has 

 been, and must continue to be, the lot of the million. In despite of phi- 

 losophy or philanthropy, we must have hewers of wood and drawers of 

 water : persons whose lives are passed in a state of constant labour, 

 repaid sometimes by narrow means of subsistence, and always by very 

 narrow means of enjoyment. All that the freest government can do is to 

 give every man the right to change his station in society : the higher 

 station that is to say, the higher state of possession and enjoyment 

 must be the case of exception, not the ordinary rule. Because master 

 carpenters, twenty years ago, could usually read, and journeymen very 

 frequently could not, it would be a delusion to infer that, if all now 

 read, all can be masters, and that the operative part of carpenters' 

 work can cease. 



Therefore, as poverty can no more be got rid of out of society, than it 

 is possible to get rid of disease or death, we should be prepared to take 

 almost any course however apparently strict against offenders or 

 really costly, if necessity were, to the community rather than admit the 

 theory, that crimes against property must necessarily be the result of 

 a state of a low paid labour. There is certainly no pecuniary expense 

 to the community, at which we would not resist this principle ,> for, of 

 all modes of paying labour, that by crime must be the most endless and 

 the very worst. It is already enacted, that the rich in England shall 

 maintain the absolutely poor : that no man, on any pretence, shall be 

 without subsistence. This is much to have declared ; although, as a 

 customary gift soon grows into a debt, we are challenged directly, that 

 this provision immense as it would be esteemed, if now bestowed for 

 the first time is not enough. But, although we think any material 

 extension of that charity needless, and pretty nearly, we are afraid, 

 impossible ; yet if put to our choice we would rather attempt its 

 extension we would rather, in fact, pay for " emigration," or pay any 

 demand, however exorbitant than recognize the fatal principle that 

 crime against property is a necessary consequence of what is called 

 " popular distress." Because society is not the dream of an idealist. 

 " Distress" or a state of privation to express as nearly as possible 



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