340 Police of the Metropolis. 



what is meant for the terms of high or low wages, or high or low paid 

 labour, are very indefinite distress is a condition of things which 

 always must exist. In England as long as it continues to be a coun- 

 try probably, it will be the absolute failure of a market for labour and 

 that alone that will in future limit the supply. We cannot have a 

 limited extent of soil, with a full population freed from all the causes 

 which go to impede increase : saved by science and knowledge from the 

 ravages of disease: by moral lessons and early marriages from the 

 scourges of debauchery and vice : dependent, moreover, for existence 

 as a manufacturing population in great numbers upon the demand of 

 foreign markets, which accident may close for a time, or entirely destroy : 

 this state of affairs cannot continue any where long, before an increas- 

 ing population will overshoot the common demand for labour, and, con- 

 sequently, reduce the wages of that labour to such a point as we may 

 frequently term a condition of distress. It would be better, therefore, 

 as it seems to us, for the country to establish any scheme, however costly, 

 for getting rid of its surplus labour deportation nay, the plentiful 

 maintenance of all unemployed labour in idleness if so desperate a 

 resort were necessary than to assume that persons ill paid, or unpro- 

 fitably employed, must relieve themselves by crime, or to allow any " dis- 

 tress" short of the mere want of subsistence from which the existing 

 law secures them to form an excuse for their engaging in it. 



We feel that this point is likely to be an unpopular one ; but it is 

 impossible for us not to maintain it to the utterance. We admit the pres- 

 sure of that case which compels a man to live upon the " parish allow- 

 ance :" but we cannot admit that any person with that allowance has a 

 claim to rob : we could but look for this result, if we repealed the law 

 which compels us to provide such persons with the means of subsistence. 

 It is a hard state of things for a man to have to live upon potatoes and 

 salt. Few of our parish poor live quite so hardly as this ; but, even where 

 they do, they are as well off as a great part of the Highland peasantry ; 

 as well off as the more fortunate part of the Irish peasantry. And, how- 

 ever it may be a work of humanity and policy, as far as possible, to aid 

 them, if, in a legislative point of view, we admit their distress to form 

 any excuse for the commission of crime, we at once open the door to a 

 continued system of plunder, which would make every man his own 

 judge of his claim to the goods of his neighbour, and could only end in 

 practically annulling the security of property altogether. Because the 

 right to rob apart from the consequences which our laws in general 

 affix to it is a glorious and most estimable boon ! No man feels any 

 abstract aversion to plunder no soldier hesitates to strip the country of 

 the enemy : the only ban under which the act lies, is that which the law 

 where it talks of hanging has thought fit to impose upon it. Of ten 

 labourers, therefore, whose means of subsistence for themselves and 

 families are limited to the lowest amount at which that subsistence can 

 be obtained if, when two quit this ill-paid labour, and live by robberies, 

 we listen to " distress" as an excuse for the election what is the lan- 

 guage that we hold out to the other eight ? what but that they have 

 done themselves much injustice, by neglecting an immunity which has 

 proved most profitable and agreeable to their fellows ? With all that is 

 heard of the pollution of prisons, and of the effect of ill example in con- 

 finement upon incipient offenders, we believe that the example of unpro- 

 secuted or unpunished offence offence successful in its object, and 



