J828.] General Increase of Crime. 341 



divested of its ill consequences does more mischief to a community, or 

 to any portion of a community, in one instance, than the discovery that 

 crime was capable of being committed at a heavy risk of after dis- 

 count and suffering ever did in ten. 



We might pursue this argument farther : and it is an utter . error to 

 suppose that it is a question in which the rich only are interested. By 

 the peculiar, though perhaps beneficial, constitution, indeed, of our 

 legislature, it so happens that the parties who make laws are seldom 

 those who suffer much from their violation. This may be well; because 

 a man is likely to be an ill judge always of the extent of punishment or 

 protection requisite in his own cause : but, well or ill, it is the fact. 

 Persons of large wealth and extensive establishments are not the people 

 who are exposed, practically, to depredation ; any more than the man 

 who rides always in his carriage perceives the inconvenience of a 

 crowded or dirty street. The parties who suffer from plunder are the 

 middle classes, who live necessarily in the public haunts of men ; and 

 whose possessions therefore are exposed ; while their means will not 

 defray the charge of an expensive and continued watching : the small 

 householder in the country, who has not the advantage of a ring fence, 

 three miles round, to protect his pigs, or his poultry, or his fruit ; and 

 the shopkeeper in the town, who is obliged to keep his wares in a spot 

 easy of access, while he can neither watch incessantly to guard them him- 

 self, or pay the cost of half-a-dozen sentries to do that for him. And the 

 thing does not stop even here. No persons are so much exposed to 

 depredation from " the poor," as the industrious poor themselves. Plun- 

 der is not nice in its object ; and its great temptation is always, less 

 amount, than security. One half the prosecutions for burglary and 

 " stealing in dwelling-houses," in the agricultural counties, consist of 

 cases where the whole value of the property stolen does not reach ten 

 shillings : the cottages of the labourers who are abroad in the fields are 

 broken into and ransacked by those who will not labour or, we will say, 

 by those who have support from the parishes, because they cannot obtain 

 labour. Take this last to be the case, is it one jot less necessary why 

 the offence should be extirpated? Such trash as to admit any excuse for 

 attacks upon property, short of that on which the culprit was abso- 

 lutely destitute of the means of life, could only end in the general 

 depopulation of society. 



From this statement, then, it will probably be inferred, that we should 

 be inclined very guardedly to admit any case of necessity as a plea for 

 the commission of crime. And we confess that, even at the hazard of 

 occasional severity much as our feelings would shrink from the details 

 of such a course we should be content, as the lesser evil to reject that 

 principle. Fortunately, however, we suspect that we shall not very 

 hastily be put to this trial. The effect of " distress" of that state of 

 affairs and commerce in the country, which refuses to the industrious and 

 steady labourer a competent supply of the necessaries of life for himself 

 and his family the quantity of crime resulting from this cause no 

 doubt must be something ; but its amount, we believe, is very far smaller 

 than is often assumed or imagined. 



If it were not that a simple possibility, by the mere force of being 

 confidently asserted a given number of times, often paeses, without exa- 

 mination, for a truth, it would be surprising to find the scarcity of 

 employment alleged as a leading cause of the existence of crime, when 



