1828. ] General Increase of Crime. 3&V 



of improvement ; but we doubt whether it is by attention to these mea- 

 sures alone, that the amount of annual crime against property, will in 

 any very considerable degree be abated. 



As the best theories, unless well looked after, are apt to do mischief 

 by running into extremes, we are a little afraid that, among the various 

 modes of reducing the average of crime that presses upon the country, 

 the simply obvious one, of punishing the parties who commit it, has 

 fallen undeservedly into neglect. The plan has its merits although it 

 is simple and self evident : in many countries, it is very much relied on ; 

 and, in our own, the principle upon matters not connected with human 

 frailty is decidedly recognized. The farmer troubles himself little 

 (for he knows it would be to little purpose) to fence round his poultry 

 yard, and guard it by watchmen at every corner from the attacks of the 

 fox : but he shoots the criminal the first time he catches him : and expe* 

 rience shews us that the same party so treated, seldom offends again. 

 We are a little afraid protesting that no person can be more forward 

 than ourselves, in the cause of real humanity that rogues have beeii 

 rather too much petted, during the run of philanthropy, in the course 

 of the last ten years. The feeling which has led to this result is 

 supposing it to have occurred honourable ; but it is not so entirely a 

 feeling of disinterested benevolence as the warmest of its disciples 

 imagine ; and the cause of its extent and popularity may very easily be 

 traced. The vulgar proverb of " First come, first served," has an appli- 

 cation in all the affairs of human life : the calamity before us that which 

 obtrudes itself upon our notice we are always very anxious to remedy : 

 sufferings far greater, and deservings far more meritorious, not decidedly 

 thrust upon our observation, pass for very little. The criminal por- 

 tion of mankind are thrown, by their position, out of the great mass, and 

 under our especial notice ; and they reap the benefit, very largely, of 

 that location. Prisons are public institutions : we visit them : feel con- 

 cerned, nationally, in their competent regulation : then take a pride in 

 them ; and in the course of all this acquire a feeling of compassion for 

 the individuals who inhabit them. The same quantity of misery, or a 

 tenfold greater degree, existing abroad in the crowd and bustle of the 

 world, we lament but it does not come before us in a ready and 

 distinctive form- and, moreover, not within such a compass that we can 

 relieve it. We cannot give bibles and flannel waistcoats to a whole 

 world : and we are apt to give them without any inquiry, which would 

 be too tedious or too troublesome, into peculiar merits to the people 

 who stand before us, and who are without them : we forget, when we 

 extend our charity to a thief, who is sentenced to twelve months impri- 

 sonment for some tolerably considerable crime, that many an honest 

 man is in quite equal need of that same charity, who is not in the way to 

 receive it, simply because he has performed those duties and obeyed 

 those laws, which the whining knave before us has refused to attend to. 

 We do not mean here to enter into the question, of how much good 

 is effected by the prison honorary regulators * how much ' ' criminal 

 reform ?" We believe that, practically, the " reform" produced is so 

 small as not to be worth notice. The creed of a thief in prison, and the 

 tale of a deserter who goes over to the enemy, are likely to be what the 

 French hair-dresser's religion was " Any thing that shall please his 

 lordship !" The persons who are not so mixed up, in belief or interest, 

 with the reforming party, as to be capable of forming an opinion (and 

 M.M. New Series VOL. V. No. 28. 2 Z 



