1828.] General Increase of Crime. 355 , 



the trade of theft. The object then would be, if possible, to devise some 

 species of penalty, or course of punishment, which shall be sufficiently 

 displeasing to deter offenders from crime, and yet not of a nature from 

 which, as disproportioned to the offence, humanity will recoil : and this 

 desideratum sufficiently difficult to be supplied brings us rather to 

 one of the circumstances which we set out by charging as a cause of 

 part of the recent increase of crime the stoppage or failure of those 

 drains, by which as short a time back as twenty or thirty years since, the 

 depraved or doubtful part of our population, was accustomed, in a con- 

 siderable degree, to be carried off. 



During the whole of the last twelve or fourteen years, the diminution 

 of our military and naval establishments, has removed a valuable drain 

 that we possessed, for the incipient knavery of the country. Appre- 

 hensions, we recollect, were entertained, lest the kingdom should be 

 flooded with offenders, at the time when great numbers of men were 

 discharged from our army ; but the real probability of inconvenience 

 lay in the presence of those who would cease to be enlisted into it. We > 

 know that we shall be met upon the threshold of this part of our discussion 

 -by the clamour against ' ' looking at our army and navy" as ' ' places 

 of retreat for criminals :" but we will go through with the argument, 

 whatever termination it is to have : there must be a dust-hole in some 

 corner of every house ; and the modern philosophy, which says there 

 shall be none, only concludes by leaving the dust scattered up and down^ 

 trampling under foot, and doing mischief every where. The fact, too, 

 is one over which the optimists will find it hard to get : the enlistments 

 for the army and navy, in the time of the war, did purge the country of 

 its scum, and turned it as the manure which is a nuisance in one place 

 becomes valuable in another to purposes of utility and advantage. The - 

 recruiting parties cleansed, periodically, the villages and the towns. 

 The poachers, fowl stealers, garden robbers, and other incipient candi- 

 dates for the gallows, in the counties ; dissolute mechanics, stage-struck 

 footmen, and idle apprentices in the cities ; all those who only waited 

 for the bribe of a few guineas in hand, and a few days' drunkenness, 

 to commit some offence which would have fixed their destinies as rogues 

 for life : all these, and a great many others, who had committed small 

 crimes, and whom their neighbours or masters thought better got rid of 

 than prosecuted : all this rabblement amid the rejoicings of their friends- 

 that they met with no worse fate were regularly, and periodically, 

 carried off by "the soldiers." 



Beyond this voluntary enlistment, both in the agricultural districts 

 and in the larger towns, and especially in the metropolis, minor offences 

 were frequently commuted by magistrates, for the immediate entry of 

 the prisoner into the army or navy. It is a sickly nicety that objects to- 

 this : the same aim that did a wrong in shooting at a pheasant, turned to 

 good account when pointed at a Frenchman : the wavering principles of 

 the parties were more likely to be fixed by a drill serjeant than by Mrs. 

 Fry: and the worst of them were at least as fit to figure in the 40th 

 Foot, as to be restored with the help of greased locks and hymn books 

 to a place in civil society. In fact, at all events, the profligate, in esse, 

 and in posse, were the men who recruited our armies, and received 

 bounties as substitutes in our militia : and it was well for them and the 

 country that they did so. They made first-rate soldiers ; and were made- 

 good subjects : the observation of the elders was of latter years when* 



2 Z 2 



