1828.] General Increase of Crime. 359 



The advantage of a system like this would be, that we could thin the 

 ranks of the offenders who, under the present law, are over and over 

 again, turned out to prey upon the country, without either producing 

 a ruinous expense to the public, or shutting the individuals themselves 

 out from all chance of retrieving their station in society. Judges of 

 assize, or magistrates at sessions, might be empowered, on a man's 

 second conviction for minor offences, or on his first conviction for a 

 felony, to sentence him, instead of transportation, to a certain number of 

 years of military service in the colonies. The men would be secure in this 

 situation. They would be past the power of doing mischief. And they 

 would be ten times over in a better position to reform than if they were 

 in confinement : for they would be living in society, and actually per- 

 forming a useful duty in the state : subject to such surveillance, as incom- 

 parably better than withdrawing them from the world compelled them 

 .to honest and active conduct in it. Such a punishment would unite two 

 of the most important, and yet most difficult qualities to blend in any 

 description of penalty : it would be very much dreaded by offenders, 

 and yet not of such a character that we could have an aversion to inflict- 

 ing it. Of all conditions distasteful to a thief, there is none so very 

 abhorrent as the state of a soldier. Discipline, constant exertion, the 

 necessity for prompt submission, without murmur or appeal; all these 

 are circumstances the most repugnant to those tastes and habits which 

 he quits the course of honesty and industry purely to indulge : and yet 

 they are inconveniences to which the most scrupulous philanthropist 

 could have no hesitation in subjecting him. He is" made serviceable: he 

 is placed in an excellent school for curing his ill dispositions : he has 

 still the means, by good conduct, of regaining the position that his 

 offences have forfeited : and his name does not go on year after year 

 swelling the criminal calendar : until he is reformed, the country is 

 delivered from him. 



Objections will be taken to this scheme, in which we admit there is 

 no novelty, and which we shall be glad to see displaced by some pro- 

 position more effective : but, in the meantime, we are convinced that if 

 measures are to be adopted, which shall reduce the amount of crime 

 which exists in the country, they must be either some punishments 

 which shall strike terror into offenders, or some arrangement which 

 shall carry them off more rapidly from the country as they do arise. 

 For mere improvements in our regulations of police, we are far from 

 contending that much exertion is not wanting in this department, or 

 that good may not be effected by exertion in it ; but we doubt whether 

 that benefit would be extremely extensive : and it is to be recollected that 

 it would be confined entirely to the metropolis. In the counties nothing 

 could be done by " concurrent jurisdiction," or a change in the " nightly 

 watch :" but the power of getting rid of dangerous and disorderly people 

 there, would be of incalculable value: the curse of the agricultural districts 

 is in the hordes of smaller offenders, who appear over and over again until 

 they are as familiar to the gaoler as his own servants : dividing their 

 time, as we have already observed but always at the common expense 

 between residence in gaol, and engagement in depredation. 

 . In London, too, we are inclined to believe that any improvements 

 which may be effected from a change in the state of the police, will be 

 rather in the getting rid of the mass of disorder and riot which now 

 disgraces our streets, than of the depredation which is committed in 



