TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 103 
than that which we are now permitted to derive merely from a comparison of the 
numbers wholly uneducated that appear in the marriage registers and in the criminal 
calendars. 
Let us, however, return to the comparative progress of “ education,” up to the 
mark of bare reading and writing among the population at large, and those brought 
up before the criminal tribunals of their country. Here, also, we see a great number 
of curious coincidences in the contemporaneous increase of marks in the marriage 
registers, and of the proportion of persons able neither to read nor write in the cri- 
minal calendars of the country or district. There are likewise some anomalies, but 
the general result is a decrease of the proportion wholly uneducated in the criminal 
calendars at double the rate that it is found to decline in the marriage registers, after 
reckoning for the difference of the intervals between the data yielding the figures 
now compared. The decline is scarcely perceptible in the western Celtic districts, 
and next to them, it is least observable in the great northern and central mining and 
manufacturing counties, where it has declined only one-thirteenth in five years, while 
in all the rest of the kingdom it has declined about one-tenth, except in the northern 
and midland agricultural counties (contiguous to the comparatively stationary mining 
and manufacturing counties), in which it has declined upwards of one-seventh. We 
thus find the decline of total ignorance to be slowest in the most criminal and the 
most ignorant districts, in which, nevertheless, its decline among those in gaol is 
_ greater than in society at large; everywhere indicating the very doubtful quality of 
_ a great proportion of that which barely helps its recipients out of the category of 
the totally ignorant. 
___ The proportion of criminals “‘ reading and writing ill” is seen now to be precisely 
double that of the criminals “unable to read and write,’”’ having increased no less 
than 5°7 per cent. in the first period of five years, and 0°4 per cent. during a subse-~ 
quent period of three years, making a total of 6"1 per cent. inthe eight years. The class 
of “‘ superior instruction” being very limited (in fact, in the centesimal proportions, 
always under a whole figure), and likewise unvarying, this increase must necessarily 
be derived from only one other of the four classes, besides those who can neither read 
nor write. From this we have seen that there is a subtraction of 3°1 per cent. in 
_ five years, and 1°1 per cent. in three more, making a total of 4*2 per cent. out of the 
6°1 per cent. of augmentation observed in the column of “‘ reading and writing ill.” 
The other 1°9 per cent. is derived from the colump of “reading and writing well,” 
in which the decline during the first five years was no less than 2°6 per cent., but a 
retrograde movement during the last three years has reduced this proportion to !'9. 
It is, however, to this heading that I would call especial attention, for this alone 
_ affords evidence, both conclusive and satisfactory, of a moral progress. A gradual 
_ change in the standard designated ‘‘ reading and writing well” could alone account 
for this decline of one-fifth in the proportion of those possessed of this amount of 
‘instruction ; but I would fain hope that it is a correct indication of a real improve- 
‘ment in the moral tone of the middle classes generally, springing from the source of 
all truth and all goodness. Even if any portion of it arise from a practical elevation 
of the standard designated by the heads of each column, this fact will only render 
‘still stronger the conclusion already drawn from the increased proportion of those 
reading and writing ill, which would have been yet greater, but for the retention of 
‘some that might have been included in that column in the number of the totally un- 
instructed. 
held REF Him me As 
