Moral Statistics of France. 339 



man,* in some of his most interesting social relations, and especially as an 

 agent responsible to his fellows. The first step in the formation of poli- 

 tical society is the institution of certain laws, and the transference of power 

 and authority to some one or more of the community, to enforce their ob- 

 servance under suitable penalties. The great end of all civil institutions 

 is the due protection of person and property, in other words the establish- 

 ment of the rights of all. Mr. Hume informs us,t that "we are to look 

 upon all the vast apparatus of our government as having ultimately no other 

 objector purpose but the distribution oi justice, or in other words, the 

 support of the twelve judges : kings and parliaments, fleets and armies, 

 officers of the court and revenue, ambassadors, ministers and privy coun- 

 cillors, are all subordinate in the end to this part of the administration." 



Without an intimate acquaintance, however, with the facts coming under 

 the head of the Statistics of Crime, penal legislation must be a course of 

 blind and hazardous experiment. We shall not know either the amount 

 of moral evil with which society has to contend, or where existing checks 

 and preventives require to be strengthened. No government, therefore, 

 can stand excused, which neglects the establishment of the data that are 

 required to give a proper direction to criminal jurisprudence, and to ad- 

 vance safely in the work of national iujprovement. 



M. Guerry's work relates wholly to the department of moral Statistics j 

 and we are indebted to him as being the first to exhibit, in a systematic 

 form, the principal facts illustrating the social condition of one of the 

 great European Powers. France offers particular advantages for investi- 

 gations of this nature. Since the year 1792, when the custody of the 

 registers was transferred from the ecclesiastical to the civil authorities, 

 they have been kept with great care and exactness in respect to those 

 facts which develope the laws of population and mortality : but the earliest 

 published documents relating to the administration of criminal justice that 

 can be relied on, do not date earlier than 182.5. It is now the custom in 

 France for the Procureurs G<;u6raux (officers nearly corresponding to the 

 Procurators Fiscal of the Scotch courts) to transmit, every three mouths 

 to the Keeper of the Seals an accurate register of the business of the local 

 judicial courts. These returns are classified on a systematic plan, and 

 after careful examination, an analysis is made of them at the end of each 

 year, and published under the title of "Compte g(!;n^ral de I'administration 

 de la justice criminelle." The very rigid system of police established in 

 France, and the superior intelligence of the functionaries to whose custody 

 criminals are committed, combined with the centralising controul exercised 



• "That comprehensive atom ! — all the world 

 In act of thought embracing; in the world 

 A grain, scarce filling a particular space !" 



Phil. Van Artev. ii. 221. 

 t Essays, i. 32. 



