360 



Moral Statistics of France. 



criminals, the result is decidedly in favour of the good tendency of instruc- 

 tion. On the average of four years, 1829 to 1832, the annual number of 

 relapsed criminals amounts to 1357, who are distributed into four classes, 

 as follows : 



No. 11. Relapsed Criminals (Les RecidivesJ. 



As the proportion of relapsed criminals who were acquitted in each 

 class, increases with their degree of information, it seems to be proved 

 that however overcome for a time by the force of temptation, instruction 

 has a tendency to make the experience of punishment profitable to the 

 offender. 



In comparing the several Departments as to the number of criminals 

 which they furnish, and the degree of instruction which they have re- 

 ceived, we must bear in mind the wide diversities of character in the in- 

 habitants of the different provinces, which must materially affect their 

 susceptibility of the influence of education, so far at least as certain crimes 

 and propensities are concerned. But it appears even from M. G.'s data, 

 that if instruction has not invariably a marked effect in the repression of 

 crime, yet that it cannot be visited with the reproach of disposing men to 

 criminal acts. The writer of the article already referred to,* after con- 

 trasting together four of the most with four of the least enlightened de- 

 partments, from the two extremes of the scale, and showing that in the 

 latter where instruction is most neglected, crime is by no means least pre- 

 valent, (and so reciprocally in the other four) justly concludes : 



" It is here seen that not only is the proportion of criminals to the entire 

 population smallest in the best-instructed districts, but the nature of the 

 crimes committed is loss serious: — a result which cannot fail to prove 

 satisfactory to those who look to the cultivation of the minds of their 

 fellow-citizens, as to the surest means of redeeming them from vicious 

 habit8."t 



* Companion to the Almanac, ut supra. 



t These remarks are so fully confirmed by Mr. W. R. Greg's valuable "Report 

 on the Social Statistics of the Netherlands," (read at the last meeting of the British 

 Association in Dublin) and his conclusions are altogether so important, that it would 

 be unpardonable to omit giving them in detail. The following table relates to the 



