'il8 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



ingenuity can devise, either by education^ exten- 

 sion of cottage comfortSj religious example, or 

 clmrcli discipline, will make a population any 

 better than it is their gift to be. I have watched 

 what is termed the progress of learning and reli- 

 gious education, as it is fondly called, step by step, 

 year by year, for half a century, and at the end of 

 tliat half century for the life of me I cannot see 

 that the population is one bit improved, that crime 

 has become less frequent or less villainously vile, or 

 that murder has shrunk from its sanguinary pur- 

 pose. Let us look the facts in the face, and not 

 shrink from an unpalatable truth. 



Wife-murder, child-murder, assaults on women 

 and children, have increased, and not increased in 

 merely the same ratio as the growth of the popula- 

 tion, but hand-in-hand, numerically speaking, crime 

 and education have advanced side by side; of tlie 

 two, crime has outstripped the schoolmaster. If 

 my readers doubt this, let them search the statistics 

 of the Police. 



The real fact is, that the la^vs of the country do 

 not now speedily and sufficiently punish evil-doers, 

 — tlie murderer, the thief, and the A'ilest offenders. 

 They execute the foul murderer as if they, the 



