402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ber of people who developed the disease and the number who 

 were vaccinated to guard against it. Further than this, the fig- 

 ures given in the article [Mr. Morrison's] compare the three de- 

 cades beginning in 1860, 1870, and 1880, and show, what is true 

 enough, that the number of inmates of these two classes of insti- 

 tutions has increased in each ten years ; but this does not show 

 an increase of convicted or even of potential criminals, but only 

 reminds us that there were comparatively few such schools until 

 the great development of these institutions took place after the 

 Eeformatory and Industrial Schools Acts were passed, in 1866, 

 for the purpose of encouraging them, and that advantage has 

 been taken of them with still greater vigor in connection with 

 the Education Acts passed in and since 1870. 



" In a similar way the increase in the police force is cited as a 

 proof of the increase of crime. If this view were sound, we should 

 expect to find that when there was no police force at all it 

 was because there was no crime a paradox which, perhaps, it is 

 not necessary to spend time in refuting. Many years ago 110 

 traveler could cross Hounslow Heath, Wimbledon Common, or 

 similar desolate approaches to the metropolis, without a good 

 chance of being robbed. Hanging those who were caught did not 

 check this inconvenience ; but at last Sir John Fielding hit upon 

 the idea that it might be prevented, and established the armed 

 horse patrol, which soon put a check on the highwaymen. Their 

 appointment was no sign that highway robbing had increased ; it 

 was only a better mode of preventing it. Another most potent mode 

 of preventing crime is by making detection more certain. . . . An 

 increase in the police force, with a view to their greater prevent- 

 ive efficiency, is no more a sign that crime has increased than an 

 increase in the amount spent in drainage and water supply, when 

 towns and localities become alive to their advantage, is a proof of 

 increased unhealthiness in places which have adopted such pre- 

 ventive precautions. If an inquiry into the health of a town was 

 to assume that the increased activity of drainage was a sign of 

 increasing bad health, and was altogether to ignore and pass over 

 the evidence afforded by the improved death-rate and the opinion 

 of the medical men of the town, it would be precisely similar to 

 taking the increased activity in progressive development of these 

 preventive institutions as a sign of increase of crime, omitting 

 altogether any investigation into their effect on the number of 

 the criminal classes or disorderly houses, and ignoring the direct 

 testimony of the police, who must know how these matters stand." 



A large proportion of the duties of the police, moreover, have 

 nothing to do with crime. The mere collection of large numbers 

 of people together makes a police necessary without any reference 

 to the crime they actually commit. 



