174 REPORT — 1864. 



apprehensions in three years in respect of the sanae number of crimes. He also 

 observed that the percentage of commitments for trial upon apprehensions had also 

 increased from 65 per cent, in 1860 to 69 per cent, in 1863 — facts which show that 

 a great increase of criminals for trial is quite consistant with there being no actual 

 increase in crimes committed. 



Two facts, he remarked, testified to the efficient working of our present system 

 of punishments : 1st, the decreasing number of recommitments, these being 

 40 per cent, upon the total commitments in the year 1859, and progressively de- 

 clining to 371 per cent, in 1863 : 2nd, the great number of persons who had been 

 subjected to penal servitude who were living honest lives ; for that in February in 

 the last year the Government directed the police authorities throughout the 

 country to make a return as to the modes of life of the persons then at large, either 

 upon tickets-of-leave or upon the tennination of sentences of penal servitude, and 

 it was ascertained that there were 4379 such persons, and that of these 2025 were 

 living the lives of honest well-conducted men (being in fact nearly one-half), the 

 remainder being either doubtful or bad characters. He refen'ed, also, to the very 

 gratifying fact of a substantial decrease of crime amongst the juvenile population, 

 the decline in the number of commitments of prisoners under sixteen years of age 

 being one-third in seven years, the numbers in 1856 being 13,981, and in 1863 

 only 8459. 



He observed that we could never hope by merely penal discipline entirely to 

 reclaim criminals from crim(^, or prevent innocent persons from embracing it ; that 

 as long as poverty and ignorance exist, so long will there be destitution and its 

 offspring, crime ; that in this age, when science is doing so much through ma- 

 chinery to supersede mere manual labour, and when skilled labour is almost the 

 only kind of labour that is in requisition, the uneducated man is daily becoming 

 more and more embarrassed in his efforts to obtain a livelihood; that to the un- 

 educated man the lowest and commonest kinds of labour are alone open, and 

 when from any cause these fail he has no other resource, and want and destitution 

 are his lot. That this is so is proved by om- criminal returns, which show that 

 crimes are annually becoming more and more confined to the ignorant ; that in 

 the year 1856 the untaught, untrained, and unskilled to work comprised 53 per cent, 

 of all those who were committed for trial ; whilst in the year 1863 this percentage 

 had increased to 63i, or more than 10 per cent, in seven years ! That the more 

 clearly to show that crime is being confined to the ignorant, the returns should 

 be looked at as exhibiting the degrees of education amongst the criminals ; and 

 that, going back to the year 1856, it would be foimd that 33 per cent, of our 

 criminals could neither read nor write, whilst in the year 1803 this class had 

 increased to 35 per cent. ; that in 1856 the numbers who could merely rend, or 

 read and lorite imperfectUj, were 53 per cent, upon the whole, whilst in 1863 they 

 were 60 per cent. But that looking to the educated proportion of our criminals, the 

 numbers who, in 1856, could read and jvrite well were only 5i per cent., whilst in 

 1863 even this small percentage had declined to 3^, the most striking fact being 

 that of criminals possessing superior instruction the percentage in 1856 was only 

 03, which in 1863 had furtlier declined to 02. 



He concluded as follows : — " Such facts as those conclusively show the tendency 

 of crime to confine itself to the imtraiued and ignorant, and to leave the educated 

 almost wholly free from its association. Crime and ignorance clearly go hand in 

 hand ; and although it by no means follows that an untaught man will become a 

 criminal, instruction would appear to afford a guarantee against its possessor 

 becoming such. The statistics I have now brought under your attention estab- 

 lish, I think, these propositions : — that uotmthstanding we now keep nearly all 

 our criminals in this country instead of transporting a large proportion of them to 

 our colonies, the criminal classes have greatly declined in numbers, whilst crime 

 itself is at as low an ebb as at any period of our history ; that our detective and 

 penal machinery works well, and that crime is more and more becoming the 

 associate of only the untaught and ignorant. If I am correct in the facts I have 

 stated and the conclusions I have drawn from them, our duty and policy alike 

 point out, that whilst we should not neglect by penal discipline to endeavour to 

 reform the criminal, and b}' the terror of his example work healthily upon the 



