I 



STATE OF CRIME IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND. 385 



§ 14. Crime and Want. 



The motives of crime are not easily fathomed. A crime is often a 

 symptom of moral disease, an evidence of total incapacity to control our 

 grossest instincts. It is often associated with corporeal deformity, and 

 may be the result of inherited propensities. But it is too often produced 

 by circumstances connected with our social system. Some of the most 

 operative causes of crime are certainly greed, cupidity, and want. The 

 desire for acquisition is prominent in the English character. "Wealth 

 and comfort are sought after with much recklessness and disregard of 

 consequences, whilst tbe sense of want is keen. Poverty, whether real 

 or imaginary, affects the proper balance of the reason, suggests make- 

 shifts, leads to temptation. The poor, living in squalid habitations, and 

 surrounded by persons of low character, are easily brought to the very 

 verge of criminality. Of whom consists the bulk of our criminals ? Of 

 persons having no occupation ; of common labourers, whose means are 

 precarious ; of domestic servants, extravagant in their habits and utterly 

 thriftless. 



§ 15. Crime and Thrift. 



Hence the relation of crime to savings and wealth is very intimate. 

 The number of persons committed for trial in England and Wales in 

 1880 was 19 per cent, less than in Scotland, and 53 per cent, less than in 

 Ireland. . And so, in almost equal proportion, the amount of deposits at 

 the Savings Banks Trustees and Post Office combined, in the same year, 

 in England and Wales averaged 30 per cent, more than in Scotland, and 

 73 per cent, more than in Ireland. Take the twelve most criminal coun- 

 ties in England, and compare them with the twelve least criminal, and 

 we find the latter having more in the savings banks and fewer paupers 

 than the former have. Prosperity goes hand in hand with virtue ; misery, 

 with temptation and crime. Encourage thrift, promote the economic wel- 

 fare of the masses, and you thereby operate the most effectively towards 

 the repression of crime. 



The graphic table which accompanies this paper, and Table C in the 

 Appendix, exhibit the relation of crime to thrift in so far as it appears 

 from the Savings Banks' returns, though the results are by no means 

 uniform, especially from the fact that the amount in the savings banks is 

 "by no means tbe sole evidence of thrift. 



.... the 



folio V 



A high rate of crime with a high rate of savings appears in 



Hereford 097 . . 70 



Middlesex 0-93 . . 8.S 



Norfolk 53 . . S9 



1882. cc 



