STATE OF CRIME IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND lEELAND. 387 



adnlts, and some still youog in age though old in malice. The jndicfal 

 statistics give the number of these in England and Wales in 1880 at"70,338, 

 or in the proportion of 2" 77 per 1,000, and in Ireland at 8,991, or 1*69 

 per 1,000. The average number of prisoners during 1880 vras in 

 England 1-13 per 1,000; in Scotland 0-83 per 1,000; and in Ireland 

 0-62 per 1,000 of the population. Necessary and useful as a place of 

 punishment, the prison is fatal to the character of the prisoner. The 

 prison, alas, is a school, not of virtue, but of vice. Notwithstanding 

 every effort to soften its asperities, to isolate the prisoner, and make him 

 think, those who once enter the portals of the prison seldom, if ever, 

 come out of it untainted and reformed. But what fatuity does it seem 

 to make the prison the antechamber to the reformatory school. If the 

 reformatory school is to spare the child from the contamination of the 

 prison, why bring the child under an influence which will ever after 

 haunt his mind and destroy his spirit and independence ? 



§ 20. Crime in the United Kingdom and France. 



A comparison of the state of cz-inie in the United Kingdom as a 

 whole with France gives unsatisfactory results. In the United Kingdom, 

 the total number of persons summarily disposed of by the magistrates, 

 and committed for trial was, in 1880, 1,043,000, or in a proportion of 

 29'62 per 1,000. In Prance, the total number of persons before the 

 Assizes, Correctional Tribunals, and Simple Police in 1879, was 636,000, 

 or 17-18 per 1,000. The total number committed for trial in the United 

 Kingdom for murder, attempt to murder, and manslaughter in 1880 was 

 808, or in the proportion of 0-023 per 1,000. In France, the total 

 number before the Court of Assize for parricide, poisoning, assassination, 

 infanticide, and murder in 1879, was 645, or 0-017 per 1,000. In the 

 United Kingdom, the total number of cases of drunkenness in 1 880 was 

 287.000, or 8-15 per 1,000 ; in France, the total number in 1879 was 

 63,000, or 1-70 per 1,000. 



§ 21. Criminal Reforms. 



The state of crime in the United Kingdom is not, I am sorry to say, 

 as favourable as we should like it to be. Doubtless we may congratulate 

 ourselves that, as compared with former years, there is a notable diminu- 

 tion of the heavier crimes, nevertheless the total number of crimes and 

 offences is large, and they are the sure symptoms of a grievous disease 

 in the body politic. What is to be done ? Sanitary science or hygiene 

 has done much to eradicate or modify physical disease. Jurispi-udence 

 and ethics must combine in the removal of those causes which contribute 

 to crime. Large indeed is the field open for the jnoral and social re- 

 former. In the improvement of the homes of the people, in the pro- 

 motion of health and comfort, of education, temperance, and self-control 

 among the masses, in the advancement of measures calculated to further 

 solid progress, much effort is needed, much perseverance, much faith. 

 Happily, large as is the field of labour, many are the labourers, who, by 

 means both of repression and prevention, are seeking to remove those 

 clouds which now obscure oar moral horizon, and we need not fear but 

 their labour will bo crowned with success. 



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