4 o + THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Acts could not be committed before 1870, but they count for 96,601 

 in the latter year. Few people, however, would say that ' crime ' 

 was increasing and civilization demoralizing us because we now 

 compel parents to send their children to school, and hale before 

 the magistrates those who fail to do so, not having yet been accus- 

 tomed to accept the new law. Offenses against local acts and 

 borough by-laws, which are not f crimes/ have in the same time 

 increased from 35,681 to 59,108 ; begging and other offenses against 

 the vagrant acts, from 41,780 to 46,019 ; offenses against the high- 

 way and similar acts, from 29,837 to 32,889. If the efforts that are 

 being made to make it a penal offense to work more than eight 

 hours a day are successful, we might expect to find several hun- 

 dred thousand added to the number of offenses brought before the 

 magistrates, but nobody would consider this a proof of increase of 

 ' crime.' To find out, therefore, whether crime has increased or 

 decreased, it is necessary to extract from the mass of figures those 

 which really illustrate this point. The judicial statistics have 

 provided an excellent classified analysis of the offenses in which 

 those that consist of breaches of the laws for the protection of the 

 person or property are set forth in five classes, which constitute 

 substantially what people have in their minds when they speak of 

 an increase or decrease of crime. The tables distinguish between 

 offenses summarily dealt with and those not so treated as indict- 

 able offenses. Offenses of the latter class only are included in the 

 classification. These consist of offenses against the person, includ- 

 ing assaults ; offenses against property, with violence ; offenses 

 against property, without violence; malicious offenses against 

 property ; and forgery and offenses against the currency." The 

 tables, as summarized by the author, afford clear evidence of a 

 continuous decrease in the number of crimes committed both in- 

 dictable and summary, which is fatal to the theory of an inevi- 

 table increase. 



Such results, Sir Edmund Du Cane observes, should be no mat- 

 ter of surprise, as they have, to all appearances, followed the pre- 

 ventive measures taken in order to effect them, among which are 

 particularly specified the establishment of institutions to guard 

 young people from falling into crime. This is further corrobo- 

 rated by the decrease in the number of first convictions, and the 

 diminution in the number of young persons (under sixteen years 

 of age) committed to prison (which includes all those sent to re- 

 formatories). 



The author makes no reference in his review to punishment as 

 in any degree the cause of the decrease in crime which he sets 

 forth, " though," he says in his concluding paragraph, " I well 

 remember that, when crime was increasing, it was at once set 

 down to the prison system. I will not endeavor to appraise the 



