Our Criminal Classes. 
twenty years whose accumulated fortunes amount to 
more than one and a half millions of pounds sterling and 
yet not one of them has left a cent for the benefit of the 
poor of the colony, though the whole of their great 
fortunes have been made here by the labour of the people. 
It is a shame and a disgrace! Two men only, Paul 
de Saffon and Samuel Brandford Trotman, have 
left charitable legacies to their poorer brethren, and their 
names will to all time be accompanied by the blessings 
of the widow and the fatherless. 
One great object of education is to make the public 
understand that all crime is detrimental to their interests 
as members of a social state, and to make them 
disapprovers of criminals. Public disapprobation has -a 
more deterrent effect in rooting out crime than any 
amount of legal punishment. If the people generally 
were distinctly hostile to offenders it would assist justice 
immeasurably in catching and punishing criminals. " An 
enlightened people are a better auxiliary to the judge 
than an army of policemen." But unfortunately amongst 
the poorer classes, public disapprobation of criminals, 
especially when they are thieves can hardly be said to 
exist : on the contrary if the victims be the richer 
classes, more sympathy is shown than disapprobation. 
They consider property as a benefit in which they have 
no share, and that the rich are the natural prey of the 
poor; so that instead of being an assistance to justice 
the lower classes throw every obstacle in the way of the 
suppression of crime, and the punishment of offenders. 
Even respectable people of the poorer classes who would 
themselves shrink from theft, will at the same time 
screen one of their own order who is pursued by the 
