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is attempted to enforce that all intercourse in them and relative to them is to be considered confidential; though we do not recollect any written canon or by-law that renders them so. We simply ask-will the council allow us to speak plainly what we have seen and heard? It is true we may do it anonymously and with impunity; but we will not avail ourselves of such subterfuge; nor will we break our faith with them, unless, by their own conduct, they morally absolve us from our objections in this respect. Instead, therefore, of bringing more recent cases of partiality and injustice, which are known to us personally, before the public, we will quote from Dr. Granville a few instances of the conduct of the council of past times (p. 57).

'In 1800 several papers by Professor Bode, communicating important facts in astronomy were rejected. When Schroeter first imparted his discovery of the rotation of the planet Mercury, he met with the same fate which Bode had already experienced; yet not a single astronomer was present at the meeting of the deciding committee! In that same year Blumenbach was made to withdraw a paper on the Ornithorhynci, while a paper of Everard Home on the same subject was ordered to be printed at the same meeting. Professor Bell's various papers on boracic acid were also rejected by the committee. A paper on the male rhinoceros (the single production of an old member) was voted for publication in the following year's committee, which contained not a single naturalist. Every memoir on Piazzi's newly-discovered planet Ceres, by Baron de Zach, Maskelyne, and others, was rejected, not one astronomer, or mathematician, or really scientific man, except Rennel, being present on those occasions! On the planet Pallas several foreign astronomers communicated papers to the Royal Society-but these were not published, nor any thing allowed to be placed on record in the Transactions respecting this second interesting discovery of a planet, until Sir W. Herschel took up the subject.'

The entire chapter from which this is quoted gives rise to very serious considerations respecting the honesty of successive councils: and we can only say of many cases, as he has said of one (and more emphatically as we approach the year A.D. 1845), respecting the rejections and admissions of papers into the Transactions, Grounds they could have none; but there were motives.'

That the Royal Society has abundant influence, by means of its medals and paid lectures, to procure papers of high merit, is quite evident; and that these motives have led to many papers being submitted to that society which would otherwise not have been, we ourselves know. But thereby hang some curious tales, for the details of which we have not space here, even with respect to the last Royal medal awarded to Mr. Rook.

The Royal Society and its 'progeny' have a superb example of what they should be, in respect of so sacred a trust as that connected with papers, in the French Institute. In that august body there is no secrecy, real or affected. All is open

to the investigation of the persons interested in those papers, and to the wide world.

The referees themselves are public, their conclusions are stated at length openly, and the reasons upon which those conclusions are founded are fully detailed in the 'report.' The reporters' put themselves, where there is a shadow of necessity, into communication with the author or discoverer. They discuss with him any doubtful points, see the experiments repeated by him, suggest to him any circumstance calculated to throw further light upon the inquiry, and, instead of robbing him of the discoveries he has actually made, give him all the aid in their power towards extending and perfecting the researches upon which he is engaged.

In the 'report' itself, signed by the authors of it, there is often most valuable information upon the past history, the present state, and the desiderata yet belonging to that particular class of subjects, making, as has been repeatedly and most truly said, the report often of far greater value than the original communication.' What a contrast is this to our own societies, but most of all to the Royal!

'Money! money!! money!!!' is the cry of all the societies: money is their life's blood: money the galvanic influence that moves their hearts and moves their tongues: it is their body, soul, and spirit. Deprive them of money and you deprive them of every thing refuse them your cash and you annihilate them! Even love cannot live on flowers,' and science, literature, and art, like patriotism and the priesthood, must be fed with gold and good things, if their existence be a national object! What a soul-lost and benighted people we should be if we had neither gold nor bank paper!

INCREASE OF CRIMES AND PAUPERISM.

One of the most startling results of social progress is the increase of crime. We are the most criminal population in Europe, and the richest. How is this, that apparently the urgencies of want have multiplied with our means, that with the increase of wealth there has been an increase of delinquent acquisitiveness? Strange as these results appear, they seem to admit of satisfactory elucidation. Though crimes have augmented, though criminals form a larger proportion of the population than formerly, we doubt the decline in general morality. It certainly savours of paradox to affirm that we have at once become better and worse, but the apparent in

consistency is reconcilable by reference to the revolution within the current century in the occupations of the people. The growth of criminality, as we shall try to explain, has resulted from the increase in the opulence and population of towns, consequent upon the expansion of commercial and manufacturing industry, and this unaccompanied with any debasement in the national standard of conduct and happiness.

The opportunities for delinquencies have multiplied, not the disposition to perpetrate them. It is manifest that the increase of mercantile property, of manufactories, docks, shipping, and warehouses,-of shops well supplied with goods, and of the sales, transfers, and exchanges of commodities, must have multiplied temptations, and widened the range for criminal depredations. Commerce, especially, requires personal confidence. Clerks and porters, factors and agents, cannot always resist seductive opportunities. Commerce leads to luxury, to the assembling people together in large towns, to the creation of credit and paper-money, the intoxicating and illusive stimulants to over-speculation and fruitful source of offences. It leads to sudden vicissitudes in men's fortunes, produces extreme inequality of rank, avidity of gain, and contempt for poverty; in short, makes a violent thirst for riches the predominant passion, and offences connected therewith the prominent trait of the community. Where there is little chattel property there cannot be much theft, either from the person, house, warehouse, or in transfer ; where there is little agency, embezzlement and breaches of trust must seldom occur; and where men, as in agricultural countries, form a fixed caste, liable to no unexpected alternations of condition, they are exempt from the vicious excitements to which sudden wealth or raging poverty is exposed. Hence, we apprehend, may be traced the predominance of crimes against property in this country. We are peculiarly an enterprising, industrious, and emulative people; the range for plunder is wider and more seductive, the necessities of individuals more sudden and urgent, and the frequent ebbs and flows in their circumstances beget a reckless excitement which makes them little scrupulous about the means they employ to better their lot or repair their disasters.

On the other hand, we are comparatively a moral and enlightened people; and this seems to account for the second trait of criminal propensity, in the comparative fewness of offences against the PERSON. Crimes accompanied with personal violence, and indicating greater depravity of heart, are fewer in England than on the Continent. We are, in fact, too

calculating a people to give way to the unprofitable impulses of passion, and hence crimes originating in revenge, jealousy, lust, or mere atrocity, do not frequently occur. Our offences are mercantile, like our pursuits; even highway robbery is nearly extinct among us, and the depredations chiefly followed are burglary, forgery, coining, swindling, theft, pocket-picking, fraudulent insolvencies, and smuggling. They indicate no personal hostility to mankind, but only a culpable mode of seeking those objects that are in general request, and form the staple social distinction.

It is by the consideration of these principles and national characteristics that the chief perplexities connected with the progress of delinquency in England may be unravelled. By comparing the proportion of offences to inhabitants in the metropolitan and manufacturing counties with the proportion in the agricultural counties, it will be seen that delinquency is most predominant in the former districts of the kingdom; and, as population has increased faster in the metropolitan and manufacturing than in the rural counties, there has, in consequence, been an accelerated increase in the ratio of offences compared with the number of people.

In 1840, in the seven manufacturing counties, one criminal in 538 of the population; in the two metropolitan, one in 515; and the nine agricultural counties average only one criminal in 656 of the population.

These comparative results seem to solve the problem as to the cause of the greater exhibition of crime, but are far from establishing a general increase of depravity in the community. The statistics of crime are questionable criteria of the standard of national morals and civilisation. The criminal returns show an enormous increase since the commencement of the century, without affording conclusive proof of deterioration in the manners of the people. The most sudden start appears to have been immediately after the general peace of 1815, and the criminal impulse then given may be easily explained. During the war many found a refuge in the army and navy, who, since the peace, have worked out a reckless course in the gaols and prisons, the colonial dependencies, and penal settlements of the empire. The slow increase of female offenders has always appeared to us satisfactory evidence that national character has not degenerated; for, had there been a growing depravity in the community, it must have been shared in by the women as well as the men ; and the existence of it would have been attested by a corresponding augmentation in the number of feminine committals. The reason that offences have increased among the men is, that commercial

property and transactions connected with property have increased. Females have been much less affected by this revolution than the males; and hence, while the number of committals of the former has increased, from 1805 to 1840, only 289 per cent., that of the latter has increased 572 per cent.*

A result derived by M. Guerry from statistical inquiries. in France, and which has been reluctantly admitted, probably admits of explanation by reference, there as in England, to the pursuits and occupations of the people. It has been found that the most educated districts of France are the most criminal; but it would be erroneous to infer from hence that the greater proportion of crime is the consequence of education. The most instructed portion of a population is usually found in the parts most densely peopled; they are the inhabitants of towns, abounding in riches, and whose occupations are the pursuits of pleasure, commerce, or the manufacturing arts. Their criminality is not the consequence of superior instruction, but in defiance of its checks and monitions-the result of greater temptations and a more changeable condition, which are incidents of their lot reconcilable with a higher state of social happiness than that enjoyed by the agricultural classes.

In Scotland, in 1832, there was only one offender to 973 of the inhabitants, and in Wales only one to 2,348; doubtless owing to the less riches and commercial activity, and greater predominance of rural industry, in those divisions of the island. With respect to crimes against property, it is said that ignorant, degraded, and impoverished Spain, is three times less vicious than France, and seven times less vicious than England. The reason of this is obvious enough. In Spain crimes, if committed at all, must be crimes against the person (and there they predominate)—not against property, since there comparatively is none. It is hard to be a thief where there is nothing to steal. Hence the peculiarity in her criminal calendar. But ought any one to infer from this

During the last seven years there has been an almost uninterrupted increase of committals for offences. The following exhibits the annual committals for trial in each year :

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27,187

27,760

31,309

29,591

In 1843 the decrease was only in the minor offences. In the number of offences against the person there was an increase; also in the number of offences against property committed with violence. But in the number of offences against property committed without violence there was a decrease.

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