The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-06 00:00:00

AUGUST 6, 1853. between destitution and vice is well illustrated by facts which have come under Mr. Hill's notice. Depositors in savings banks are scarcely ever found in gaol: in the Jedburgh bank, in 1847, there were 1,000 such depositors, of whom in five years only one had been con victed of any offence. So also it is noted that the amount of crime committed by railway la bourers (" navvies") is remarkably dispropor donate to their numbers, although these men are unrestrained for the most part by domestic influences, and lead an unsettled life, wan dering from place to place. The high wages which they earn. and their continuity of em ployment, explain this fact. Again, on the Scotch coasts it is found that few or no breaches of law are committed during the height of the fishing season, that being a time when all the population capable of work is fully employed. In Scotland the absence of a poor law drives the destitute to crime, that by imprisonment they may obtain the means of subsistence. Mr. Hill proposes, in order to guard against this danger, to throw open the prisons to all those who desire to enter them, whether with the view of simply obtaining food and shelter, or (as sometimes chances) in the hope of curing intemperate habits. The plan has already been tried, though without legal sanction : During part of the time that I was inspector of prisons in Scotland, persons were received, on their own appli. elation, into certain prisons, though charged with no offence; and offenders, in like manner, allowed to remain after their period of confinement had terminated. And even where the system of ituprisonment was of a stringent character, including early rising, confinement in a separate sell, and hard work, many took advantage of this per. mission. Indeed, at one of the prisons at Glasgow where this indulgence existed (for, compared with half•starvation and exposure to the rude elements, even this hard alter. native was an indulgence), these voluntary prisoners some• times numbered thirty or forty. The principle on which these poor creatures thus oh• tamed food and shelter appeared to me to be perfectly sound; indeed, it seems one of the plainest rules of j►uis• prudence, and a rule which cannot be departed from with• out danger, that whatever is enforced on the offender should be open to the innocent man; that no privilege should be awarded to crime; that purity should nut be sent to blacken itself as a qualification for attainment. In England, where a well organised work house system exists, Mr. Hill recommends the establishment of au " Independent Ward," to which all persons should be admitted who. by labour there provided, could defray the entire cost of their keep. Such a ward, he says, would afford the means of preserving a distinction between the industrious from suf fering from unforeseen and temporary distress, and the idle, vagrant, mendicant. To us, how ever, it seems doubtful whether such an ar rangement could be framed without interfering unduly with the labour market, a possible danger not to be rashly incurred. Mr. Hill's last words on the subject of po verty deserve to be quoted in full : For the further decrease of poverty in this country we must look to the increased value of labour consequent on better training and a wider spread of general educa tion ; to sanitary improvement, by which the physical powers may be strengthened, and the period for active exertion and productive labour prolonged ; to increased habits of self-control and forethought ; to improvements in machinery, and to discoveries in chemistry and other branches of science ; to the withdrawal of the remaining fetters on trade and commerce ; to such an alteration in the laws relating to land as shall make its transfer secure, simple, and cheap, and thereby allow full scope to that strong and general desire to possess land which, that they may obtain the means of purchase, will induce men to labour hard and to live &wally ; to the saving, by increased habits of sobriety, of a large portion of the money now wasted in intoxicating liquors ; and perhaps to a saving also of a great part of the cost of the army by a substitu tion for a large portion of them of a well•selected and well-organised militia, and by the employment of the remainder of the military force and the naval force, when not required for purposes of war, in maritime discovery, the conveyance of emigrants, the construction of railways, the reclamation of waste land, and other kinds of pmdue • tive industry. The remaining inducements to crime may be briefly subdivided into three heads. (1.) Ha . bits of law-breaking brought on by the creation of ar tificial offences. (2.) Unnecessary legislative in terference in private affitirs. (3.) Insufficiency of punishment, or inadequate means of detection. Artificial offences are created by all restrictions on trade, however necessary ; as these tend to bring men, otherwise honest, in collision with the officers of the law, and thus to familiarise them with acts of illegality and violence. In quisitorial legislation, like that directed against the truck system in manufacturing districts, THE PRESS. and, generally, every enactment which forbids acts of which the immorality or illegality is not readily intelligible by the public, fall within the same category. All laws attempting to re gulate the conditions of labour are in this respect peculiarly obiectionable. The practice of impressment for t le navy (disused during peace), and the bounty system of recruiting, both of which lead to the crime of desertion, merit similar censure. Long apprenticeships. being in fact compulsory contracts made at an early age, and often with an imperfect compre hension of the terms, otter a temptation to idle ness and breaches of faith. The brutal vio lence practised by members of the same family on one another, which it may he hoped the re cent act will do something to check, is in part ascribed by Mr. Hill to the practical impossi bility of obtaining a divorce or separation ; and also to the entire control with which the law invests the most worthless husband over the property and labour of his wife. This, however, as well as the game-law question, also discussed, is a subject too wide for consider ation here, Our ()tailor strongly recommends partnership:4 with limited liability—which the law at present discourages—as a means of giving the labourer a direct pecuniary interest in his employer's success. This view we have our selves, in a former article, endeavoured to support. He considers such a change the best if not sole guarantee against those evils which are produced by the frequency of strikes, often attended with violence, and which, by enforcing temporary idleness, tend to create crime. The state of the police appears, by Mr. Hill's report, to be less satisfactory than we are in the habit of considering it. " Many " parts of the country are still without any " thing deserving the name." The urban and rural police, instead of co operating, often quarrel ; and the mode of remuneration is essentially faulty. High premiums are given for the detection of offenders—none for the prevention of offences ; whence it results that the preservers of public order have a direct interest in not utterly extirpating crime—just as rateatehers are said, with an eye to future employment, always to leave a sufficient stock of young rats in houses which they are en gaged to clear of vermin. It has even been known—though happily this is rare—that, under the stimulus of offered reward, evidence has been got up against innocent persons. But ,the more usual fault is that of omission, not of commission. Receivers of stolen goods are too mercifully dealt with—perhaps for the reason at which we have hinted. Their houses, their mode of life, and the extent of their gains are commonly well known ; yet the law refrains from touching them. A vigorous crusade against this class, and the suppres sion of lodging and public houses which no toriously harbour thieves, would break up criminal confederacies to an extent little imagined. The result is thus described : An important advantage arising from vigorous measures to reduce the her of criminals at large would be, that the situation of every remaining criminal would become more difficult. Some persons, indeed, have fears that to withdraw a number of criminals is only to create a void which will call new criminals into existence. But this appears to not to be a great mistake; founded probably on a false analogy between crime and foist, or some other thing for which there is a natural demand, the pressure of which would in- crease with any diminution in the number of producers. Such, however, is not the case with crime, for crime is op posed to the interests and feelings of society; and the community at large would be glad to drive it out of exiatence; and, instead of the expansive power of crime increasing with every contraction, 1 believe the reverse to be the case, and that the withdrawal of every criminal, inasmuch as it tends to break up organisation for dishonest purposes, and to bring each remaining offender more pro minently before the public eye, weakens the position of criminals generally, and fm•ilitates the complete snppres• Mon of crime. It is this want of a crowd of offenders to afford the means of a division of labour and mutual con cealment that, in my opinion, does much toaceount for the almost total absence of crime in many small places. Certain practical reforms are here suggested, the principal being—abolition of the Scotch rule of evidence, by which two witnesses are required to prove guilt—abolition of that legal rule by which the ownership of stolen property must be fixed before prosecution is possible — avoidance of delay in bringing on trials, such delay a&rding opportunities to tamper with the witnesses—and security to be taken from 331 the landlord of any house used as a receiving. house for stolen goods, whereby ho shall incur a penalty in the event of its being so used again. The Life if &mimosas Robert Haydoet. Edited by Tom Taylor, Esq. London : Longman and Co. (Second Notice.) MR. HAVDON'S notions of the differences be tween swum and Num, of debtor and creditor, were finished in the school of the King's Bench, which he considered his second home, and the " blessed refuge for the miserable." There, what moral sense he had was oblite• rated, as his bile broke forth splendidly, at the sight of men of genius and half-pay officers crippled with debts and honourable wounds, and arrested by " rascally tradesmen ;" then " the footpad who risks his life is a hero " compared to the wretch" of an upholsterer who had taken legal steps against our artist, whose first exclamation when locked up is, " What a pity it is that I should be so harassed !" Self-love soon comes, how ever, with the consolation that Bacon, Ra leigh, and Cervantes had, like himself, been inmates of the prison. The magnifying powers of his self-conceit enlarged his own propor tions to such a size that as he paced his painting-room when free again, and gazed upon his gigantic canvases spread on the easel, he only wondered how a man who could conceive and paint on such a grand scale should for a moment be exposed to want, by the shameful neglect of the British nation. He marvelled that peers and capitalists did not strive who should be foremost to assist him, and especially to pay the tutors and "butte's" and college expenses of his son whom he had sent to Oxford of all places in the world, without more money in his sack than in his penniless father's. The sire him self, while clamorous for the contents of the purses of others, was, however, profuse in in dulgent expenditure for himself and family, which averaged from six hundred to a thou sand a year. We have inklings of " riding horses," tours abroad, watering-place excur sions at home, attendances at Reform meetings and elections, and such-like varieties of life, more pleasing than parsimonious, and scarcely consistent with forming a provision, present or future, for a ready-stocked and rapidly-increas ing nursery. Any qualms of conscience at this prodigious idling which occasionally crossed his mind flitted by rapidly as the summer clouds with an "Oh dear! this is sad work, " nothing but one day's painting—sucking in " fresh air, basking in sunsets, rolling with " my children on the grass, and observing " nature." These rural felicities usually suc ceeded to incarcerations and discharge through the Insolvency Court only to recur again, for sifter a due white-washing the wind was raised, and the whole family started for Brighton and places at which gratis accommodations do not abound : Twice have I been imprisoned (as he moralises on one of these excursions), and 1 thought it was a little at the expense of prineipk to go to Ramsgate without settling all my bills. Yet, as my income is current, and all de• Tends on my talent's and the development of them in health, it may be excused. Next a trip is made to Broadstairs, and tho question of the costs is thus got over : Ought I to spend 2111., owing it as I do? If Ido not my children suffer. They want sea air. I struggle be. tween the feelings of the father and the citizen. .• So much for the creditors, as the Noah's ark is again launched from the watering-place'w beach. To the taxing-man he was a trifle more deferential, so, when "he was unable to " pay up his rates in the approaching struggle, " and keep his love here too—at liroadstairs— " he wrote to the Duke of Sutherland and " stated the case : directly, like a fine follow " as he is, he took two shares in my ' Saragossa,' " which will enable me to do it. !lima!" He excused the especial good care that he took of himself on hygienic principles, and stinted neither "wine nor negna," as being good for " a scrofulous habit." " Alcohol is a necessary " stimulant ;" and he seldom failed to talk over his wine-merehant with the blarney of She ridan himself. When dunned by a creditor of the cask, he shows him his unfinished