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

THE PRESS.

this point, confirmed by the observation of the great body
of prison governors and chaplains with whom I have con•
versed, enables me to say that it is much less than this.
To what an extent the simple power of reading fluently
is often a protection from habits of crime may be judged
of from the fact that a home missionary in Edinburgh, in
whom I had full confidence (the present worthy and able
governor of the prison of that city, Mr. Smith ), told me
that in all his visits to the poor he never met with a single
person who was at the same time addicted to crime and iu
the habit of reading.

But it is not by mere neglect that parents
offend against their children. Some have been
known, though not themselves criminals, to
encourage them in habits of vice, and even
to apply for sentences of transportation
against them, in hope thus to be relieved from
the charge of their maintenance. For this
evil Mr. Adderley's admirable bill furnishes
the best and only fitting remedy, by throwing
on the careless or criminal father the expense
of providing fur his convicted child. Parental
control, without corresponding responsibility.
is undoubtedly an anomaly which ought not
to exist under any civilised government. But,
in order to guard against the possible abuse of
too sweeping an enactment, discretionary
power might be left with the court to exempt
the parent from such charge where he could
prove that the misconduct of the child had
not been created by neglect on his part. The
burden of proof, however, should lie with him,
responsibility being the rule, and not the ex
ception.
Cheap postage, cheap literature, good schools,
and habits of early industry, are earnestly
dwelt upon by our author as remedies for the
evil here complained of. These topics, how.
ever, are but cursorily touched upon, and re-
quire separate discussion to do them justice.

(2.) The second cause assigned is drunken-
ness and profligacy. The ' insane fondness
for drink" which prevails among the criminal
population is acknowledged by witness after
witness, cited in Mr. Hill's pages. "Of the
" many thousand annually imprisoned," writes
the chaplain at Glasgow, "it would not be
" possible to find one hundred sober criminals
in any one year." From Edinburgh, Pres-
ton, and Derby we have similar reports. Mr.
Hill himself considers intoxication to be, di-
rectly or indirectly, responsible for four fifths
of all offences, grave and light, which come be-
fore courts or magistrates for trial. Even ab-
ject destitution is a less fertile source of crime.
Like testimony reaches us from the other side
the Atlantic. An inquiry carried on at New
York in 1.850 gave a per eentage of ninety-two
drunkards and only eight sober men among
the prisoners there undergoing sentence. Nor
is this propensity confined to professedly law-
less characters. Notwithstanding education,
cheap reading, and temperance societies, it is
still the one great reproach of our nation. Mr.
Porter's tables have made familiar to all statis-
ticians the amount of taxation imposed on us by
love of strong drink. From 65,000,0001. at the
highest computation, to 57,000,000/. at the low-
est, are the various estimates of our annual ex-
penditure on this one item. It is satisfactory to
see by recent returns (not quoted or alluded to
in the work now before us) that this vast outlay
is diminishing, and that the consumption of
tea, coffee, and the like, presents a correspond-
ing increase. But no longer ago than 1847
Mr. Clay could write thus from Preston :

We see, that taking any 100 or 140 well-employed work-
men, each of them, on the average, devotes to the
pleasures of drink more than 2.5 per cent. of his earnings ;
that many married men thus squander 40 or 50 per cent.,
and that some are so infatuated as to throw away. weekly,
in drink, fl&s., out of 40s. wages. I have minutely
examined the official returns by the gentlemen respec-
tively superintending the County, Liverpool, Manchester,
Salford, Preston, and Wigan police, and I find that, in the
year 1540, more than 15:200 persona appeared before the
magistrates charged with drunkenness; and upwards of
10,000 more accused of " breach of the peace " and
" assaults ; " offences implying drunkenness in almost
every ease. I do not now notice those moie terrible
offences, manslaughter, rape, robbery, which are almost
always produced by the same cause. It is the knowledge
of facts like these which renders credible the calculated
expenditure in the United Kingdom. in intoxicating
drink, viz., more than sixty•rive millions of pounds sterling
annually ! Ten times the usual amount of the English
poor rates !
Experience shows that this enormous use of
stimulants is in almost every instance preju•
dicial, and that the total discontinuance
them produces no injury to health. This rt.-
suit is tested by the practice of all prisons,

SATURDAY,

where they are invariably forbidden. Tempe-
rance societies have worked much good ; but
these are open to the double charge, first, of
injuring by exaggeration the cause which they
support, confounding as they do the most
moderate use of liquors with gross intempe-
rance ; and secondly, of substituting nothing
for what they prohibit. "No institution," said
Napoleon 1., speaking of France, "is effectu-
ally destroyed until it is replaced by another."
And so with popular customs. To root out
habits of vicious indulgence it is necessary to
put something better in their stead. Excite-
ment is a necessity of life, and to none more
than the labourer or artisan, who finds in his
daily routine of mechanical toil a total want of
all that can employ the higher faculties. The
want of amusements—a national defect with
all classes—is with the labouring class one
principal cause of intoxication, and hence, in-
directly, of crime. Among minor remedies,
Mr. Hill suggests the following :—(l.) Pay-
ment of wages elsewhere than in public-houses.
(2.) Payment on some other day of the week
than Saturday, the coincidence of the weekly
holiday with that period when the working-
man's purse is fullest being in itself a tempta-
tion to waste and debauchery. On another
subject of great interest, as connected with
public morality, our author shall speak for
himself:

Much, I believe, would be done towards securing the
virtue of the female sex, and towards the general dimi-
nution, therefore, of profligacy, if the practical injustice
were put an end to by which women are excluded from
many kinds of employment for which they are naturally
qualified. The general monopoly which the members of
the stronger sex have established fur themselves is surely
most unjust; and, like all other kinds of injustice, reacts
on its perpetrators. Why are our streets still crowded with
prostitutes, to the ruin of the health and morality of the
poor creatures themselves, and to the deep injury of those
who yield to the temptations which it is their degraded
trade to present? To a great degree, because the payment
fur the labour of females iu this country is often so small
as to demand, for obtaining an honest living, a greater
power of endurance and self control than can reasonably be
expected; whereas let the male sex but forego any slight
additional remuneration which they may obtain fur their
labour by the exclusion of females, and whilst thousands
of women would be saved from degradation, the young
physician, clerk, or artisan, aided by the income of the
woman to whom he is attached, would often find that, with•
out imprudence, he might, at a much earlier age than at
present, take upon himself the duties of a husband and
father, and partake of the happiness and moral security
which marriage, when based on affection and mutual
esteem, is so eminently calculated to afford.

The occupations suggested as fittest for
women are printing, cabinetmaking, copying,
and clerk's duty generally ; as also attendance
in shops. It may be noted that this part of
Mr. Hill's theory clashes with his previously-
quoted remark, that the employment of females
in non-domestic labours tends to demoralise
their children. The practice of the two great
industrial nations with which we can compare
our own differs materially in this respect. In
France a great deal of hard work is done, and
well done, by women ; in America they are ex-
empted from all but the most necessary details
of household duty. There is a medium in all
things, and not improbably the demand for
women in the colonies may suffice to remove
the evil of which Mr. Hill complains, without
the necessity of so violent a change in our
social system as he desires to see introduced.
Hood's song, and the well-known story of the
sempstresses, have created an undue prejudice
against employers of female labour, thus tend-
ing to aggravate what the benevolent inter-
meddlers desired to cure. Mr. Hill says, Sen-
sibly and shortly :
- - •

It seems to me to be more than idle to blame the person
who pays for female work only what the labour market
enables him to give, however small the pittance. So far
as his act operates, he assists in raising, and not in de-
pressing, the reward for female labour, even if he give but
a few halfpence for making a shirt.
•

(3.) In the list of incentives to crime our
author reckons poverty, which, by extracts
from Sir F. Eden and others, he satisfactorily
demonstrates to be on the decrease. One
good test is the rise in servants' wages, which
are now about four times what they were sixty
years ago, anti twice what they were thirty
years ago. As such persons are taken from
the labouring class, and supplied with all ne•
cessaties except clothing, the larger amount of
pay received by them is a fair measure of the
improvement in their condition, and conse-
quently in that of their class. The connection

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,