The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-29 00:00:00

testantism re

ant character of our institutions,
require better, firmer, more soundly-principled
men ; and where are such men to be found ? Cer-

()tact the Prote

.rs of the new fangled
or the misty rubbish of
st the mere land-

tainly not amongst the profe
_ _

its of New Englar

the Trac

rcely anion

lord party, and decidedly not amongst the coalition
of Republicans, Papists sectarians, mere whips and
apostatc? from Conaervatism, who will rally round
the banners of R

ell and Pee

One of the most serious questions just now pres-
sing upon the attention of the observant portion of
community, is the question—" What is to be
repression of Crime, and, more par-
*le Crime ?" For years ,past we
have been experimenting upon this object. We
have tried model prisons, and separation of offen-
tems and lenient systems. The

ticularly, of Juv

ders ; rigorou

schoolmaster has been at work amongst the classes,
which ordinarily furnish employment for the magis-
trate, the judge and the turnkey; yet we have the
painful conviction continually forced upon us, that
hitherto we have made little progress, compared
with the extent and cost of the efforts which we

have put forth. The amount of committals, indeed,
have in our own county exhibited a slight decrease
during the past year. From an able statistical re-
port which has just been submitted to the magis-
trates by the Rev. J. Clay, chaplain to the Preston
house of correction, we are informed that crime has
decreased throughout the county to a most grati-
fying extent. Within the last five years the dimi-
nution of offences in England and Wales collectively,
has been at the rate of 12.4 per cent.; while in
Lancashire, "owing to various causes, among which
the general revival of trade may be supposed to pre-
dominate," and in the borough of Liverpool, the
decrease of crime has been double that rate ; and
in the hundred of Salford, where everything de-
pends upon manufactures, the decrease of crime is
in a ratio which nearly doubles that of England and
Wales." The writer adds :—" So far, the local
diminution in crime appears to be commensurate
with the cause supposed to have produced it,—viz.,
the return from inactivity and distress to full em-
ployment and good wages." But, these temporary
circumstances, which have tended to produce such
a result, removed, we cannot doubt that we have
still around us the same amount, or a slightly
diminished amount of crime, and vicious inclination
ready to rush into crime, on the first moment of
temptation.

That this state of things will resist the effect of
all merely repressive steps is evident to most men,
although it is certain that much may be done by
judicious alteration of our prison system. However
vigilant may he our police, and however attentive
or strict our magistrates, little will be done until
the cloud of ignorance which hangs over the masses
of our working population is dispelled, and sound
religious and moral training introduced amongst
them. The same able writer remarks :
" No one sees more 'clearly than the chaplain to a jail
that ' public education is lamentably imperfect.' For
successive years my duty has required me to lay before
the magistracy of the county statistics of secular and re-
ligious ignorance, which, though at first considered scarcely
credible, subsequent investigation by other and better
qualified enquirers has corroborated. In 1839 these
statistics, among other evidence of a similar character,
were referred to Lord John Russell. That there are
great difficulties in the way of any general measures for
removing the ignorance so widely spread is admitted ; but
I venture to think they are such as might be overcome, if
those interested in the subject would consent to waive some
minor points, and agree, by way of commencement, to
rough-hew what is now a shapeless and useless obstacle—
if not incumbrance—into what might be rendered valuable
for the support and ornament of the great social edifice.
It is not required from one holding my humble position to
suggest the mode of operating on the unformed masses of
ignorance ; but I feel that it is incumbent upon me to re-
port facts bearing on the question, and brought under my
own observation, which evince the paramount necessity of
doing something ;—to exhibit, unpleasant as it may be to
all parties, the mere animal existence—it can scarcely be
called humanity—which, in this civilised and religious
country, yet remains uncivilised and without religion."

The facts referred to are perfectly astounding ;
and, as no doubt a similar state of things would be
the result of an enquiry amongst the offenders
within the jurisdiction of our own magistracy, we
make no apology for giving them here.

" During three years," Mr. Clay says, " the perfor-
mance of my duty has brought me into contact with—

" 1,733 men and boys, and 387 women and girls, al-
together unable to read and mrite ; with
" 1,301 men and boys, and 287 women and girls, who
knew not the name of the reigning sovereign ; with
" 1,290 men and boys, 293 women and girls, so in-
capable of receiving moral or religious instruction,
that to speak to them of virtue,' vice,' iniquity,'
or holiness,' was to speak to them in an unknown
tongue ; and with
" 1,120 men and boys, and 257 women and girls, so des-
titute of the merest rudiments of Christian know-
ledge, so untaught in religious forms and practice,
that they knew not the name of Him who died for
their sins, nor could they utter a prayer to their
Father in heaven !"

No mere prison discipline, it is obvious, can be
effective in producing any great improvement
amongst a mass of human beings such as the above,
whose lives, it is well known, present only an alter-
nation of punishment and of the commission of fresh
crime. The lessons and labours of a chaplain, how-
ever earnest, are lost upon them ; and when they
leave their prison, at the termination of their sen-
tences, they fall back naturally into their old habits,
unimproved, if not hardened in vice.
An authoritative statement published in the Daily
News informs us that Government are about to
attempt the decrease of crime, by a new system of
prison discipline. All transportation is to be sus-
pended for two years. The first year is to be spent
in seclusion, as in Pentonville. Another, year the
criminal is to be placed under the sllent. system ;
and, afterwards, the probation system is to be acted
upon, acid habits of hulustly intruaucetl, upon ale
amount of improvement in which the the term of
imprisonment is to depend. We have certainly
little hope of the efficacy of this or any similar
change, unattended by some comprehensive efirt
to dispel the ignorance by which crime is generated
—to remove the contact of evil example, which
debases the minds of so large a portion of our poor.
It embraces only the cases of the heinous offender,
whereas the most material object to be attended to
is the reformation of the juvenile offender. The
present practice adopted towards him,- of com-
mittal for shoit periods, it is well known, produces
evil instead of good. The young thief, kept for a
fortnight or a month upon better food than he has
ever found in the hovel or the cellar of the degraded
parent, or the common lodging-house, emerges only
to mingle with his dissolute companions again, and
after a short perio I of riotous liberty, to return to
his confinement. With respect to this class, we
may quote some able remarks lately delivered at a
special meeting of the Metropolitan Society for the
Improvement of the Law, as regards penal discipline,
by M. D. Hill, Esq., Recorder of Birmingham.
After condemning the present practice of short
commitments, the learned gentleman said :

" Let the prisoner first commune with himself, learn to
regard labour as a resource, and forego his evil habits,
and then be gradually restored to society. He would not
enter minutely into detail, as his object was to establish
the principle that a person once rightfully imprisoned
should not be suffered to go at large again till he should
become thoroughly reformed. With a slight addition, he
would inscribe over the door of every prison, Dante's
awful inscription over the gates of hell, " Abandon all
hope, ye who enter here," of departing unreformed. No
doubt a certain per centage would resist reform, and be
incapable of self-government, and these he would treat as
lunatics, and subject them to perpetual imprisonment, no
more painful than was absolutely necessary to prevent
them from inflicting injury on themselves and others ; in
fact, in many cases, mere detention. lie did not shrink
from asserting his opinion, that a gaol should be regarded
in the light of a moral hospital, and no patient should be
discharged from its precincts until thoroughly cured. In
one respect only he would make a distinction, for he
would retain the morally diseased incurables in his hos-
pital. If this principle of treatment were acknowledged
and acted upon, there would be an end of the morbid
sympathy too often exhibited towards criminals by spec-
tators, juries, and even judges. The law would have the
alliance of all mankind but- the criminals themselves,
whose evil habits would be corrected, and whose com-
panions in guilt would have the assurance that, once im-
prisoned, offenders would never behold them again but as
altered men. This certainly would act as a powerful
check upon crime, and.remove many temptations."
Combined with a comprehensive educational
movement, to repress the growth of crime, such a
treatment of am- existing stock of criminals• might
not be without valuable results.