The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-05-07 00:00:00

Blackwood'B Magazine

There are several excellent articles in the number for
the present month, chiefly, however, of a solid character,
with a rather smaller sprinkling than usual of those of a
light and amusing vein. 'the first is No. I. of a series of
papers on " Imprisonment and Transportation," with re-
ference, in this instance more especially, to the " Increase
of Crime." The author, we dunk, takes rather a gloomy
view of the subject, imputing—on the authority of some-
what exclusive statistics, the real accuracy of which may
be questioned, if indeed they be not ex parte—by far the
greater weight of our national delinquency to the increase
and demoralising influence of our manufacturing system.
Recent accounts from Preston and other towns state, on
the contrary, that—probably owing mainly to the opera-
tives being pretty fully employed—crime had during the
last three months decreased to about one-fourth of its
amount within the same period last year. Our author by
no means approves of the recent relaxations in our penal
code, which he considers altogether inoperative for good ;
and though we are not friendly, saving for the highest
offences, to extreme or sanguinary punishments, which
are the general resort of bad and arbitrary governments,
it must be admitted on behalf of his argument, that it has
become extremely difficult of late to visit great criminals
with condign punishment. We concur with him that the
progress of education, such as it generally is amongst the
working classes, has effected but a negative amelioration,
if any at all ; for the heart must be improved by religious
and moral training, as welt as the head, before men in a
dense and naturally vicious state of society can be re-
claimed. The mere mechanical art of reading and wri-
ting, and that imperfect in degree, without this, may be a
bane. Our author promises in his next paper to consider
the causes of the general failure in the recent relaxations
of the law, &c., and the means requisite for the diminu-
tion of crime. He will fail to convince us if be do not
include religious instruction, and the putting down, if
possible, of the too general resort to the intemperate use
of intoxicating liquors, with its concomitant evils of reek-
lessness and domestic improvidence.—`• The Rhine and
Rhinelantlers " will be read with interest, especially by
continental tourists. " The Monster Misery of Litera-
ture" is forcibly depicted : no literary production, how-
ever talentel, will command an adequate sum from a
bookseller, unless it be spun out to " three volumes," to
suit the ridiculous and immutable taste of the circulating
libraries. " The Memoirs of a Statesman" is continued,
and with increasing interest. There is an article on Indian
affairs during the last few years, which places the whole
within a glance, and vindicates Lord Ellenborough.
" The Freethinker" is well narrated, and, in conclusion,
imparts an admirable moral to all would-be atheists.
" Love in the Wilderness" is not much to our taste, but
de gustibus, &c. Finally, there is a paper on the Land-
lord and Tenant question in Ireland, showing that the
owners of the soil in that country have been most grossly
maligned by the partisan O'Connell press ; that the al-
leged extortions in rent have no existence; and that the
sufferings and discontent of the Irish peasantry must
have their origin and continuance in far different causes.
Some extracts will be found elsewhere.