The Sun. — 1842-03-31 (London, England)

CRIME AND IGNORANCE.  We think that, although the ordinary connexion of ignorance and crime is still as distinctly. traceable as ever in the calendars of assizes and sessions—which now contain a column, marking the degree of proficiency of every prisoner in the elementary knowledge of reading and writing—there is beginning to be discernible in these calendars the operation of an extension of these rudiments of instruction amongst the class of persons in which criminals are generally found to exist. For example, in the calendar of prisoners for trial at the present South Lancashire Assizes on charges of felony, generally of a very serious description, we find the numbers to stand as follow :—There are just 100 prisoners named in that calendar of whom we find 30 (that is 30 per cent.) can neither read nor write ; 24 can read imperfectly, but cannot write ; 34 can read and write imperfectly ; seven can read and write well ; and five can read and write in a superior manner.' Of the seven who can read and write well, three prisoners are charged with crimes against person, not property, viz. fratricide (from sudden passion), manslaughter, and rape ; a fourth with forgery (which offence required a degree of intelligence and education), and the others with horse-stealing and other felonies. Of the five, who are still more proficient in reading and writing, four are indicted for forgeries ; and the fifth, a clerk in the postoffice, for stealing a letter. We apprehend that few persons are now to be found who would gravely contend that education is an evil, because it has in some few instances enabled individuals to commit forgery. The answer to such an obsolete argument would be that, of persons able to read and write well, this calendar contains only 12 per cent., while there are 30 per cent. of criminals utterly ignorant of both reading and writing ; 44 per cent. more who are ignorant of writing, and can only read imperfectly; and 34 per cent. more who only read and write iinperfectly. The two classes would stand thus :-0f comparatively ignorant and uneducated persons, 88 per cent. ; of comparatively educated persons, 12 per cent. As it appears to us, this is a very cogent argument for national education ; and such facts ought to appeal powerfullrto the legislature, in behalf of some comprehensive measure for that purpose. But as we have stated (though, not having former calendars at hand, we cannot state how much per cent.), even this melancholy statement of things shows, as we believe, a decided improvement on the calendars of a few years back, when they first began to record these things. Fifteen per cent. of the prisoners in this calendar are females ; and 17 per cent. (both sexes) are under 20 years of age.  Last week, at the Court of Assize of the Saone-etLoire, a man named Laboricr was tried for the murder and robbery of the widowDucrot, who kept a wine-shop at Macon. The crime was committed in December last, and the prisoner was arrested in Geneva the following month. This man, whose character was of the worst description, confessed his crime immediately. He said that having. but two sous left, and not knowing where to find a sleepingplace, he knocked at the door of the widow Ducrot's house, in the hope of persuading her to let him in. She spoke to him from the window, and then came down' to open the door. It was, he said, at the moment the door was opening that the idea of the murder and robbery came across his mind. He struck her a violent blow with his fist on the head which stunned her, and then tied a rope round her neck and strangled her, He immediately ransacked the drawers of the table, and took away about 600 f., together with a gold chain and ring, which his victim wore at the time. On the trial, the great point of interest arose respecting the truth of the prisoner's statement, that the crime was unpremeditated. Several circumstances—such as his declaring the day before that he was to receive money in a day or two—his having a rope with him when he struck the woman down—and the evidence of a medical man, that the blow on the head was not given with the hand— seemed to prove that Laborier was lilt telling the whole truth. The jury, however, gave in a verdict of attenuating circumstances, and he was condemned to hard labour at the hulks for life.