The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1864-09-03 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

THE PROBABLE INCREASE OF SUICIDE.  The Se of alto' hostile following artic'e on this important subject :  Convicts complain every day in the police-court that their sentence fi•Hows them everywhere, and it is true that to the respectable, i e., to thine who feel social stigmas, the world when their characters are taiated Ia beemning one vast prh,on-houss. As the sense of honour developes among the muhitusles, tii•t it is developing font all familiar with tbe poor well know, this will he, perhaps, the strongest of all the temptations to suicide, It is already the most app.reut, at least sue-half of the cases which reanh the pollee courts being suicides committed Ey giris whose lovers nave betrayed stuil,ileserted them, . .  The largest cause of all, however, we -believe, is the in, cease of foresight, the development of imagination among the millions. As they rise, and they rise fast-how feet will not be peiceived till the men of fifty die off-to the feeling; of the educated, till shay come also within the cire'e of their temptations, and one of tho-e temptations 10 on abject fear of the future. The crowd which dwells around the broad them of the Rectal pyramid had thirty years ago no foresight, lived on from day to day, never thought of the morrow, could not in mill-on, of instances understand the value or the dread of anything not chew at hand, of a pension, for instance, or thirty years' imprisonment instead of twenty. They have been carefully taught to under. staud, to erovidefor old age, to etude the future, to realm that life stud its cares do not end with the week just passing away. Consequently they perceive as they never perceived before the consequences; of their acts, the results which will come but have not come from their misfortunes. A great enipliq er of lariour told ns recently that the greatest change which in thirty years he had noticed in tip mental condition. of his people was in this respect, that a ;treed sock as the educated poor constantly feel had settled in his villages, and hid, as he thou‘sht, taken much of happintos out of life. Millions are rising to e -ink of educated poor, learning to worry about po..si: ie at ippages of wages, about savings, about iloir children's education and prespecte, about their own chance of escaping the workhouse in old age. Poverty is a very close neighboor to these people, and they fear it with a fear which strangles cheerfulness; in its birth. For one result they accept the principle of insurance by hundreds of thousands, but for another they will feel the temptations to suicide lINS their social superiors feel them, and yet more ke nly than they, for they know by experience what the others only dread. Every. where we heir among the masses of plans which regard the future-of socieies which will give annul. ties after twenty years, of budding a..sociations only profitable when ten years have expired, of tontines, "mutual aids," and funds to provide against sickness. They are all good things, but they all prove that the one faculty latent among the masses of all old countriea- imaginal in- -is getting vivified, and we must accept the evils as well as the good effects of that awakening. We can no more have foresight without despondency than physical long-aightedneßa without the tendency to flatness of the pupil which dims the eyes in old age. It may be that with the danger the correctives will arrive, that life will grew palpahly easier, that phasieal di-comfort may become as unknown in Europe as in Ohio. that a healthier training may. remove other and equal causes of depression, but in the interim period, while millions are acquiring educ ttion without obtaining prosperity, using their imaginations without aught to wake their dreams pleasant, we shall, we may rely on it, see a perceptible increase in the crime of suicide.