It is a well-known and acknowledged fact that in this country felony is so lucrative and so far from hazardous that it thrives, and will thrive.
It appears from the judicial statistics that, while incidental crime is decreasing, habitual crime is growing.
Transportation no longer carries off our thieves, who are discharged at the rate of about two thousand a year into the general population.
It is more than probable that a great proportion of these liberated prisoners re-enter the ranks of the criminal class.
The money spent on the repression of crime, ten millions a year, is amply sufficient to effect the purpose. But, as yet, it has been spent in vain. If things continue in the present course, we may look for another panic ere long. The subsidence of that in 1856 was as irrational as its rise. In deference to the popular outcry a show was made for a time of restraining the issue of the licences, and the country was appeased. But the real evil, the discharge of criminals unreformed by their past treatment, and without a check on their future conduct, continues unabated.
It is to be hoped that when the indignant terror of the public is once more aroused it will not again be squandered on the wrong object—the unlucky ticket of leave. But we must not be too sanguine. It is the nature of the bull to vent his fury on the red rag instead of the matador.
It must, however, be conceded that a man really anxious for self-restoration may pass through Portland or Dartmoor uncontaminated, and even derive some benefit from the discipline, defective as it is; but each instances are rare.
The young man who had attracted Peace’s attention became utterly reckless and debased while in the last-named prison.
He became instructed in all the manœuvres of the habitual criminals with whom he associated, and his face became quite changed, as well as his mind.
It assumed that peculiar expression so prevalent among hardened offenders, which to the initiated is unmistakeable. A “leary look,” in which fear, defiance, and cunning are blended together.