If we take the total cases, including summary convictions, the figures stand as follows:—
| Convictions in 1859 | 246,227 |
| ” 1881 | 542,319 |
| ———– | |
| Increase in crime | 296,092 |
In other words, instead of your Right Hon’ble Ruler’s decrease of 2,000 convictions, we have actually an increase of nearly 300,000. Is it possible to conceive a more glaring case of what Mr. Gladstone himself terms “the simple but effectual plan of pure falsification?”
Now for Intemperance. The number of persons fined for drunkenness in England:
| In the year 1860 | 88,410 |
| In ” 1881 | 174,481 |
or roughly speaking, the convictions for drunkenness have doubled in twenty-one years.
Truly, my Friend, you cannot congratulate Free Trade on the decrease of pauperism, crime, and intemperance it has produced.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] “In fifty years, Great Britain has lifted her estimate on this point so rapidly that she spends five times as much for a given number of paupers? than she did fifteen years after the opening of the century.” (‘Practical Political Economy,’ by Profr. Bonamy Price, p. 237.)
[46] Comparative Cost of Relief to Paupers.