Whatever other information the inquirer may want, he must obtain for himself; if he wish to learn from the crimes something as to their causes, as well as the nature of the criminals, he must begin de novo, and, using the official facts, but rejecting the official system of classification, proceed to arrange all the several offences into two classes, according as they are of a professional and casual character, committed by habitual or occasional offenders. Adopting this principle, it will be found that the non-professional crimes consist mainly of murder, assaults, incendiarism, ravishment, bigamy, embezzlement, high treason, and the like; for it is evident that none can make a trade or profession of the commission of these crimes, or resort to them as a regular means of living[11].
The professional crimes, on the other hand, will be generally found to include burglary, robbery, poaching, coining, smuggling, working of illicit stills, larceny from the person, simple larceny, &c., because each and every of these are regular crafts, requiring almost the same apprenticeship as any other mode of life. Burglary, coining, working illicit stills, and picking pockets, are all arts to which no man, without some previous training, can take. Hence to know whether the number of these dishonest handicrafts—for such they really are—be annually on the increase or not, is to solve a most important portion of the criminal problem; it is to ascertain whether crime pursued as a profession or business, is being augmented among us—to discover whether the criminal class, as a distinct portion of our people is, or is not, on the advance. The non-professional crimes will furnish us with equally curious results, showing a yearly impress of the character of the times; for being only occasional offences, of course the number of such offenders at different years will give us a knowledge of the intensity of the several occasions inducing the crimes in such years.
The accidental crimes, classified according to their causes, may be said to consist of—
I. Crimes of malice, exercised either against the person or the property of the object.
II. Crimes of lust and perverted appetites; as rape, &c.
III. Crimes of shame; as concealing the births of infants, attempts to procure miscarriage, and the like.
| IV. Crimes of temptation, | with, or without breach of trust. |
| V. Crimes of cupidity, | |
| VI. Crimes of want, |
VII. Crimes of political prejudices.
With the class of casual or accidental criminals, however, we are not at present concerned. Those who resort to crime as a means of support, when in a state of extreme want, for instance, cannot be said to belong to the voluntary non-workers, for many of these would willingly work to increase their sustenance, if that end were attainable by such means, but the poor shirt-workers, slop-tailors, and the like, have not the power of earning more than the barest subsistence by their labour, so that the pawning of the work entrusted to them by their employers, becomes an act to which they are immediately impelled for “dear life,” on the occurrence of the least illness or mishap among them. Such offenders, therefore, belong more properly to those who cannot work for their living, or rather, who cannot live by their working, and though they offend against the laws in the same manner as those that will not work, they cannot certainly be said to be of the same class.