It is astonishing how many ways men will turn before they can be brought to admit the simple truth unfolded in the book of Jeremiah and enforced in every page of the gospel, that the heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Driven from the chimeras of mild punishment and general education as antidotes against the antagonist power of sin, philanthropists have at last taken refuge in the infallible effects of solitary confinement. Punishment, it was said, is the real demoralizer of society; it is our jails which are the hotbeds and nurseries of crime. Reform them—separate the hardened criminal from the apprentice to crime—let solitary confinement teach its impressive lessons, and confer its regular habits; and vice, with all its concomitant evils, will disappear from the land. At the same time a great impression was made on the legislature by a graphic, and, in some respects, just description of the suffering in the penal colonies of New South Wales; and the result has been a general adoption, over the whole empire, of the system of long imprisonment instead of transportation, to an extent previously unknown since the system of forced convict-labour in the colonies was introduced. All persons practically acquainted with the subject were aware of the result in which their experiment would terminate, and the fearful multiplication of irreclaimable criminals to which it would lead in the heart of the empire. But unfortunately the persons practically acquainted with the subject had scarcely a voice in the legislature—the current ran strong in favour of lengthened imprisonment, and the abolition, except in very bad cases, of transportation. The judges gave ample scope to the new system, and it received in every point of view a fair experiment. Highway robbers, housebreakers, and habitual thieves, received, in great numbers of cases, sentences of imprisonment, instead of transportation for life or fourteen years. The jails at the same time were every where improved; a general system of prison discipline was adopted and enforced; and solitary confinement, with hard labour, became almost universal. And what has been the result? Why, that it has been now demonstrated by experience, that even the longest imprisonments, and the best system of prison discipline, have no effect, or scarce any, in reclaiming offenders; and that the only effect of the new system has been, to crowd the jails with convicts and the streets with thieves; to load the counties with assessments and the calendars with prisoners; to starve New South Wales for want of compulsory labour, and oppress Great Britain by the redundance of hardened idleness. We speak of a matter the subject of universal notoriety: ample proof of it will be furnished in a future Number.
But, what is most alarming of all, it has now been completely demonstrated, that we are not to look even to the general spread of religious instruction for any immediate or even rapid diminution of crime, or amelioration of the habits of the labouring classes. We say immediate or rapid, because none can be more sensible than we are, that it is thus alone that crime in the end is to be arrested, and that the efforts now making in this respect in all parts of the British empire, are laying the only foundation whereon in future times the superstructure of a moral and orderly society are to be laid. But, as every system must be tested by its fruits, and these fruits in the present forced and artificial state of society are so rapidly brought forth—it is worse than useless to go on encouraging expectations of an early reformation of society from the extension of church establishments, the zeal of dissenters, or the efforts of clerical instructors. Depend upon it, half a century must elapse before these praiseworthy and philanthropic efforts produce any general effect on the frame of society. We shall be fortunate indeed, if in a whole century the existing evils are in any material degree lessened, and society has gone on so long without one of those terrible convulsions, like the French Revolution, which at once destroy the prospects of the present generation and the hopes of the next.
The reason is, that degraded and sensual men have an instinctive aversion to religious truth, and a still greater distaste for religious restraint. The carnal man is at war with God. When will this great truth, so loudly proclaimed in every page of the gospel, be practically acknowledged and acted upon? To those who are acquainted with the anatomy of crime, and who see exemplified in real life the courses of the wicked, its truth becomes not only evident, but of overwhelming importance. The strength of the world consists in its pleasures and enjoyments. It is the vehemence of the desire for these pleasures and enjoyments, which constitutes the fearful force of its temptations. The whole progress of society, the whole efforts of man, the whole accumulations of wealth are directed, in its later stages, to augment these desires. Necessities in a large portion of society being provided for, pleasures only are thought of. Civilisation increases them, for it augments enjoyment: commerce, for it multiplies the wealth by which it is purchased: ingenuity, for it adds to the instruments of luxury: knowledge, for it spreads an ardent, and often exaggerated picture of its gratifications. The whole efforts of man in civilized life are directed to the increase of human enjoyment, the incitement of human desire. Need we wonder, then, if religion, which prescribes an abstinence from the pleasures of sin, which enjoins continence to the sensual, sobriety to the drunkard, reflection to the unheeding, gentleness to the irascible, restraint to the voluptuous, probity to the avaricious, punishment to the profligate, meets in such an age with very few votaries? Some, doubtless, will always be found, who, disgusted with the profligacy with which they are surrounded, are led only the more rapidly to a life of rectitude and duty by such vice; but how many are they amidst the crowd of sensual and unreflecting? Perhaps one in twenty. The great mass pass quietly by on the other side; they do not say there is no God, but they live altogether without God in the world. In vain are efforts made to reclaim the vicious, to bring up their children in the way they should go, in the hope that when they are old they will not desert it. The grown-up will not go to church; in manufacturing towns they will not even put on Sunday's clothes, but revel in intoxication or sloth in their working-dresses all the Lord's day; except when softened by misfortune, or roused by calamity, they will not listen, even at home, to the voice of religious counsel. Children may learn their catechism, and repeat their responses at school; but when they become men and women, will they resist the temptations by which they are surrounded? Numerous congregations are often suddenly formed by the planting of an eloquent and earnest divine into a densely peopled and neglected locality; but where does the congregation in general come from? Go into the thinned or deserted churches or chapels in its vicinity, and you will find you have only transferred the serious and Christian community from one place of worship to another.
Nor let it be said that these dangers affect only a limited portion of the community, and that, provided only society holds together, and property is upon the whole secure, it is of little consequence to the great bulk of the nation whether its criminals are doubling or tripling every ten years, whether its convicts are hanged, imprisoned, or transported. Doubtless that is the view taken by the majority of men, and which ever makes them resist so strenuously any measures calculated to arrest the general evils by a forced contribution from all classes of the state. But is such a view of so very serious a matter either justified by reason, or warranted by a durable regard to self-interest? Considered in reference only to immediate advantage, and with a view to avert the much-dreaded evil of an assessment, is it expedient to allow crime to go on increasing at the fearful rate which it has done in this country during the last forty years? Can we regard without disquietude the appalling facts demonstrated by the Parliamentary returns of population and commitments—that the people are augmenting three times as fast in the manufacturing as the agricultural districts—that detected and punished crime is multiplying in the former three times as fast as the people—and crime really committed three times as much as that which is brought to light? What can be expected from a state in which crime, in the manufacturing districts, is thus increasing TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES as fast as mankind in the rural? From what sources does this overflowing stream of recklessness, profligacy, and misery, which overflows our workhouses and fills our jails, mainly spring, but from this prodigious and unrestrained increase of crime and depravity among the working classes in the manufacturing districts? Must not such a state of things lead to a constant augmentation of poor-rates, county rates, and jail assessments? And how short-sighted is the policy which allows these oppressive burdens to go on constantly increasing, merely from terror of incurring additional expense in striving to arrest them, and hopes to avoid danger, like the partridge, by putting its head in the bush, and ceasing to look it in the face?
But most of all, in a public and political view, is this extraordinary increase of crime in our manufacturing districts, a subject of serious and anxious consideration to all classes in the state. It is in vain to seek to conceal, it is folly to attempt to deny, that in the dense masses of the manufacturers the real danger of Great Britain is to be found. Though not amounting, upon the whole, to more than a tenth part of the nation, they are incomparably the most alarming from their close proximity to each other, the fierce passions which the revolutionary press has long nourished among them, and the perfect organization which, under the direction Of the leaders of their trades' unions, they have long attained. The insurrection in the manufacturing districts of England, and violent strikes in Scotland in 1842, may warn us of the danger of such an outbreak, especially when combined, as the next will almost certainly be, with a general rebellion of the Irish Repealers. Infinite local mischief, incredible destruction of life and property, would inevitably follow any serious and general insurrection among them; even though crushed, as in the end it certainly would be, by an united effort of the other classes in the state. But is the shock to credit, the destruction of capital, the breaking of the bread of hundreds of thousands, nothing in a national point of view? And what can augment the dangers of such local insurrections so much as the acknowledged fact, that crime is making unprecedented progress amongst them; that so general have the causes of dissoluteness become, that whole masses are brought up in depraved and reckless habits, on the verge of, if not actually committing crime; and that "les classes dangereuses" are daily receiving additional accessions on the depraved, the dissolute, and abandoned from all the other ranks in the state.
Let us therefore no longer deceive ourselves, or attempt to deceive others. Crime is making extraordinary and unprecedented progress amongst us; it is advancing with a rapidity unparalleled in any other European state: if not arrested, it will come to render the country unbearable; and will terminate in multiplying to such an extent "les classes dangereuses," as they have been well denominated by the French, as, on the first serious political convulsion, may come to endanger the state. It has advanced with undeviating and fearful rapidity through all the successive delusions which have been trusted to in the country to check its progress. With equal ease it has cast aside the visions of Sir Samuel Romilly and the advocates of lenient punishment—the dreams of Lord Brougham and the supporters of general education—the theories of the Archbishop of Dublin and the enemies of transportation—the hopes of Lord John Russell and the partizans of improved prison discipline at home. Even the blessed arm of the gospel has hitherto failed in checking its advance amongst us; and it nowhere appears in more appalling colours than in the districts where the greatest and most strenuous efforts have been made for the moral and religious instruction of the people. "Nous avons donnés à penser," as the French say. Ample subject for serious reflection has been furnished to our readers till a future occasion, when the cause of this general failure, and the means requisite for the diminution of crime, will be considered.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Table showing the progress of crime in the British islands since 1805, in so far as can be ascertained.
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—Porter's Progress of the Nation, iii. 172, 227.