repealed in 1824-25. But, as the statute law was narrowed, the common law was expanded to fill its place, and judicial decisions against laborers reduced the liberty they expected from the repeal of the combination laws almost to nothing. Finally, an act of 1875 specially protected all "combinations in contemplation or furtherance of trade disputes," and the persistent attempts to make trade unions, as such, criminal, have failed.

A similar attempt, now very prominent in the United States, to make trust combinations, as such, criminal, is likewise doomed to failure; for both trade unions and trusts, despite the many evils connected with them, are necessary instruments in the upward growth of civilization. The aim should be wise legal regulation, not criminal suppression, which is indeed almost impossible.

APPENDIX II

STATISTICS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.

THE statistics of indictable offences from 1853 to 1860 present a strange phenomenon. The totals mount from 29,359 in 1854, to an average of more than 53,000 in 185761, for the same classes of offenders. Does this great vault in the statistics really mean that the actual amount of these old crimes in England was multiplied suddenly in a like degree? The evidence does not warrant this conclusion. The great recorded increase falls wholly under the head of simple larceny, and was due to the enforcement of the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, which relates only to such offences.' Undoubtedly, social repression for acts of petty theft greatly increased at this time, but it seems impossible to believe that such conduct had not been truly criminal for many years previous. When death or transportation were the only legal penalties for a larceny of forty shillings, or even five shillings, such conduct may not have been crime, because society would not often inflict such punishments; but this was at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, and since then social pressure has been growing steadily stronger, as the following table reveals. It is most probable, therefore, that the great increase in the statistics for indictable offences in 1857 does not mean a corresponding growth in the actual amount of such crime among the people. The increase of delinquency came earlier, when various kinds of petty larceny and other offences were re-criminalized by society, after the introduction of milder penalties.

1 See Judicial Statistics, 1857. Introduction, p. xiii.

TABLE SHOWING THE RAPID INCREASE OF CONVICTIONS AND PUNISHMENTS FOR CERTAIN OFFences as the PENALTIES BECAME LESS SEvere.

The very small totals of commitments for all indictable offences in the early years of the nineteenth century (4,605 in 1805), points to the de-criminalizing of many forms of evil conduct, and a corresponding decrease in the actual amount of the nation's crime. The growth of intelligence and humanity among the English people seems to have been directly responsible for this decrease, contrary to the general

This does not include the many thousands convicted by Courts of Summary Jurisdiction, under the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, but shows the decreased use of the higher courts for the trial of such offenders.

404

How Evil Acts Ceased to be Crimes

trend of the evidence and argument of this book. The explanation is simple. The nation demanded more righteous penalties, deeming the punishment of death, or even transportation for minor crimes, greater evils than the acts themselves. There was strong evidence-as shown in Chapter XI.-that many offences, "not of atrocious nature," but punishable with death, were "never brought under the review of magistrates at all," so great was the reluctance to prosecute. Among the evil acts very rarely punished, Judge Colquhoun mentioned shoplifting and various other larcenies, forgery, housebreaking in the daytime, highway robbery, horse, cattle and sheep stealing, burglary without entering the house, acts of violence on the person, frame breaking, and various other minor offences. Many of these evil acts had doubtless ceased to be crimes from lack of social punishment. Some of them, we are told, were fast losing in the public mind the idea of evil formerly associated with them. This is interesting and important as showing the rapid lowering of the social standard of morality, when acts rightly criminal are no longer punished as crimes; and if this be true, its counterpart appeals even more strongly and naturally for our belief, namely, that the enforcement of new and wise social prohibitions is very influential in elevating the moral standard of the lower masses of the people. The English nation was not powerless to arrest and punish dangerous malefactors, as the death penalties for murder (see page 260), and the convictions for burglary' abundantly prove, but it deliberately chose to leave many of its laws unenforced for a time, rather than that minor evils should be punished too severely under existing criminal statutes. It did not attempt to substitute lynch law, for that is practically never used for minor offences.

1 Total convictions for burglary in the years

Passive opposition to the enforcement of the cruel laws, and urgent recommendations for change were the means employed. The rapid increase of social prosecution and punishment for old offences of wounding, forgery, housebreaking, and various kinds of simple larceny, from 1817 to 1857, as less severe penalties were legalized, is strong evidence that these acts were not really crimes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the total of all punishments for indictable offences was very small indeed.

One of the most striking characteristics of the old judicial statistics was the inclusion among serious crimes of a great mass of acts of petty larceny, and other minor offences against property, while many forms of even serious violence against the person remained unnoticed and unpunished. This would indicate that the social conscience condemned one of these two great classes of evil acts much more strongly than the other, and history proves that this was so. Even most desperate attacks upon the person, including worst attempts to commit murder, were not declared serious crimes until 1803, and this law was again greatly extended in 1829 and 1861; while common assaults were regarded as so highly natural, and occurred so frequently unpunished, that the English people were thoroughly hardened to them, and certainly did not think of them as crimes until long after 9 Geo. IV., c. 31, 1829, which for the first time made such conduct legally punishable by fine and imprisonment, on conviction before justices of the peace. In the same year the metropolitan police force was established, and seven years later, in 1836, the borough police; but it was not until 1857, by 19 and 20 Vic., c. 69, that the establishment of a disciplined police force was made compulsory throughout all the counties of England and Wales. The nation thus greatly increased its ability to arrest and prosecute for minor acts of evil, as well as for more heinous offences. Meanwhile the methods of proced