940 nearly. This of itself demonstrates how rapidly Scotland within the last thirty years has gained on its more opulent neighbour in this unenviable distinction. But, in truth, this difference in favour of Scotland is apparent only, not real; for it arises chiefly from the greater care bestowed by the committing magis trates in Scotland, who are all professional lawyers, than in England, where many of them serve gratuitously, and are private gentlemen.

It may safely be concluded, therefore, that the proportion of crime to the population is as high in Scotland as England; an astounding and almost incomprehensible fact, considering how large a proportion of Caledonia is in a simple agricultural or pastoral state, where crime is extremely rare, and clearly demonstrating that the depravity of its great towns, to make up the average, must be even greater than in the Great Babylon of the Southern Empire.

There is another deplorable fact which illustrates the same change. In London, the number of public houses is one fifty-sixth of the whole houses: In Glasgow, it appears from Mr Cleland's late invaluable publication, it is now one-twelfth. In England crime has more than tripled during the last twenty years; in Scotland, it has during the same period, at an average, increased at least five-in the great towns probably eight fold. Whatever the Schoolmaster may have done for our manufacturing population, he has at least proved but a feeble safeguard against the temptations of vice and the passion for whisky.

In Ireland the greatest possible exertions have been made during the

last twenty years, and with the most general success, to educate the people. Between the rivalry of the two contending religions to obtain proselytes, and the benevolent efforts of the clergy and landholders of both persuasions, more has been done during that time to teach the poor to read than in any former period of Irish history. Arthur Young and Mr Wakefield long ago observed that the ignorance of the Irish was by no means the greatest evil, for that a large proportion of them could read; but that they were almost totally destitute of any books that could do them good, and that the adventures of Moll Flanders, or some such edifying history of a prostitute or robber, was generally the only intellectual food which they received. Since that time the efforts made to educate the Irish have been uninterrupted and incessant; and so far have they penetrated, that Mr Weld tells us, in his interesting account of Killarney, that it is not unusual to see little schools in the wilds of Kerry, in which the fern forms the roof, and the rocks the seats and table of the humble establishment, a fact which the author himself witnessed in that county twenty years ago. How have these prodigious efforts for the education of the poor been rewarded by their results upon the moral and political condition of the people? We will not appeal to the Coercion Act; we will not appeal to the admission in the late ministerial pamphlet, that "the only question was, whether the whole of Ireland was to relapse into the sanguinary barbarism of Abyssinia;"† we would only request our readers to cast their eyes on the stupendous catalogue quoted below, taken from the Par

liamentary Return, 14th March, 1833, from which they will see that the sum-total of crimes in Ireland is about 15,000 in a year, of which, in the year 1832, no less than 248 were murders, 1,172 robberies, attacks on houses 1,675, burning houses 571, burglaries 844, rapes 212.

Now, it is in vain to say that Ireland, so far as the power of reading goes, is not a highly educated country. Whether they read any thing which will do them any good is a totally different question. Perhaps most of our readers may think that they read rather more of agitating speeches and inflammatory addresses than either their Bible or Prayer-book, but be that as it may, it is certain that so far as mere education goes, they have made unparalleled strides in the last twenty years, and such as never was witnessed in Ireland, or perhaps in any country before. Now, in order to perceive the proportion which the offences of Ireland bear to Great Britain, we must recollect that, by the late census, its population in 1831, was 7,784,000 ;* and that the Table given below is, not of the criminals, but the offences in the Emerald Isle. Now, as most of the Irish crimes are committed in large bodies or gangs, it is certainly no exaggeration to say, that if there were 13,753 crimes committed in Ireland

Illegal notice,

Brought forward,

in 1832, there were at least double that number, or 27,506 criminals engaged in their perpetration. Probably there were a great many more; but as we wish rather to be within than without the mark, let us take it at that number.

It results from this, that there were in Ireland in 1832

.

At least 27,506 criminals.
Population, 7,784,000.

Which gives a proportion of 7,984 to 27, or 290 to 1 nearly. It is true the Irish return is of crimes perpetrated, not persons committed, like the English and Scotch; but when it is recollected what vast numbers of persons are generally engaged in offences in that country, it is certainly no exaggeration to say, that the committals, if the police of the country had been such as to render the apprehension of the criminals tolerably certain, would have been at least in the same proportion.

These facts are of the utmost, we may add, the most paramount importance upon this subject. They prove that crime is tripling in twenty years in England, increasing at least five fold during the same period in Scotland, and probably multiplying six fold in the same time in Ireland. This proportion is in the highest degree alarming. Mr Malthus has long terrified the world by his cele

brated view of the multiplying power of population, and all our philosophers have stood aghast at the power of duplication in the human species in twenty-five years; but what is this to the triplication of crime in one part of the empire, and its quadruplication in another, in a still shorter period? Why, if things continue at this rate, we shall have crime going on not as the square, but the cube; in twenty years, the criminals will be 60,000 annually in England, in forty years 180,000, in sixty years 540,000, in eighty years 1,620,000, in a century 4,860,000, or nearly a third of the whole existing population! It is needless to say that such a result is utterly inconsistent with social existence; a system fraught with such consequences must in a short time destroy itself; it merely illustrates the fearfully rapid progress which crime is making amongst us in an age when education has existed to an unparalleled extent among the people, and greater charitable exertions have been made for their improvement and amelioration than in any former age of the world.

This rapid increase of crime is out of all proportion to the augmentation either of the numbers of the people, the national wealth, or the national revenue. From the Tables quoted below, it appears that since 1812 the population has increased somewhat more than a half; that the national expenditure has declined from ninety-four to fifty millions, nearly a half of its former amount; that the exports only have risen from thirtythree to sixty millions, or nearly doubled; the imports only increased about a seventh; the poor's rates increased about a sixth in money, or somewhat less than doubled, if estimated in grain; whereas the criminals have more than tripled. The increase of crime, therefore, is beyond all comparison greater than the augmentation in any other particu

lar; and it has even far outstripped the rate of our exports, aided as they have been by the steam-engine, the steam-power looms, and the incalculable improvements of machinery.

We do not lay this prodigious increase in crime in so short a time entirely upon the Schoolmaster. If it all lay upon his shoulders, he would be crushed to the earth by its weight. We are quite aware how many concurring causes have been at work to produce the deplorable result: we are fully sensible of the tendency of a long-continued peace; of the vast increase of manufactures, the growth of our large cities, and many other circumstances, in producing the general effect. But what we take our stand upon is this: That experience has now proved that the mere education of the poorer classes, without any care of their religious principles, has had no sensible effect in counteracting the influence of these demoralizing circumstances, or preventing, by the extension of knowledge and mental resources, the growth of human depravity. This is demonstrated as clearly as that two and two make four; happy if it could be safely said that the influence of such merely scientific education has only been negative, and that it has not positively added to the sum-total of general wickedness.

It is not surprising that such has been the result. The whole system of the Educationists has been built upon a wrong foundation.

The chief object of Lord Brougham and the philosophic set of educationists has been to extend the intellectual powers and scientific knowledge of the labouring classes. It is for this reason that they have made such extraordinary efforts to increase the means of acquiring such information. We have had Labourers' Institutes, Mechanics' Reading-rooms, Penny Magazines, Penny Cyclopædias, Education Societies, Lectures

on Natural Philosophy, Astronomy made Easy, Treatises on Political Economy, and every sort of institution and composition set on foot, by all classes of Whigs, from the Lord Chancellor downwards, in order to give full developement to the intellectual powers and reasoning facul ties of the lower orders, and enable them all to understand Bacon, Newton, and Adam Smith. That these

efforts were philanthropic, we admit; that they were natural to men of studious and learned habits, who judged of others by themselves, may be conceded; but that they were founded upon a gross misconception of human nature, must be evident to every one practically or theoretically acquainted with the human mind is evident, and that they have totally failed, is now placed beyond dispute by the result.

Sense and imagination hold forth instant gratification, to which all are alive, because they are the lever by which nature intended the great mass of mankind, in every class of society, should be governed. Thought and intellect hold forth instant labour and difficulty; require years of toil and erection; promise in the end a gratification intelligible only to a most limited class of men in any rank of life, because they were never meant to guide more than a small portion of society. It is utterly preposterous to suppose that intellectual pleasures, never at any time capable of being felt by more than one in ten, and attended in the outset with such distasteful qualities, can, when left to themselves, stand for a moment in competition with those of sense or fancy,-with licentious novels, demoralizing poetry, infidel abuse, levelling misrepresentation. No doubt, among every thousand of mankind, there may possibly be found a hundred who will derive pleasure from the discoveries of science, or the pursuits of literature and philosophy, but unquestionably there will never be found more than that number. The remaining ninetenths will be accessible only to physical enjoyments, or excitation of the fancy. This is not peculiar to the lower orders; it pervades alike every walk of life, the Peers, the Commons, the Church, the Bar, the Army. No man ever found a fifth

part of his acquaintances, even in the most cultivated and intellectual classes, who really derived pleasure from the pursuits of the understanding, or would prefer them to other enjoyments, if they could abandon them without risk to their professional prospects. We cannot expect in ploughmen or weavers, a degree of intellectual capacity which we look for in vain at the Bar or in the House of Commons.

But

A father sends his son to Paris, and those acquainted with the seductions and allurements of that great mart of profligacy, warn him of the dangers to which he would be exposed in the midst of every thing calculated to entrance the imagination, and captivate the senses. the sturdy old educationist replies, "Never fear the gambling-houses, he has got Locke with him; never fear the theatres, he has the Labourers' Institutes; never fear the Palais Royal, he has the Penny Magazine; never fear the Danseuses, he can read Bacon." What should we say to a man in private life who should speak and act in this manner? • Yet this is precisely what Lord Brougham and the education-mad set have done, when they poured at once and universally into the minds of the working-classes the means of reading, not only without any effort to induce them to select what is good in preference to what is bad in human composition, but a complete and careful abstinence from the only antidote really capable of grappling, among the multitude, with the allurements of passion,-the influence of Religion.

If you do not instruct the people, say the advocates of the Education System, you leave them to the undisturbed control of their senses, which require no tuition; you debar them from all intellectual enjoyments which might counteract or counterbalance their influence, and necessarily subject them to the government of their passions. The argument is plausible, and has misled many a benevolent and good man; but the sophism it contains is obvi

ous.

It presupposes that the educated are admitted only to pure and mentul pleasures; that no corruption or sensual excitement can enter by the portals of the Press; that at the in

tellectual feast, nothing but wholesome and salutary viands are set forth; and that, if the people only are allowed to get in, they cannot fail to be both improved and strengthened by the banquet. Alas! experience has now proved, what principle might have from the first anticipated, that the most tempting dishes are the most dangerous,-the most salutary the least attractive; that there is poison in the cup, and that, without the utmost care to separate the good from the bad, by incessantly enforcing the principles of religion, nothing but disease and death can follow the feast. It is demonstrated by the result of the experiment, tried on the greatest scale in this country, that Education, in an old and complete community, if not perpetually placed under the safeguard of Religion,if not attended with rigorous safeguards against the intermixture of error, will be perverted from the greatest of all blessings to the greatest of all curses; that the Press will become an engine of vast power for the introduction of infidelity, discontent, profligacy, and corruption among the people; and that, under the influence of this mighty solvent, all the safeguards of religion and virtue will speedily give way, and one unbridled torrent of licentious ness overwhelm the land.

The great error of the philosophical party on this subject, consists in this, that they supposed that what they took pleasure in themselves, every one else would take pleasure in; and that Bacon, Newton, and Locke would prove as effectual a counterpoise to sensual allurements or guilty excitation in the whole labouring population, as it did in Her schel, or Brewster, or Babbage, or Whewell, or Professor Forbes, or Ivory, or such gifted spirits. They saw every here and there an individual or a family among the lower orders, who lived in the sober shade of study and retirement, and were most virtuous and exemplary citizens; and they figured to themselves a world composed of persons of the same description, and saw no bounds to the delights of the prospect. They beheld the lamp of knowledge burning in the workshop of every mechanic, and lightening the labours of every ploughman; cheering the so

litude of the pastoral valley, and purifying the corruptions of the crowded city; dignifying the retirement of the poor artisan, and softening the pride of the lordly politician. The prospect was enchanting, the vision captivating, the dream delightful; it had but one fault-it was totally impracticable. The idea of the labouring poor being generally either brought to understand, or taking the slightest interest in, or being in the least the better of philosophical information, is a Utopia not one whit less extravagant than the Vision of Sir Thomas More, or the El Dorado of Sir Walter Raleigh. No doubt there will always be found a certain number of individuals in the humblest, equally as the highest ranks, who will take an interest in such pursuits, and feel, in the recreation they afford, a counterpoise to the allurements of sense; but their number can never exceed three or four in the hundred. Upon the remaining ninety-five or ninety-six, they will produce no sort of impression whatever; they will never effect the slightest lodgment in their mind; but, disregarding such dry and uninteresting topics, the great bulk of mankind will fly to the journalist or the romance-writer, to abuse of their superiors, raillery at the Church, or invectives at the Government, which never fail to console them for the inequality of fortune; or stimulants to the passions, which the weakest intellect can understand.

The Penny Magazines, Penny Cyclopædias, &c. which have recently issued under the direction of the great Central Societies in London for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, are certainly a great acquisition to the amusement of such of the poor as will read them, and they may have diffused much useful practical knowledge amongst them; but in a moral point of view, they have been and are nearly totally useless. It is not by being told about the caves at Elephanta, and the size of the Pyramids; the Upas Tree, and the Falls of Niagara; the diameter of the Earth, and the satellites of Jupiter; the architecture of Athens, and the Cathedral of York; the battle of Hastings, and the height of the Andes, that the labouring poor are to be taught the regulation of their pas