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8. p. cent.
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We shall now proceed to an examination of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts presumably arising from destitution. It has already
been pointed out that seven per cent. of the annual amount of crime
committed in England and Wales consists of offences against the
Vagrancy Acts, and it now remains for us to inquire whether these
offences are the result of destitution, or what part destitution plays
in producing them.

Out of the 52,136 offenders against the Vagrancy Acts in the year
1888, less than one half (45 per cent.) were charged with begging; the
other offences consisted principally in prostitution, in having
implements of housebreaking, in frequenting places of public resort to
commit felony, in being found on enclosed premises for unlawful
purposes. In all these cases, with the exception of prostitution, it
is not probable that destitution had much, if anything, to do with
inducing the offenders to violate the law. Men who live the life of
incorrigible rogues, who prowl about enclosed premises, who lead a
mysterious existence, without doing any work, are not to be classed
among the destitute; as a general rule, such persons are habitual
thieves and vagabonds, who persist in the life they have adopted
merely because it suits them best. One of the great difficulties in
dealing with persons of this stamp is their hatred of a well-ordered
existence; in a vast number of cases the life they live is the only
kind of life they thoroughly enjoy; it is a profound mistake to
imagine that they are pining for what are usually regarded as the
decencies and comforts of human beings. Nothing is further from their
thoughts. Let us alone and mind your own business is the secret
sentiment and often the open avowal of most of these people. "We
should be miserable living according to your ideas; let us live
according to our own." It is very common for benevolent people to
assume that the objects of their compassion and solicitude are, in
reality, as wretched as they imagine them to be. Living themselves in
ease, and it may be affluence, and surrounded by all the amenities of
existence, it is difficult for them to realise that multitudes can
enjoy a rude kind of happiness in the absence of all this. Such,
however, is the fact. The vagabond class is not more miserabl