ws of Draco. For the last fifteen
years so many offences, formerly capital, have had that dreadful penalty
removed, that the law in Great Britain, as now practically administered,
is probably the mildest in Europe. Death is scarce ever inflicted except
for murder; in cases of housebreaking, even when attended with personal
violence, it is never thought of. The executions in Great Britain now
range from twenty-five to thirty-five only a-year, instead of a hundred
and fifty or two hundred, which they formerly were. And what has been
the result? Has the promised and expected diminution of crime taken
place, in consequence of the increased certainty of punishment, and the
almost total removal of all reasonable or conscientious scruples at
being concerned in a prosecution? Quite the reverse. The whole
prophecies and anticipations of the Liberal school have been falsified
by the result. Crime, so far from declining, has signally increased; and
its progress has never been so rapid as during the last fifteen years,
when the lenity of its administration has been at its maximum. An
inspection of the returns of serious crimes already given, will
completely demonstrate this.

Next, it was said, that education would lay the axe to the root of
crime; that ignorance was the parent of vice; and, by diffusing the
school-master, you would extinguish the greater part of the wickedness
which afflicted society; that the providing of cheap, innocent, and
elevating amusements for the leisure hours of the working-classes, would
prove the best antidote to their degrading propensities; and that then,
and then only, would crime really be arrested, when the lamp of
knowledge burned in every mechanic's workshop, in every peasant's
cottage. The idea was plausible, it was seducing, it was amiable; and
held forth the prospect of general improvement of morals from the
enlarged culture of mind. The present generation is generally, it may
almost be said universally, imbued with these opinions; and the efforts
accordingly made for the instruction of the working-classes during the
last twenty-five years, have been unprecedented in any former period of
our history. What have been the results? Has crime declined in
proportion to the spread of education? Are the best instructed classes
the least vicious? Has eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge
diminished the power of the Tempter? So far from it, the consequences,
hitherto at least, have been melancho