81
Aberdeenshire, 192,387 92 1 in 2,086

Total, 2,160,969 3,163 1 in 682

III.-MANUFACTURING AND MINING.

Commitments Proportion of
Population for serious crime commitments
Names of Counties. in 1841. in 1841. to population.

Middlesex, 1,576,636 3,586 1 in 439
Lancashire, 1,667,054 3,987 1 in 418
Staffordshire, 510,504 1,059 1 in 482
Yorkshire, 1,591,480 1,895 1 in 839
Glamorganshire, 171,188 189 1 in 909
Lanarkshire, 426,972 513 1 in 832
Renfrewshire 155,072 505 1 in 306
Forfarshire, 170,520 333 1 in 512

Total, 6,269,426 12,067 1 in 476

--PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, 1841, 163; and _Census_ 1841.]

The table in the note exhibits the number of commitments for serious
offences, with the population of each, of eight counties--pastoral,
agricultural, and manufacturing--in Great Britain during the year
1841[2]. We take the returns for that year, both because it was the
year in which the census was taken, and because the succeeding year,
1842, being the year of the great outbreak in England, and violent
strike in Scotland, the figures, both in that and the succeeding
year, may be supposed to exhibit a more unfavourable result for the
manufacturing districts than a fair average of years. From this
table, it appears that the vast preponderance of crime is to be found
in the manufacturing or densely-peopled districts, and that the
proportion per cent of commitments which they exhibit, as compared
with the population, is generally three, often five times, what
appears in the purely agricultural and pastoral districts. The
comparative criminality of the agricultural, manufacturing, and
pastoral districts is not to be considered as accurately measured by
these returns, because so many of the agricultural counties,
especially in England, are overspread with towns and manufactories or
collieries. Thus Kent and Shropshire are justly classed with
agricultural counties, though part of the former is in fact a suburb
of London, and of the latter overspread with demoralizing coal mines.
The entire wan