1821. 1831. 1841.
Pop. Com. Pop. Com. Pop. Com.

Middlesex, 1,144,531 2,480 1,358,330 3,514 1,576,636 3,586
Lancashire, 1,052,859 1,716 1,336,854 2,352 1,667,054 3,987
Staffordshire, 345,895 374 410,512 644 510,504 1,059
Yorkshire, 801,274 757 976,350 1,270 1,154,111 1,895
Glamorgan, 101,737 28 126,612 132 171,188 189
Lanark, 244,387 ... 316,849 470 426,972 513
Renfrew, 112,175 ... 133,443 205 155,072 505
Forfar, 113,430 ... 139,666 124 l70,520 333

--PORTER'S _Parl. Tables, and Census_ 1841.]

Here, then, we are at length on firm ground in point of fact. Several
writers of the liberal school who had a partiality for manufactures,
because their chief political supporters were to be found among that
class of society, have laboured hard to show that manufactures are
noways detrimental either to health or morals; and that the mortality
and crime of the manufacturing counties were in no respect greater
than those of the pastoral or agricultural districts. The common
sense of mankind has uniformly revolted against this absurdity, so
completely contrary to what experience every where tells in a
language not to be misunderstood; but it has now been completely
disproved by the Parliamentary returns. The criminal statistics have
exposed this fallacy as completely, in reference to the different
degrees of depravity in different parts of the empire, as the
registrar-general's returns have, in regard to the different degrees
of salubrity in employments, and mortality in rural districts and
manufacturing places. It now distinctly appears that crime is greatly
more prevalent in proportion to the numbers of the people in densely
peopled than thinly inhabited localities, and that it is making far
more rapid progress in the former situation than the latter.
Statistics are not to be despised when they thus, at once and
decisively, disprove errors so assiduously spread, maintained by
writers of such respectability, and supported by such large and
powerful bodies in the state.

Nor can it be urged with the slightest degree of foundation, that
this superior criminality of the manufacturing and densely peopled
districts is owing to a police force being more generally established
than in the agricultural or pastoral, and thus c