nd the selfishness of
man. The inquiry is one of the most interesting which can occupy the
thoughts of the far-seeing and humane; for it involves the temporal
and eternal welfare of millions of their fellow-creatures;--it may
well arrest the attention of the selfish, and divert for a few
minutes the profligate from their pursuits; for on it depends whether
the darling wealth of the former is to be preserved or destroyed, and
the exciting enjoyments of the other arrested or suffered to
continue.

To elucidate the first of these questions, we subjoin a table,
compiled from the Parliamentary returns, exhibiting the progress of
serious crime in the principal counties, agricultural pastoral, and
manufacturing, of the empire, during the last fifteen years. We are
unwilling to load our pages with figures, and are well aware how
distasteful they are to a large class of readers; and if those
results were as familiar to others as they are to ourselves, we
should be too happy to take them for granted, as they do first
principles in the House of Commons, and proceed at once to the means
of remedy. But the facts on this subject have been so often
misrepresented by party or prejudice, and are in themselves so
generally unknown, that it is indispensable to lay a foundation in
authentic information before proceeding further in the inquiry. The
greatest difficulty which those practically acquainted with the
subject experience in such an investigation, is to make people
believe their statements, even when founded on the most extensive
practical knowledge, or the more accurate statistical inquiry. There
is such a prodigious difference between the condition of mankind and
the progress of corruption in the agricultural or pastoral, and
manufacturing or densely peopled districts, that those accustomed to
the former will not believe any statements made regarding the latter.
They say they are incredible or exaggerated; that the persons who
make them are _tetes montees_; that their ideas are very vague, and
their suggestions utterly unworthy the consideration either of men of
sense or of government. With such deplorable illusions does ignorance
repel the suggestions of knowledge; theory, of experience;
selfishness, of philanthropy; cowardice, of resolution. Thus nothing
whatever is done to remedy or avert the existing evils: the districts
not endangered unite as one man to resist any attempt to form a
general system for the alleviation of mis