Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844

Strong, and in many respects just, pictures of the state of the working classes in the manufacturing districts, have been lately put forth, and the Perils of the Nation have, with reason, been thought to be seriously increased by them. Those writers, however, how observant and benevolent soever, give a partial, and in many respects fallacious view, of the general aspect of society. After reading their doleful accounts of the general wretchedness, profligacy, and licentiousness of the working classes, the stranger is astonished, on travelling through England, to behold green fields and smiling cottages on all sides; to see in every village signs of increasing comfort, in every town marks of augmented wealth, and the aspect of poverty almost banished from the land. Nay, what is still more gratifying, the returns of the sanatary condition of the whole population, though still exhibiting a painful difference between the health and chances of life in the rural and manufacturing districts, present unequivocal proof of a general amelioration of the chances of life, and, consequently, of the general wellbeing of the whole community.

How are these opposite statements and appearances to be reconciled? Both are true—the reconciliation is easy. The misery, recklessness, and vice exist chiefly in one class—the industry, sobriety, and comfort in another. Each observer tells truly what he sees in his own circle of attention; he does not tell what, nevertheless, exists, and exercises a powerful influence on society, of the good which exists in the other classes. If the evils detailed in Lord Ashley's speeches, and painted with so much force in the Perils of the Nation , were universal, or even general, society could not hold together for a week. But though these evils are great, sometimes overwhelming in particular districts, they are far from being general. Nothing effectual has yet been done to arrest them in the localities or communities where they arise; but they do not spread much beyond them. The person engaged in the factories are stated by Lord Ashley to be between four and five hundred thousand: the population of the British islands is above 27,000,000. It is in the steadiness, industry, and good conduct of a large proportion of this immense majority that the security is to be found. Observe that industrious and well-doing majority; you would suppose there is no danger:—observe the profligate and squalid minority; you would suppose there is no hope.

At present about 60,000 persons are annually committed, in the British islands, for serious offences 11 11 Viz., in round numbers— England, 30,000 Ireland, 26,000 Scotland, 4,000 60,000 worthy of deliberate trial, and above double that number for summary or police offences. A hundred and eighty thousand persons annually fall under the lash of the criminal law, and are committed for longer or shorter periods to places of confinement for punishment. The number is prodigious—it is frightful. Yet it is in all only about 1 in 120 of the population; and from the great number who are repeatedly committed during the same year, the individuals punished are not 1 in 200. Such as they are, it may safely be affirmed that four-fifths of this 180,000 comes out of two or three millions of the community. We are quite sure that 150,000 come from 3,000,000 of the lowest and most squalid of the empire, and not 30,000 from the remaining 24,000,000 who live in comparative comfort. This consideration is fitted both to encourage hope and awaken shame—hope, as showing from how small a class in society the greater part of the crime comes, and to how limited a sphere the remedies require to be applied; shame, as demonstrating how disgraceful has been the apathy, selfishness, and supineness in the other more numerous and better classes, around whom the evil has arisen, but who seldom interfere, except to RESIST all measures calculated for its removal.

It is to this subject—the ease with which the extraordinary and unprecedented increase of crime in the empire might be arrested by proper means and the total inefficiency of all the remedies hitherto attempted, from the want of practical knowledge on the part of those at the head of affairs, and an entirely false view of human nature in society generally, that we shall direct the attention of our readers in a future Number.