Have any

What a wanton effusion of human blood! one of these crimes decreased? Not one-the very reverse; while those crimes in which death-punishments have been abolished nearly (sheep-stealing for instance), have actually decreased. The Society engaged in collecting and diffusing information on this momentous subject have recently promulgated the following:-Statistics connected with the Question of Capital Punishment. While crime has increased as it relates to non-capital offences, or those which constitute the great bulk of commitments,-while it has increased, also, as it regards those offences which continue to be visited with the punishment of death, it is a fact not less true than it is important, that, as to those offences from which this extreme but uncertain penalty has been removed, crime has diminished, as is proved by the following abstract of the parliamentary returns for England and Wales.

1st Class.-Non-capital offences, such as larcenies, &c.

Here the commitments rose from 46,833, to 51,701.

2nd Class.-Offences for which the punishment of death continues to be inflicted, viz.: arson, murder, attempted murder, robbery, rape, &c.

Here also the commitments rose,-they rose from 1,705 to 2,247 notwithstanding the numbers executed.

3rd Class.-Offences for which the punishment of death was abolished in 1832-33, viz.: coining, forgery, horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, larcenies in dwellings, and house-breaking, (to which burglary, though nominally capital, must be added, because formerly it was often indicted as house-breaking, while the crimes continued subject to the same punishment,)

In this class alone the commitments fell—namely,

from 4,622 to 4,292.

This diminution of crime being confined to those cases which have ceased to be punished with death, (class 3) and not extending to the other two classes, it cannot be owing to any change of circumstances in the country. To what, then, is it owing? To two causes. First, an increased probability of prosecution; and secondly, an increased likelihood of conviction, as may be proved by the parliamentary returns. Thus in the last three years as to those offences (class 2) for which capital punishment continues, for every hundred commitments, there have been on the average only 42 convictions, while in the same period, as to the 3rd class, or those offences enumerated as having ceased to be visited with death, for every 100 commitments there have been on the average, 74 convictions.

Let us compare crime in the Company's Bengal territories (the only place whence we have returns) with offences in England, in Ireland, and in France; with reference to the yearly averages, and the proportion to the population :

Averages of sentences, and comparison with the amount of population, in England and Wales, in France, and in Bengal.

Sentences.

To death Transportation or` imprisonment for

life

Do. for 7 years

Proportion of yearly Averages to Population.

England: Ireland: France: Bengal. Population Population Population Population 13,000,000. 7 to 8,000,000. 30,000,000. 60,000,000.

1 in 10547 1 in 258401 in 2370781 in 1004182

1 in 67173 1 in 126289 1 in 109890 1 in 402010 1 in 43610 1 in 86419 1 in 290411 in 167669

The following extract from the Supreme Court's Reports of Calcutta, for February, 1833, adds a further gratifying instance of the decrease of crime in India.

The preceding tables, as well as the facts stated in the foregoing pages, are e best criterion of the efficiency of the Company's Government, and the excellence of their criminal code1; I question whether any country in Europe would present so

1 In the Ultra Gangetic territories which have lately come into our possession, much is to be done: Captain Low states, that the utmost venality and perversion of justice prevails in the native courts of civil and criminal law in Tenasserim; and that the perpetrator of any crime, treason perhaps excepted, may buy himself off, if able to furnish the requisite sum. Murder is punished with death; the culprit has his head struck off by a sword. If the victim of murder is a man of rank, the whole family of the murderer suffers the same penalty with him, in order, as the Burmans allege, that the children of the criminal shall not have an opportunity of avenging his death. A traitor, and a conspirator against the king, or a man of high rank, is blown up by gunpowder, and his near relatives suffer the same fate. They are all shut up in a house filled with straw, and gunpowder, and other combustibles, and the whole is fired by a fusee. Adultery, theft, and minor offences are commutable by fine; incestuous intercourse is punished by banishment. If a priest rescues a condemned person on his way to execution, and conveys him to a pagoda, his life is spared. Whatever laws or rules were made on the subject of inheritance, were seldom very strictly attended to; and, unless the deceased individual was a man of rank, the local chief of any Burman government, in Tenasserim, used his discretion in apportioning it, taking care to pay himself handsomely for his self-constituted post of executor.

rapid and so remarkable a diminution of crime as the Bengal tables demonstrate. It is to be regretted that we have not complete tables of all India, as also returns from all the British Colonies; I would therefore suggest, that extensive statistics of crime be prepared for the India-house and Colonial office, which would not only be most valuable in themselves, but also offer the best possible proof of the condition of the people subject to the authority of the East India Company and of the Crown 1.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL CONDITION OF BRITISH INDIA.

No man was better qualified from his acute powers of observation, or his extensive knowledge of other countries, to form an opinion of our possessions in the East than Bishop Heber, who thus graphically dwells on this subject :- Southern Malwa from a mere wilderness is now a garden,' p. 74. During the years of trouble, Malwa (except in the neighbourhood of fortified towns, and among the most inaccessible

1 It would be extremely desirable if the number of gaols in India and in the colonies, and the number of prisoners in each gaol, were specified, as also the mode of employing the prisoners, and the general effects of prison discipline. There can be no doubt that the public exposure of criminals in road gangs not only hardens the offender, but takes away, in a great measure, the dread of punishment from those inclined to crime, as witnessed by me in New South Wales.-R. M. M.