If we divide this table into two quinquennial periods, and ascertain the mean number of convictions for the different offences enumerated in each of the periods, we shall find that, during the five years, 1853-57, the mean number of convictions for all the offences, except burglary and breaking into dwelling-houses, &c., and forgery and offences against the currency, is less than in the five years, 1848-52:

If these figures might be taken as indices by which to measure the actual quantity of offences committed, they would show a gratifying decrease in the amount of serious crime in the metropolis. In the absence, however, of data showing the actual number of grave offences which have occurred, conclusions derived from the number of convictions, as to the amount of crime, must be received with caution.

The ages, sex, and degree of instruction of the persons convicted during the five years, 1853-57, are set forth in the following tables :

The ages of 20 to 25 and 30 to 40 include the greatest number of persons convicted; and, of the whole amount of criminals, the largest number were under 30 years of age. The increase and decrease of crime in a district is due principally to the criminality of individuals of mature years-of those, in fact, who have arrived at an age when they become most fully exposed to the vicissitudes of life. The proportion of female criminals is large, being somewhat more than one-third of the whole amount. The bulk of the criminals consisted of persons who had received an imperfect education. This is the rule among the criminal class. A vast amount of instruction of a most unsatisfactory character, and in which the moral faculties, in particular, are neglected, prevails among the lower classes and also among the middle class; and it is from individuals who have received this spurious education that the criminal class chiefly derives its additions.

The statistics of felonies against property constitute a very interesting portion of the Police Returns. In the following table is given a summary of the number of felonies which occurred during the five years, 1853-57, the number of convictions for felony during the same period, the first amount of loss, the amount recovered, by the police, and the total amount of loss :

The particular felonies of which summaries are given in the foregoing table form a curious list. The following table shows the number and character of the felonies committed in the Metropolitan Police district during the year 1857

It is evident that the cases marked thus (*) could not have been prevented by the police.

The number of convictions for felony during the years 1853-57 was 12,441; the ascertained loss of property from felony, in the same period, amounted to 192,4647. If we suppose that the whole of this sum (which would not be the case, as stolen property, except when money, can only be got rid of for sums much beneath its value) was divided solely among the number of individuals convicted for felony, 157. and a few odd shillings only would fall to the lot of each person! Crime is, indeed, a most unprofitable occupation.

Of the 12,441 individuals committed for felony during the quinquennial period, 1853-57, 3180 had been in custody for felony twice previously, 689 thrice, 147 four times, and 53 five times and upwards.

The great increase in the total amount of offenders, as well as in the number of arrests and convictions for several of the slighter offences, which is shown by the preceding statistics to have occurred in 1857, and the decrease of arrests and convictions in 1855, are not susceptible of explanation by the information

which we at present possess. Perhaps the most important conclusion which may be derived from the criminal statistics of the metropolis is, that the greatest number of convictions and arrests occur for offences which arise from a low grade or a perverted state of morality, rather than from more deliberate criminality. This conclusion affords additional support to the propositions which we have endeavoured to set forth in this article.

In addition to the returns of the number of persons taken into custody, the offences for which they have been arrested, and the results of the arrests, the police also make certain "Miscellaneous returns," among which is included a report of the "Number of suicides committed, and the number attempted and prevented by the police and others.”

The numerical records of suicide form a terrible illustration of the acuteness of the misery and sin which exists in the metropolis. The statistics of suicide are doubtless incomplete, as it is not improbable that many of those deaths, upon an inquiry into the cause of which a jury returned a verdict of "Found dead," have resulted from suicide. The number of instances in which a verdict of Found dead' was returned, in the county of Middlesex last year, was 535. The following table shows the number of suicides and attempted suicides in the Metropolitan Police District during the ten years 184857:

We may add, as a pendant to this melancholy table, that in the eight years 1848-55, 242 persons died in the metropolis from privation of food, 49 from neglect, and 109 from cold.

In the preceding article our object has been to show the chief points connected with the etiology of a low grade of morality which we believe to exist extensively among all classes of the population of London (and, indeed, of the kingdom), and which we consider to be the substratum of crime and other forms of immorality. We have attempted to indicate the most prominent causes which, acting upon this substratum, determine overt acts, not only of crime, but of vice generally; and we have given a summary of the crime which has occurred in London during the last five years, as an illustration of one of the effects of the low grade of morality existing among the metropolitan population.

567

ART. III.-ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE LANGUAGE OF ORATORS, POETS, AND PHILOSOPHERS.

BY A. F. MAYO, ESQ., BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

It is my object in this paper to suggest some distinction as to the varying necessities under which the orator, the poet, and the philosopher lie in regard to the possession of an abundant vocabulary. Some light may thence be thrown upon the necessities of the ordinary intercourse of mankind; for no man can talk with his neighbour without evincing the presence of mental ingredients, which in their highest energy become poetry, oratory, or philosophy.

The orator is frequently in want of language under the stringency of that very emotion which he must needs yield to if he is to animate his audience with kindred fire. The danger to which he is exposed is that, if he may not possess such a sufficient repertory of language out of which he may select the words which may paint the passing shade of intensified thoughtwhat happens?-his inspiration may be suddenly chilled in consequence of his intellect being turned into a channel divergent from the main stream of his discourse. He has to let down his plummet into the depths of the ocean of language and laboriously to examine its contents. No longer like a ship careering over the surface, the orator is like the diver, subjected to the heaviest pressure of the element which he fain would master. How often those sympathies are chilled which, if they were rightly seconded by language, would carry the orator to the highest summit of success; unable at the lucky instant to marry his thought to burning words, what happens to him? He falls into some philosophic generality, from the cold trammels of which he is himself unable to escape; and all this from his impotence to find the right word at the right moment.

The consequence is that men of high philosophic power require, if they are to become orators, a copious vocabulary and a ready memory to evoke it, though the want of both is sometimes compensated for in the persuasiveness of an electric sympathy irradiating the most distant portions of the argument. Let me explain this more fully.

An orator who makes use of a general term because he is unable to find a more specific one, becomes himself entangled in that sense of the term which has least to do with the subject in hand, very much as the owner of a vast estate frequently envies the petty freeholder who owns the outlying angle which is wedged