No man will plead that privateering is essential to the safety of any country, and though it has been hitherto allowed by all, it can be no more defended upon any principle of humanity, morality, or of common honesty, than the sending of a band of housebreakers and highway-robbers, armed with daggers and pistols, into what we are pleased to call an enemy's country, to plunder, and, if they venture to resist, to destroy its peaceable inhabitants. Yet some of our ministers might, perhaps, scruple to plan, and some of our soldiers refuse to execute a commission for that purpose, pleading that they were neither thieves nor assassins. But in the eye of reason, humanity and common sense, where is the dif ference? And what is it which renders housebreaking a more atrocious and despicable crime, than entering a trading or a travelling vessel forcibly, to seize upon the property which it carries, and prepared, if any opposition is made, to kill or maim the defenders of it? If there is a difference between robbery and murder upon the water, and the same detestable deeds upon dry land, I will thank any one of your Correspondents who will clearly point it out.

Till this has been done to my satisfaction, I must deem privateering one of the most disgraceful and least necessary attendants upon that fruitful source of human crime and misery, War.

I remain, Sir, in common, I trust, with the great majority of your readers,

a sincere friend to

PEACE.

AND

GLEANINGS; OR, SELECTIONS
REFLECTIONS MADE IN A COURSE
OF GENERAL READING.

Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, (Letters CLVIII. and CLIX.,) which were not designed for the public eye, but solely for the regulation of the conduct of Mr. Stanhope, who was educated for the diplomatic profession. His Lordship, it will be remembered, had passed a long life in Courts, and was now delivering his own experi. ence.

"The ways" (of Courts)" are generally crooked and full of turnings, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes choked up with briars; rotten ground and deep pits frequently lie concealed under a smooth and pleasing surface: all the paths are slippery, and every slip is dangerous."

"Nothing in Courts is exactly as it appears to be; often very different; sometimes directly contrary. Interest, which is the real spring of every thing there, equally creates and dissolves friendships, produces and reconciles enmities; or rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmities; for, as Dryden very justly observes, Politicians neither love nor hate. This is so true, that you may friends to-day, and be obliged to-morrow you connect yourself with two to make your option between them as enemies."

think

"Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good-breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose: but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at Courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence; and dissimulation introduced

that habit of politeness, which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman."

"Homér supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth to connect him with mortals. There is, at all Courts, a chain which connects the prince or the minister, with the page of the back-stairs or the chambermaid. The King's wife or mistress has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid or the valet de chambre has an influence over both, and so ud infinitum. You must, therefore, not break a link of that chain, by which you hope to climb up to the prince."

"You must renounce Courts, if you will not connive at knaves and tolerate fools. Their number makes them considerable. You should as little quarrel, as connect yourself, with either."

REVIEW.

"Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame."-POPE.

Review.-Eardley-Wilmot's Letter on the Increase of Crime in general. 417

sent. Offences of all kinds, are there easily perpetrated, and as easily elude detection: in such neighbourhoods opportunities of combination and conspiracy are furnished in abundance. Thither the bold and the secret violaters of the laws resort, from every quarter, as to the spot most favourable to their base designs, and to their shelter from the grasp of justice. There bad example operates with a force corresponding to the wide and diversified field in which it ranges: and as in the human body the vital fluid issues from the heart and comes back to it again, so the capital of a nation, or the chief town of a manufacturing district, is usually both the fountain and the receptacle of crime.

Mr. Eardley-Wilmot justly observes, (pp. 5, 6,) that "the arts, sciences and commerce extend into such unlookedfor and distant regions, and require such complicated safeguards from their commencement to the last stage of their career, that offences are created and multiplied almost without number."

The temptations to crime supplied by great cities and populous and manufacturing towns, must not be dismissed before we have noticed the inability of the public to distinguish the marks of the most aggravated of the frauds by which it suffers. Hence we can explain the prevalence of one species of offences. The fabrication of a spurious paper-currency, occasions a waste and sacrifice of life by which the feelings of the enlightened patriot cannot fail to be harrowed the crime abounds in proportion to the ease with which it can be perpetrated; and a remedy of the evil has long been needed, and of late zealously attempted. To diminish and, if possible, to remove the facility of executing such forgeries, is among the first of national obligations; while the neglect of it is a national reproach and vice of no common magnitude.

Our situation, for some years past, has been peculiar. When peace visited us, after an unusually long and eventful war, our commerce soon ceased to flow in its accustomed channels. The pressure of want was severely felt, and became in some instances the cause, but far more frequently the plea and pretext of rapine. There are few nations whose internal state is not

sometimes deranged by such vicissitudes. However, we cannot in justice reason from new and extraordinary circumstances to a more regular train of things; although it should be observed, that the effect will in some degree survive the cause, and that the crimes of which we especially bewail the progress are in their nature public, and obtrude themselves upon our eyes

while the happy influence of national calamity on good minds is, for the most part, limited to scenes which shun the notice of mankind.

War, be it never forgotten, has no favourable aspect on the morals of a people. If a man has for years been familiarized to intelligence of the loss of life and the seizure of property in fields of battle, he must have been well disciplined and instructed by Religion should he be not more indifferent than he once was to the lives and property of his neighbours. In this view, war, it may be feared, does greater mischief to the multitudes who know its horrors only from report, and who forget them in its triumphs, than to those who witness, or spread, or experience, its devastations. At least it must be granted, that times of public calamity have always added to the number of transgressors of the laws, by rendering not a few persons desperate and hardened.

With some reluctance we touch on another cause of the increase of crime: this is the want of definite, well-proportioned, summary and corrective punishments. Punishment defeats its legitimate ends if it be indiscriminate and excessively severe : on the contrary, it will terrify, it will restrain, if it be certain and impartial, What can we think of the penalty of death, annexed as it is to a very long catalogue of specific crimes, and in many, many hundreds of individual cases actually awarded, yet in the vast majority of them never executed, because even the general infliction of it would be rigorous beyond endurance, would shock every public as well as private feeling of humanity and justice? Capital punishments, we admit, do not recur so often in this country as they did a quarter of a century ago: yet sound policy, like benevolence, must weep over their frequency, and ardently wish that the land of our birth were relieved henceforth from the disgrace and guilt.

Punishment loses its proper nature if it be not calculated both to reform the offender and to reduce the number of offences: it loses its just effect if it be inflicted so long after the commission of the crime that the connexion between them is forgotten. These and many other considerations surely call for a new and more accurate scale of punishments, in which that of death shall either not exist, or be assigned to as few crimes as possible. Among ourselves the experiment of punishment nominally capital but really indefinite, has long been made: with what ill success, we canot be ignorant. We know that among us the hope of mitigated or remitted punishment has even cherished guilt; while in countries where death is never or very rarely the penalty exacted by public justice, in countries where the malefactor is compelled to make some retribution by his labour to the civil society which he has injured, and where there are fewer checks upon population than in our own, crime is diminished, instead of advancing.

In the opinion of Mr. Eardley-Wilmot, the uncertainty of punishments and the blind severity of our laws have tended more to swell the catalogue of offenders than any one circumstance resulting from the artificial fabrication of society, the offender knowing that if ever the rigid enactment of the statute is enforced, it will not be above once in a hundred instances * ** gambles with his life on any adventure which his wickedness or his necessities may offer to him." Pp. 7, 8.

One of the most fruitful sources of those outrages against the laws that we deplore, is the association of young with old offenders in our prisons. Seldom is it that these two classes of transgressors are separated, or, indeed, that provision is made for the purpose: and the consequences have been ascertained to be beyond imagination dreadful. Thus transgression tends to multiply itself almost indefinitely. Most of our gaols are schools of vice: for the number of exceptions is deplorably small.

See a valuable Essay on Crimes and Punishments, by the Rev. William Turner, in the second volume of Memoirs of the L. and P. Soc. of Manchester.

To the examination and correction of this enormous evil public attention has recently been directed. It is a topic of the first practical importance, a topic in which patriotism, national safety, morals and religion, are deeply interested: it stands perfectly distinct from party views and feelings, and calls for the unanimous exertions of all who have the means of information and improvement in their power.

By Mr. Eardley-Wilmot "our prisons" are styled "receptacles of vice and depravity:" he is convinced too that by the intercourse of "juvenile offenders" with "hardened villains," and "by the want of separation of prisoners," incalculable mischiefs are produced.-Pp. 11, 12.

We are apprehensive that an additional cause of the increase of crime will be discovered in that relaxation of parental discipline which characte rizes our age and country. Youthful insubordination is, in the view of many candid and intelligent observers, one among the vices of the times: the ties of the authority of fathers and mothers, and of those who occupy their place, are in several instances loosened; and the independence of the man is affected, claimed and even exercised by those who have scarcely passed the term of childhood. Thus, by a natural, an easy and a rapid process, the number of young offenders against the laws is considerably augmented.

Endeavours to stem the torrent of crime, may however be made with great advantage. Not, perhaps, to the extent which pure benevolence desires and hopes, but still to no small extent, and in a degree which is not a little animating. There are remedies which may be adapted to the respective symptoms of the diseases, and to most, if not to all, of its proximate causes.

Associated and persevering excrtions, wise and dutiful representations, with the view of interesting the Legislature and the Public in measures for the correction of juvenile delinquency, the construction and discipline of prisons and the revision of our penal code, will surely awaken some zeal and produce some benefit! Nor can it be supposed that a nation so characterized as ours is by deeds of humanity and mercy, will be regardless of obligations which cannot be slighted without dan ger to all her dearest interests.

Review.-Eardley-Wilmot's Letter on the Increase of Crime in general. 419

The increase of crime, should call forth more powerfully our personal and our joint efforts for the education of the children of the poor in the principles of religion. Iniquity would rush upon us like an overwhelming flood, were it not for Charity and Sunday Schools and other similar institutions: they are not the former pupils of those seminaries who crowd our gaols, invade our property, menace our lives, and murder our repose. By far the majority of the transgressors who stand at the bar of public justice, are utterly ignorant of even the elements of learning. To affirm that crimes abound, because instruction is liberally offered and zealously communicated to the poor, were to reason against just theory, and against innumerable facts. Knowledge, it is true, may be only the instrument of mischief, the power of doing harm: knowledge alone will too frequently be such; but with the means of knowledge, let us remember, those of Christian virtue are likewise copiously furnished.

We shall now apply ourselves to a more particular consideration of Mr. Eardley-Wilmot's Letter, &c., in a part of which he treats generally of the increase of crime, its causes and its remedies; the greater portion of his pamphlet being occupied by remarks on local facts and circumstances.

It gratifies us to perceive that a gentleman, who is "one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the county of Warwick," and who has recently filled the office of its Sheriff, devotes his "humble efforts to promote the good of the public," by a strong recommendation of those improvements in our criminal code, &c., which, till very lately, it has been the fashion to regard as the impracticable suggestions of a few retired philanthropists. In this view we are especially pleased with our Author's letter: for although there are other and better writers on penal laws, &c., yet there is scarcely any one whose eharacter, situation and connexions can, through the district in which he lives, give equal weight to his statements and remonstrances. Mr. Eardley-Wilmot professes to enter into the discussion of his subject "with feelings of extreme reluctance:" he is evidently yet needlessly fearful of his motives being misrepresented and of his object being misunderstood. He betrays a

solicitude not to be classed among political reformers, and makes a sort of apology (in our humble judgment, it is at once unnecessary and awkward) for his address to the magistracy of Warwickshire. If discontent and disaffection be at any time seen or apprehended, such, we think, is the season for doing whatever we can to amend at least our police and our criminal law, and to diminish the number of offenders. Let real grievances be redressed: let imminent and most alarming dangers be, if possible, averted. But, while we are far from being of opinion with this writer that "the very name of Reform has become odious" to all the lovers of "our excellent Constitution," those evils, we feel persuaded, must be exceedingly prominent and menacing, as the effect of which Mr. Eardley-Wilmot employs his pen in a letter to his brother magistrates. From such a man we cordially welcome the sentences that we proceed to quote.

Speaking of a certain class of prosecutions by the Bank of England, he asks,

"Has not the crime notoriously in

creased? And has not the uncertainty with which the statute has been enforced, been a powerful auxiliary to the depraved inclinations of the criminal? Out of thirteen prisoners for forgery, indicted by the Bank of England at our last assizes, not one [of them] have [has] been executed; and this is the more surprising, as with one or two exceptions, they were all men entrapped by persons employed by the Bank for the express purpose of conviction, and, therefore, supposed to be objects selected for punishment. It is a lamentable circumstance, and one which can never eradicate the evil, nor even

lessen the number of offenders, that the sellers of forged notes are alone punished, while the actual fabricators of the notes are seldom, if ever, brought to trial; though most of them are well known to the Bank, as well as to every police officer in Birmingham."-Pp. 8, 9,

Further:

"We must cut off all those means of

dissemination of bad principles which our gaol still furnishes. We must attend to the separation of prisoners, and the classification of offences: and although in consequence of the accumulation of offenders our gaol may not be sufficiently. extensive fully to carry these necessary arrangements into effect at present; yet,