increased numbers in the convict prisons, as well as in the county and borough prisons, where the unusually large proportion of the repeated recommittals of females show that no proper discipline has yet been found for the lost characters of this class. "The conditions have nearly disappeared which on the sudden restriction of the means of transportation to a penal colony necessitated a large discharge of convicts at home and led to the adoption of the licence or ticket-of-leave system. It is probable that in the limited number of such discharges now granted the licence will prove an additional safeguard to the public and a wholesome restraint to the discharged convict. These discharges were, in 1856, 2892; in 1857, 922; in 1858, 312; and in 1859, 252 only." (p. xxxi.) The The sickness among the convicts needs no remark, except that the females suffered much less than the males, 350 cases of serious illness being recorded among the former, while 6663 occurred among the latter: the cases of insanity, 31 males, 9 females. punishments barely averaged one a-day, and were chiefly of the same character as those noted in the county and borough prisons. The instances to which whipping was had recourse, were less than half the average number. The total cost of the convict prisons amounted to 247,7167. 148. 4d.; the average cost of each convict, 31l. 19s. 3d. This return is exclusive of gratuities paid to convicts on discharge, with allowance for their clothing and travelling, which average about 20,000l. additional. The monetary value of convict labour, although it must largely reduce the costs involved in their restraint, cannot readily be estimated. The prisoners in the reformatory schools during 1859, amounted to 3014 (2488 males, and 526 females), of whom 922 had been committed during the year, 472 of these cases having been previously under restraint. The number of prisoners discharged in 1859 was 441, and there remained under detention, at the end of the year, 2426. It is most gratifying to find, and at the same time it is a most hopeful indication of the good and permanent effect of these schools, that the decrease of crime in 1859 was contemporaneous with an increase of the numbers discharged from them. "It seemed reasonable," writes Mr. Redgrave, " on a first experience to impute the decreased proportion of recommittals to the large numbers who were undergoing an unusually lengthened detention under the new reformatory discipline. But it is the more satisfactory now to show that the previous commitments, instead of increasing with the numbers discharged, have actually largely diminished, thus: Murder The total cost of the reformatory schools (defrayed from the public revenues at the rate of 7s. each prisoner) was, last year, 38,8531. 1s. 3d. The total sum received from the parents in diminution of this charge, 1594l. Os. 8d. Of the industrial schools (19 in number, 11 being in the metropolis) to which children under 14 years of age can be directly committed, without any intervening imprisonment in gaol, little can yet be said, the Act governing them having hitherto been comparatively inoperative. 11. Criminal Lunatics.-A return of the criminal lunatics under detention completes Mr. Redgrave's Report on Police, Criminal Proceedings, and Prisons. The number of criminal lunatics under detention at the commencement of 1859, was 684 (527 males and 157 females). During the year there were committed, 200 (162 males and 38 females), and received from other asylums 17 (14 males and 3 females), making a total of 901 lunatics under detention in the year. Of these, 43 died, 1 committed suicide, 4 escaped, 54 (36 males and 18 females) were discharged on becoming sane, 16 were removed sane, for trial or punishment, and 54 were removed to other asylums, leaving 729 (569 males and 160 females) under detention at the termination of the year. "The numbers remaining under detention," Mr. Redgrave remarks, "form a further increase in 1859, the numbers in the former years having been, in 1858, 686; in 1857, 618; in 1856, 597; the increase being probably more owing to the greater vigilance exercised by the increased police forces, in providing for the safe detention of insane persons, than to their increase; but as their detention has no limit, the tendency must be to increased numbers." (p. xxxvi.) The offences for which the foregoing lunatics were placed in custody (correctness of definition, however, not being always practicable) were as follows: OFFENCES. ... ... 43 6 41 10 9 8 Larceny and petty thefts 150 Frauds and embezzlements Forgery ... Arson and malicious burning Uttering counterfeit coin Riot and breach of the peace Under the vagrant laws... Insane, wandering abroad Deserters from the army and navy 35 10 ... ... 33 65 215 2 5 4 7 34 14 48 2 ... The period of detention to which these lunatics had been subjected at the time of the return, is thus recorded :— Of the 132 lunatics who have been detained upwards of ten years, 53 are under custody for murder and attempts to murder, maiming, or stabbing. Nearly one-third (247) of the total number of criminal lunatics, according to the table of offences, have been placed in confinement for grave offences against the person. The total charge for the detention of criminal lunatics in 1859 was 23,3761. 16s. 5d.; of which 16571. 133. 9d. came from private funds. From Mr. Redgrave's report on the proceedings of the civil. courts, we shall only note the apparent causes of bankruptcy in 1859, adding also the summary of these causes for 1858: In terminating this outline of the Status of Crime in 1859, we have to record that, with the present number of The Judicial Statistics, Mr. Redgrave's duties as the compiler of that work terminate. It is not, however, solely as the compiler of these important returns that Mr. Redgrave's relation to them is to be regarded. He has, indeed, a claim to much higher regard upon our part; for to his efforts, voluntarily undertaken and voluntarily carried out, we are chiefly indebted for the elaborate scheme of which we are now beginning to reap the first fruits. It is impossible, without an examination of the different returns upon which Mr. Redgrave's reports are based, to form a right idea of their comprehensiveness, and of the labour involved in securing the co-operation necessary to obtain the careful registration and periodical report of the facts upon which those returns are founded. It was only by long-continued and arduous efforts that Mr. Redgrave ultimately succeeded in overcoming the many disheartening difficulties which lay in his way; and now that his statistical scheme has been matured, and everything put in right train for its future working, we hope that no petty and mistaken economy on the part of Government will interfere with its being permanently carried out. The value of such a scheme of Judicial Statistics to the Legislature has been sufficiently insisted upon by Lord Brougham; to the political and social economist its importance can hardly be questioned for a moment; to the philanthropist, the moralist, or the psychologist, per se, it offers a sound basis for the practical study of the general, as contradistinguished from the individual, phenomena of crime, the advantages of which cannot be exaggerated; to all persons these statistics must possess that high interest which is inseparable from an accurate knowledge of the amount and character of the overt villany which corrodes the nation, and of the influence of those means which are especially put in force for its repression. For ourselves, while deeply regretting that Mr. Redgrave should find it requisite to retire from the active control of the Judicial Statistics, we would express our admiration of, and tender our thanks for, the great work he has effected for the nation—a work which, to his honour and our advantage, we trust will from henceforth have a permanent place among the annual records of Government. ART. IV. THE MODERN DRAMA: A CONTRIBUTION TO MENTAL DIETETICS.† IF a new Jeremy Collier were now to arise, his picture of the "profaneness and immorality" of the English stage would necessarily be much more subdued in tone than that which aroused so much anger and indignation among our poets and players at the close of the seventeenth century. He could not charge our theatre with gross immodesty and indecency, or bring forward the works of Terence, Plautus, Seneca, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, to prove that the Pagan Greeks and Romans displayed greater purity in their writings than Christian Englishmen. He could not charge our dramatists with a fondness for profanity, or with recognising cursing and swearing, coupled with abuse of religion, as the distinguishing evidences of wit and good breeding. He could not accuse them of systematic and scurrilous ridicule of the * "Full and minute statistical details are to the lawgiver, as the chart, the compass, and the lead to the navigator."-Speech, House of Lords, March, 1856. The Eighth Commandment. By Charles Reade. London: Trübner and Co. 1860. clergy, or find any play of modern date in which a minister of religion is spoken of, like Dominick in The Spanish Friar, as "a parcel of holy guts and garbage," with "room in his belly for his church steeple." He could not allege that, in the dramatic works of the present day, all the principal characters are represented as worthless and vicious, and yet receive no punishment at the end; and if, in support of his censures against the stage, he cited the high authority of Theophilus Antiochenus, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Minutius Foelix, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Hierom, or St. Augustine, readers would be apt to smile at these hallowed names, and to question the propriety of bringing forward the Fathers of the Church as authorities upon the subject of the English theatre and the English drama of our own time. Has our stage grown so pure, then, it may be asked, in this the middle of the nineteenth century, that it needs no castigation at the hands of a modern censor? Have we no Drydens, no Congreves, no D'Urfeys, giving vice a modish, agreeable air, rendering ribaldry fashionable, impure actions patterns for imitation, and filthy witticisms standards of polite conversation? In our dramatic literature are there no reproductions of Love for Love, The Mock Astrologer, The Provoked Wife, or The Old Bachelor? Have we quite cleared out the Augean stables and kept them so carefully attended to ever since, that no fresh impurities have been allowed to accumulate there? Undoubtedly, the English stage of the present day is free from all the more glaring and obvious vices which prevailed when the great nonjuring divine wrote his famous essay. We do not now habitually make light of the marriage tie in our theatre. Adultery is not now systematically elevated into a virtue it behoves all dashing fellows of spirit to practise. If we wish to gain favour for the fallen we take good care to throw around them, first of all, a veil of sentiment and pathos. Our poets do not now put indecent verses into the mouths of women and young girls, or indulge in equivocations and inuendo worthy only of prostitution and the stews. The gallants of our stage do not, like the wits. and fine gentlemen described by Macaulay, unceasingly utter ribaldry of which a porter would be ashamed, or call upon their Maker every five minutes to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." 66 No! our theatre has at least learnt good manners since the glorious days of the Restoration, and is no longer a rendezvous of profligacy or a recruiting ground for the brothel and the beargarden. Yet we think it would not be difficult to show that the stage is still far from reaching the high intellectual standard it ought |