صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

the charities of the country were under the control of a Commission which sat in St. James's Square. He thought it advisable that the Universities should be also controlled by some influential board, such as the Committee of the Privy Councl He next referred to what he considered to be the prejudicial influence which he thought was often exerted upon the education of the country by the course of study pursued at the University, and he quoted the instance of a school containing eighty boys, in which scarcely anything was taught but classics and mathematics, simply because a certain number of these boys were prepared for the Universities. Hi thought that such an evil would be remedied if the course of study were more extended, and if other more practically useful subjects—such as the modern in guages, natural and moral sciences-were more encouraged in the University. He also thought that the students of the University ought to be instructed in subjects which would be more practically useful to them in after-life. He desired that some scholarships and fellowships should be given to those who passed a successful examination either in modern languages or in the moral or natural sciences.

When the British Association for the Advancement of Science, some years a met at Cheltenham, the Rev. Dr. Dobson, head master of the Cheltenham Colle was asked if more science could not be introduced into the Cheltenham College system. In reply, the head master mentioned, that it was the general wish of the parents who sent boys to the College at Cheltenham that their sons should have that instruction which would enable them to obtain scholarships and fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge. Dr. Dobson was of opinion that an alteration should first be made in the requirements for scholarships and fellowships at the ancient English universities, before changes could be effected in the public school system of this country.

A Royal Commission, presided over by the Earl of Clarendon, has, since that time, been appointed to inquire into the state of the largest and most richly endowed English public schools.

At Oxford, in the majority of cases, college fellowships are exclusively bestowed as the rewards of success in the classical examination for honours, at the time of the Bachelor of Arts degree, and Latin composition is constantly required in all the colleges of Oxford.

College-fellowship examinations govern, in a large measure, the whole system of higher endowed education in England and Wales.

Schoolmasters are frequently selected for the largest grammar schools from the class of college fellows. When installed into the chair of office, it is their highest ambition that their pupils should succeed in obtaining college scholarships and fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge.

Dean Peacock, formerly fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, strenu ously urged the abolition of exercises in Latin and Greek versification in academical examinations on account of the time necessary to acquire the art of making verses in dead languages, and the speedy loss of facility in composing such verses when the practice of writing them had ceased for some years.

In the examinations for college fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge, exercises in the composition of Latin and Greek verses should no longer be set, and an alternative should be allowed between prose composition in Latin and Greek and more modern subjects, such as translations from English into French and German, questions in English history, and exercises in English composition.

There are about 500 or 600 fellowships in the two ancient Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, of which at least 50 or 60 become vacant every year; a larger proportion of these academical rewards should be set apart for the encouragement of

science.

On the Prevention of Crime. By EDWIN HILL, of the Inland Revenue Office. "Crime walks thy streets, fraud earns her unblest bread; O'er want and woe thy gorgeous robe is spread."

The author called attention to the large number of habitual criminals whose sole occupation is to plunder others-a predatory class, harbouring in the very bosom of society, and keeping its ground in undiminished numbers in spite of all the

[ocr errors]

forces brought to bear against it,the residences of these enemies of society being, for the most part, well known to the police, whole districts in London being notoriously peopled by them. In illustration of the magnitude of this evil, the following particulars were given (in round numbers) from the 'Judicial Statistics' for 1858 and 1861, for England and Wales.

The known thieves and receivers of stolen goods are stated to be 44,000; the prostitutes, 29,000; suspected persons, 39,000; vagrants and tramps, 23,000; making a total of 135,000 individuals believed to be living wholly, or for the most part, by criminal practices. The houses of bad character inhabited or frequented by criminals, 24,000. The cost of repressive measures paid by the rates and taxes, for the year 1861, £2,548,000, in addition to the heavy expenses falling upon individuals, and the loss of time incurred by witnesses, jurors, and others. The loss of property from depredation was estimated by Mr. Redgrave, for the year 1858, at seven millions and three-quarters, making a total loss of upwards of ten millions per annum, attributable mainly to the class of habitual criminals.

To give some idea of the number of crimes due to this class, it was stated that London is believed to harbour some 5000 habitual depredators, who, if taken upon the average to commit but one crime per day each, would commit upwards of a million and a half of crimes in the year.

The moral evils were also noticed; the dread and anxiety suffered by thousands, especially the aged, the feeble, and the timid, the crimes of a few desperate men sometimes spreading panic through the whole country; the contamination of the young, especially of the children of the honest working man, who often has no means of escaping the localities infected by crime; and lastly, the pitiable fate of the children born amidst crime, who, if they have not the good fortune to die early, have no possible escape from the contamination that surrounds them-many being even beaten into crime, and destined to fall ultimately into the grasp of the law to have these criminal teachings then scourged out of them, if it be not too late to be possible. Probably not fewer than five or six infants per day are born (in this Christian country) so surrounded by a network of crime as to make escape from this fearful destiny all but impossible.

The writer then observed as follows:-The obstinate vitality of this crying evil impels us to undertake a thorough reconsideration of the conditions of that vitality, with a view to the discovery of some more vulnerable part than has hitherto been assailed, or, better still, of some one vital condition that it may be possible to withdraw altogether.

The command of premises for dwelling, for places of congregation, and for the warehouses, workshops, &c., used by the receivers of stolen goods, the coiners, the illicit distillers, and the thieves' instrument-makers, and, lastly, for the training of young thieves, would undoubtedly appear to be one of the essential conditions of the existence of the predatory class. For had such shelter and harbourage been heretofore wholly unattainable, it is not too much to say that the class could never have come into existence. Assuming, then, that the command of adequate premises is a vital condition, it remains only to consider whether, practically, the community has power to withdraw such condition, and (having regard to our Anglo-Saxon dislike to meddlesome or intrusive Governmental interference) whether the object of depriving the predatory class of the command of the premises indispensable to their plundering-operations can be accomplished without having recourse to enactments of an arbitrary and inquisitorial character.

The use of premises is of course obtained by the payment of rent; and as no * Thieving, with all its terrors, costliness, and enormity, is a dark streak in the otherwise brightening horizon of modern civilization. It flits in the portentous shadows of prison walls; and there is a voice from the echoes of every policeman's footfall, telling of something bad under the surface of society, and cautioning us to beware of the danger. We never retire to rest without feeling that we may be maimed and terror-stricken in our beds, or, waking, may find the hard earnings of honest toil purloined beyond possibility of recovery, by a set of worthless vagabonds who are too lazy to earn their own living, and who, with the cowardly rascality that belongs to them, subsist on the stolen property of others. Will there ever be an end to thieves and robbers? Is there no means of getting rid of this interminable expense, damage, and terror ?"—Cornhill Magazine, Sept. 1860.

a

honest owner of house property would willingly receive rents which he knew even suspected to be derived from the plunder of his neighbours, it follows that the members of the predatory class can obtain tenancy only from landlords who are ignorant of the vocation of their tenants, or from landlords who are not unwil ing to accept the proceeds of crime in payment. But for ignorance or connivance, therefore, the predatory class would cease to be able to obtain harbourage, and ma speedily fall into dispersion.

As to the conniving landlords, since there is no moral difference between receiving the proceeds of stolen property knowingly and receiving the stolen property itself, they cannot expect much sympathy, whatever pressure may be put upon them to compel them to act as honest men. Enjoying their property under the shadow of the law, it is intolerable that they should knowingly allow their property to harbour those who live by breaking the law.

As regards those landlords whose property is infested by criminals without their knowledge, such could not have happened had the public mind been so far advanced upon the subject as to have recognized it as the plain duty of the owners of house property to refuse tenancy to all persons of doubtful character, i. e. to all who coul not show, beyond all reasonable doubt, that their rents would be paid out of hoses gains, and nowise from the proceeds of crime, directly or indirectly. It could no have happened, even, had the interests of the landlords as a body, in the suppres sion of the predatory class, been well understood, since, in the towns at least, the heavy expenses annually incurred in the repression of crime cannot but fall ultimately upon the house property-seeing that, although the tenants actually disburse the police and county rates, these outgoings are doubtless considered by the tenant in estimating the rent he can afford, it being immaterial to him whether he pays more to the rate-collector and less to the landlord, or more to the landlord and less to the collector. Hence a landlord who allows his property to harbour criminals is a traitor to the interests of the landlord body, and would no doubt be so stigmatized had the subject undergone that long and earnest discussion which must have ended in the formation of a strong and healthy public opinion regarding it.

Had such public opinion been now existent, nothing further would have been needed than to find the means of restraining the few unscrupulous landlords who, for the sake of high rents, from whatever tainted source obtained, would set public opinion at defiance. The matter, however, has to be dealt with under existing conditions. The question therefore is, In what way can the law most readily deal with house property so as to induce its owners wholly to shut out the thief, his aiders and abettors-so that the landlord's absolute rule may be, "No honesty, no house"? The answer is, that the pressure of the rates now levied for the repression of crime, viz. the police and county rates, &c., do constitute an ample force adapted to this purpose, lying ready to our hands, and requiring only to be rightly wielded. It is but to "put the saddle on the right horse." It is, in truth, simply a question between the great majority of householders who do not suffer their property to harbour the plunderers of their neighbours and the small minority who do. Now the law, judging between these parties, might justly say to the offending minority, "But for the shelter you afford the predatory class, that class must be wholly dispersed, and the heavy burden of its repression thenceforth cease. fore either do as your fellow-landlords do, and so sweep away the burden altoge ther, or prepare to take it wholly on your own shoulders; justice will not allow that loss to fall upon the whole body, which, but for the laches of a few of its members, would be got rid of altogether.' To this it may be added that herein justice and sound policy go hand in hand; for, of all means of getting rid of a preventible evil, surely that of making its continuance a source of loss, instead of profit, to those upon whose will such continuance depends must ever be the most simple and the most certain.

There

There are two modes of proceeding whereby to fix the cost of repression exclusively upon the property concerned in harbouring the predatory class, viz., 1st, that of directly imposing the amount upon such property, so far as its complicity can be proved; and 2nd, that of exempting from the necessary rates all properties that should be shown to be wholly free from such complicity.

Of these two modes, the latter would be by far the most easy to carry out. For a direct imposition being undistinguishable from the infliction of a penalty, the burden of proof would lie upon the parties demanding such imposition, who would of course have to contend with the falsehood, concealment, evasion, and trickery

of every kind in which the wrong-doer naturally seeks refuge, and but too often with triumphant success; whilst the grant of an exemption from the rates would, on the contrary, be the conferring of a privilege, and the burden of proof would of course then lie upon the claimant for such privilege, who, unless he appeared with a clear straightforward case, would have no chance of success. Any sign of concealment, evasion, or trickery would at once throw the claimant out of court for the time.

Those who are practically acquainted with the difficulty of obtaining legal proof of guilt, in cases in which there is no moral doubt whatever, or none that the person accused, if innocent, could not clear up at once, will appreciate the advantage to the community of thus turning the tables upon the supporters of the criminals by whom our towns are infested, and this without any hardship; for surely those who have kept their property free from complicity with criminality cannot have any difficulty in meeting the inquiry whether they have done so or not.

As every grant of exemption would increase the pressure upon those owners who were unentitled to it, the accumulated weight would soon force them to dispose of their interests to men who had established such title. By this process our towns would be soon purified from the predatory class. The whole host of habitual burglars, garotters, pickpockets, forgers, coiners, thieves' instrument-makers, receivers of stolen goods, trainers of young thieves, flash-house keepers, &c. &c. &c., would be dislodged from their dens and hiding-places; and unless they took to honest courses (in doing which every hand should be stretched out to help them), they would find no shelter other than the workhouse or the gaol; nor, so long as the principle herein recommended were maintained, could they ever regain their footing amongst us.

The dislodgment of so large a number of offenders, and the total cessation of their criminal gains, would in all probability necessitate the adoption of some temporary measures to prevent their being driven to desperation. Nor should we forget that, fallen as they are, they are not the less our fellow-creatures. We have more than once been compelled, by the occurrence of violent epidemic disease, to make temporary provision for the shelter and maintenance of portions of our town population; and some analogous provision would probably meet the circumstances in view. Whatever difficulties might beset the state of transition, they must, from the nature of things, be but short-lived. The final relief would be both great and permanent.

It may stimulate our zeal to call to mind that which our forefathers accomplished under analogous circumstances. The "sanctuaries" of the seventeenth century were not more alien to the ruder times of mounted highwaymen than the existing "thieves' districts" are to our improved civilization. Macaulay has given us an instructive account of the suppression of that frightful den of crime, the sanctuary of Whitefriars-" Alsatia," as it was called-of which Sir Walter Scott has left us so lively a picture in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Some 800 known cutthroats, robbers, receivers of stolen goods, brothel-keepers, &c. had herded together in this "sanctuary" from time out of mind, ever and anon breaking out for the purpose of murder and robbery, as opportunity offered, or as their needs became pressing. At length the public patience became fairly exhausted; men aroused themselves as from a lethargy; supineness gave way to alarm and resentment; the requisite powers were obtained from the Legislature, and at one single touch of a really firm hand, the ranks of scoundrelism were at once broken and put to the route, and the whole mass vanished as if by magic.

On the Study of Periodic Commercial Fluctuations. By W. S. JEVONS. It is necessary that all commercial fluctuations should be investigated by the same systematic methods with which we are familiar in complicated physical sciences, such as meteorology and terrestrial magnetism. Every kind of periodic

[ocr errors]

fluctuation must be detected and exhibited, not only as a subject of study in its but because we must ascertain and eliminate such periodic variations before we can correctly exhibit those which are irregular or non-periodic, and of more interes and importance.

Tables of the average weekly accounts of the Bank of England from 1845 to 1861, inclusive, having been prepared, it is shown that there are at least three kinds of periodic fluctuation observable, during the month, the quarter, and the year. The first two kinds are precisely similar in character, though differing mod in amount, and are due to the payments of dividends or other claims which occur at the beginning of the quarter and month. Such payments cause a sudden incese of the note-circulation and of private deposits, a considerable decrease of privsz securities, a slight decrease of the bullion, accompanied by a larger but otherwise similar variation of the loanable capital.

Eliminating such variations from those of the whole year, there remain certs interesting variations due to natural causes, as distinguished from the artificial distinctions of months and quarters. The notes in circulation rise from a minima in January and February to a maximum in the third quarter, and then very rapidly decrease during November and December.

Private securities greatly increase, and private deposits decrease, about harvesttime, while the bullion and loanable capital undergo a continuous decrease.

These variations are probably due to a great absorption of capital in buying ap the proceeds of the year's industry, which have to be held in stock for consumption during the succeeding twelve months.

The bullion and capital, however, have a second maximum in February, and a subsequent decrease until May.

It is also shown, from monthly average determinations, that the rate of discount and the number of bankruptcies suffer a sudden rise after the harvest months. It may be said that there is a periodic tendency to commercial distress and difficulty during the months of October and November. The great commercial panics are aggravations of this periodic difficulty, due to irregular fluctuations.

Of 79,794 bankruptcies which were gazetted from the beginning of 1806 to the end of 1860, 28,391 occurred in the second month of the quarter, 26,427 in the third month, and only 24,976 in the first month, in which occurs the payment of the public dividends.

The price of consols and the price of wheat exhibits a double minimum during the year.

Notice of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy.

By W. S. JEVONS, M.A.

1. The main problem of economy may be reduced to a rigorous mathematical form, and it is only the absence of exact data for the inductive determination of its laws or functions which will always prevent it from becoming an exact science.

2. A true theory of economy can only be attained by going back to the springs of human action-the feelings of pleasure and pain which accompany our common wants, and the satisfaction of those wants by labour exerted to that purpose. These feelings are the commonest motives of action; but other motives of a moral or religious nature must be recognized by the economist as outstanding and disturbing forces of his problem.

3. Feelings of pleasure and pain vary in intensity and in duration. They have two dimensions. The quantity of feeling, therefore, resembles an area, and is got by integration of the function which expresses the relation of the intensity to the duration.

4. Pleasure and pain are opposed as positive and negative quantities.

5. Anticipation of future pleasure or pain gives a less degree of present feeling, related to the anticipated feeling by some vague function of the intervening time, peculiar to each person's character.

6. A useful object is that which causes pleasure, either by present use or by expectation of its future use.

7. Amount of utility corresponds to amount of pleasure produced. The use or

« السابقةمتابعة »