laws than England, is even more rife with bloody deeds* than the latter country, which in its turn is yet more so than France, and France still more so than America, where few offences are subject to condign punishment. Thus it is evident that severity, particularly when combined with uncertainty, tends exceedingly to increase crime, while it is but a burlesque on religion to make the scaffold a stepping stone to heaven; to make the twenty-four hours intervening between the sentence and execution of the culprit an expiatory period for a long life of guilt.

These remarks are scarcely made with the hope that they will be attended to in England, where the voice of reason as well as humanity has been almost raised in vain;† but if they should be the means of encouraging the judges of the East-India Company's provinces in the almost holy path they have pursued; or if they should assist in rescuing one individual, whether carried in ebony or in ivory, from death; or if they should even stimulate others to examine the truth of the doctrine, the aim of the writer will have been accomplished.

Let us now proceed with the Bengal statistics of crime. The last table gave the returns of the Court of Nizamut Adawlut; the following are those of the Courts of Circuit, specifying the nature of the crimes:

* In seven years in Ireland, ending with 1828, the number of persons accused of murder were 2,604! But such is the repugnance of the people to come forward as evidence, that out of the whole number of criminals but 224 were sentenced to death, and 155 executed. This is the state of the law in a country where the pitch cap, the triangle, and the gallows have superseded mildness, conciliation, and justice. The proportion of crime in 1831 to the number of inhabitants has been in Dublin, 1 in 96; in Edinburgh, where capital punishments are far less frequent, 1 in 540; in London and Middlesex, which stands between both, the proportion has been 1 in 400; and in Cardigan, where a capital punishment is a very rare event, the proportion of commitments to the population is only I to 4,920!

+ Witness Lord Wynford's sanguinary amendment to the Forgery Bill.

Sir R. Rice, in his evidence before the Lords in 1830, says that among a population of 150,000 persons in Bombay, during three years, there was but one execution, and that was an English sergeant.

No. 1.

SENTENCES for OFFENCES against the PERSON, passed by the COURTS of CIRCUIT in BENGAL, at Two PERIODS.

SENTENCES for OFFENCES against PROPERTY, passed by the COURTS of CIRCUIT in BENGAL, at Two PERIODS.

....

No. 3,196

1,960

No. 1,236

This is a very great decrease on two years, and in looking at the years preceding those given in the first table, the diminution is yet more gratifying to behold. For instance, adulteries were, from 1816 to 1818, in number ninety-five; felony and misdemeanor, in the same years, three hundred and seventy-six; shewing a decrease on the former of seventy-five cases, and on the latter of two hundred and sixty-nine. In the second table there is also a marked improvement in the country:

But if the foregoing Circuit Court returns be refreshing, those of the magistrates' courts for the Lower and Western provinces of Bengal are much more so, for the decrease of crime is yet more extraordinary, whether as regards offences arising from revenge, from destitution, from bloodthirstiness, or from immorality. The following shews the sentences of two years; if we had them of a more recent

date, I am convinced we should observe a still greater diminution.*

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT of OFFENCES against PROPERTY and against the PERSON, on which the MAGISTRATES passed SENTENCE in the LOWER and WESTERN PROVINCES of BENGAL, during the YEARS 1826 and 1827.

Decrease of offences against property in one year
Decrease of do. against person in
Decrease of various other offences in

Total decrease of crime in one year

* The evidence of Mr. Mangles (Lords, 4th March 1830), is confirmatory of this assumption :-" Q. Is the police efficient for the prevention of crimes? A. I believe it to be so.- -Q. Is it improved? A. Greatly,

do... do.

4,162

5,584

In arson, burglary, fraud, larceny, bloodshed, bribery, perjury, &c. we see a rapid decrease, amounting altogether in one year to upwards of fourteen thousand! Does this afford any proof of the truth of Mr. Rickards' assertion, that "the laws of India are inapplicable to the state of society, civilization, and knowledge existing among the natives ?" Yet nine-tenths of the English public quietly adopt all Mr. Rickards' statements as if they were as strong as holy writ!' Alas! Mr. Rickards' philanthropy is borne a long distance in search of an object on which to exercise it the following table will show him that he need not go many yards from his own threshold without finding a people for whom the laws are quite "inapplicable,” if we judge by the only real test which they afford, namely, the state of crime:

6

:

*

A. Greatly, certainly.-Q. Are there still robberies to any considerable extent on the navigable rivers? A. Not at all to the extent they were formerly.-Q. Is there a river police? A. There is, I think, near Calcutta and near Dacca, and in other parts, but not very generally. The improvement in the police can be proved beyond all doubt, from the great diminution in the number of crimes.—Q. Is that the case in the provinces where dacoity prevailed? A. Very greatly.-Q. Can you state in what proportion the number of crimes has diminished? A. I think in the Lower provinces the average of dacoities of late years is about as one and a fraction to seven, as compared with the state of things twenty-five or thirty years ago." Mr. Mangles adds," in the district of Kishnagur, formerly most notorious for dacoities, that crime has decreased, from an average in former years of two hundred and fifty or three hundred, to eighteen or twenty!"

* I wish here to notice a statement I have just seen: The Edinburgh Review (No. 104) attempts the justification of death-punishments for certain crimes, on the principle that it is "right to destroy an enemy who invades our country, or an individual who seeks our life," (p. 401). Does the writer mean to assert that when a few French troops landed in Wales, or in Ireland during the war, we should have been authorized in slaying them if they could be made prisoners, or of shooting them in cold blood when taken? Self-preservation compels me to preserve life even at the expense of that of another, if the latter sacrifice be efficient, but if I can imprison the individual who menaces my existence, I have clearly no natural right to destroy him.