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of it as any other : for the child , whom a brief though severe punishment immediately following the offence might ha \ e deterred from a repetition of it , usually comes out of gaol irreclaimably corrupted . But though there is no sufficient reason to believe that crime has increased , nobody in his senses can doubt that it will increase , if we do not carefully watch and promptly remove everything in our institutions
which operates as an incentive to it . Persevere in the present administration of the Poor Laws , and the whole of the agricultural population will , in a few years , be converted into criminals . What else can you look for , when you shall have completely succeeded in obliterating from the minds of the agricultural labourers , all traces of any line of demarcation between what is theirs , and what is other people ' s ; and persuaded them that they have a right to whatever their wants
requirethey being the best judges of their own wants ? Whether crime have increased or not , the administration of the Poor Laws is a grand source of future increase which must be removed . Another , is the inadequacy of our police-arrangements ; which have not kept pace with the growth of wealth and population , but afford less protection to property than any police-system in Europe , and that too in the country where there is most to protect . What wonder , again , if crime should be found to
increase , when , after gradually ceasing to inflict , we have at last ceased even to threaten , capital punishment , except for a few of the most odious offences ; while , by the admission of every competent witness , from Lord Liverpool formerly to Earl Grey now , we have no secondary punishments but what are almost worse than none at all . Lord Liverpool admitted the evil and let it alone ; perhaps feeling as Louis the Fifteenth did , when he talked of the fine things he would do if he were Minister .
An English Minister seldom considers himself as Minister for the purpose of doing any useful thing which he is not obliged to do . Something better might have been hoped from the present Ministers ; but they are ( we say it without presumption ) too ignorant ; they have neither read enough , nor reflected enough . The most accomplished man among them , without question , is Lord Brougham ; and is it not truly deplorable , after
all that has been given in evidence , and argued , and written on the subject , to find Lord Brougham still advocating the maintenance of transportation as a punishment , and Lord Denman supporting him ? Both these law-lords pledge their professional experience that transportation is dreaded . Yes ; but by whom ? Transportation is like death : a terrible punishment to the innocent , a most severe one even to the almost
innocent ; but to the criminal by profession , an object of almost entire disregard . If the Lord Chancellor will not read Mr . Bentham , or Archbishop Whately , or any of the philosophical writers on the theory of punishment , he can surely find time to read a work of less pretensions , Mr . Wakefield ' s 4 Letter from Jack Ketch to Mr . Justice Aldersun / a pamphlet which may be purchased for threepence of Mr . Effingham Wilson , and which all who have threepence to spare ought to read .
21 st June . Debate on the Universities Admission Bill . —It is not a favourable symptom of the state of the public mind , when a great n <> i 8 e is made about little things . What is it that the Dissenters want ? h it education ? or is it that their sons should herd with lord * * sons ? If * e former , they ought to know , and by taking the proper means they
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Debate on the Universities Admission Bill . 591
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 591, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/61/
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