has fallen again from about 8000 annual cases to 4365 in 1857; breaches of the forest and octroi laws diminished also; but offences against morality, larcenies, frauds of all kinds, breaches of the laws on keeping arms, and use of old postage stamps, have increased in various proportions.

The most striking feature in the composition of the correctional police cases is the very large proportion (57 per cent.) of what are called fiscal offences; indeed, it is difficult to understand, for those who are not acquainted with the minute and annoying rules of the French code on all matters connected with forests, rivers, roads, sporting, and possession of arms, how such an amount of trifling offences can be committed at all. But though the French law includes an immense variety of acts in the category of correctional offences, a large part of them cannot be considered to indicate any criminal intention; smuggling a bottle of wine through an octroi gate, or killing sparrows with a pistol without leave, though pursued correctionally, cannot be seriously regarded as indicating criminal perversity, and it is probable that a considerable part of the correctional cases do not present a much more serious character.

The third category of French tribunals, those of simple police, have also a constantly increasing number of cases submitted to them for judgment. From 97,568 in 1826, they rose to 197,343 in 1850, and to 404,333 in 1857, involving in the latter year 536,134 persons. This increase, however, is rather a good sign than a bad one, for as the classes of offences judged in simple police are generally limited to matters of order and health, their augmentation is only a proof of the growing watchfulness of the magistrates in all that concerns public security. The simple police cases average as follows:

One-seventh of the simple police cases occur in Paris alone. Suicides form a subject apart in the general question of crime. They are rapidly increasing in France. Their progress has been as follows:

They have, therefore, more than doubled in the last thirty-two years. The seasons exercise a perceptible influence in the number of suicides:

From January to March the proportion is

22

April to June

July to September
October to December

22.1

30.7

27.2

20.0

100

The largest number occur, therefore, during the summer months, the period at which crimes against persons also attain their maximum.

The proportion of women is 24 per cent. on an average of 25 years.

The means of suicide employed by each sex are as follows, calculated

on the year 1850:

Suffocation by charcoal

This table, being based on a single year, includes an unusually large proportion of women; but for that very reason it shows more clearly what are the forms of voluntary death which women prefer and avoid. They may be said not to use fire-arms at all, while, as regards suffocation by charcoal, their number is nearly equal to that of the men who employ that means of suicide. Charcoal is the most frequent form of suicide in Paris; 214 of the 303 cases shown above for 1850 occurred in Paris alone.

Accidental deaths, though they do not form any part of the crime of a country, still present a character of violence which justifies their being mentioned here. Their number is rapidly rising in France; it got up from 4781, in 1826, to 10,045, in 1857; 19 per cent. of the victims are women. Drowning is the most frequent cause of accidental deaths, twofifths of the whole number resulting from that cause. It is worthy of notice, as a source of comfort for the timid people who are still afraid of railway travelling, that the number of people annually killed in France by ordinary carriage accidents is about eighteen times greater than of those killed on railways.

It would be excessively interesting and useful to base on the foregoing details an exact comparison between the movement of crime in France and in England, so as to fix the relative criminal tendencies of the two nations; but, though in both countries the statistics of justice are now kept with great exactness and detail, the differences of classification are so great that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at a correct result.

The number of prisoners brought before the various English courts, after increasing from 1826 to 1840, remained stationary from 1846 to 1855, and then diminished.

In 1857 the number of prisoners brought up
for indictable offences was.
and for ordinary offences

20,269

369,233

or 1.94 per cent. on the whole population.

In France, in the same year, the assize courts judged.

5,775 prisoners

the correctional police courts.
and the simple police courts

Now, if these figures really represented the amount of offenders in the two countries, there would be an advantage in favour of England; but the two totals are composed of elements varying so much in their composition, that the apparent result is altogether inexact.

It has already been observed that the correctional police cases include a large number of offences which imply no criminality, and that the simple police list is almost exclusively composed of infringements of detailed police regulations referring to matters of every-day life. But, in addition to this general fact, allowances must also be made for cases which exist as offences only in one of the two countries. For instance, the 229,467 persons brought before the correctional tribunals included the following number of cases which have no existence at all in England:

Breaking limits by persons to whom a fixed resi

dence was assigned by law Breaches of the forest laws

3,702

46,759

50,461

These 50,461 cases involved (on the general average between the number of cases and the number of prisoners implicated for them) about 62,000 individuals, and that number must first be deducted from the French total to allow of a comparison with England.

Furthermore, it may be said arbitrarily that at least one-half of the simple police cases have no analogy whatever with any English offences, so that if their total be reduced to that extent, for the purpose of comparison, there would be 268,000 to deduct from it, which, added to the 62,000 culprits already indicated as being in excess on the correctional list, gives 330,000 altogether to take off the French general total of 771,000, so reducing it to 441,000.

On the other hand, the English total of 389,000 includes 75,859 charges of drunkenness, which does not give rise to arrest in France (where, indeed, it is rare), excepting when accompanied by the commission of a legal offence, so that after deducting that number as having no equivalent in France, there remain 313,000 for comparison.

Now, on the population of France, 441,000 culprits give only a proportion of 1.23 per cent., while the 313,000 English prisoners represent 1.56 per cent. of the whole nation, the relative advantage in favour of France being about one-fifth.

But as this calculation is mainly based on an arbitrary deduction of onehalf from the French simple police list, it does not really prove anything, though it is probable that, if the nature of the simple police cases could be exactly ascertained, and their number set off against the small proportion of similar charges which constitute offences in England, the deduction from the French list might be larger still, and the comparison in consequence become still more unfavourable to England. This supposition is strengthened by a comparison which it is possible to make very exactly between the numbers of certain absolute crimes committed in both countries in 1857, which were as follows:

VOL. L.

E

Every figure in this list, with the exception of rape, is in favour of France, especially when the large excess of population in the latter country is taken into account; and it may therefore be admitted, that if a similar comparison of every class of offences committed in the two countries were possible, an immense mass of the trifling cases tried in correctional and simple police would disappear from the French list, either on the ground that they have no existence in England, or that the English corresponding number is higher than the French, an hypothesis which may fairly be based on the fact just proved, that in many serious crimes the English show such a marked excess.

On one point, however, England attains, contrarily to the generally received opinion on the matter on the Continent, a decided superiority over France. Suicides are absolutely three times more numerous in France than in England, or, in proportion to the respective populations, twice as high. In 1857 there were only 1349 suicides in England, against 3967 in France.

It is a singular fact that arrests before trial are infinitely more numerous in England than in France, notwithstanding the greater personal liberty supposed to exist in the former country, and the system of preventive imprisonment which is applied in the latter. In 1857, 66,626 persons were arrested in France, while in London alone the arrests amounted to 79,364 in the same year.

It would not be safe to form a definite opinion of the moral state of a country from an examination of its criminal records alone; there are other features to examine also; but still the movement of crime furnishes a most important element of the question, and a provisional idea may be based on it of the moral tendencies of a people. Without, therefore, assigning an undue importance to the foregoing facts and figures, they may be admitted to indicate generally that the state of France as concerns outward morality is very decidedly superior to that of England. The comparison between the two countries for such crimes as can really be brought to scale is largely in favour of France; proportionately on the respective populations, rape and violation of children are twice as numerous in the latter country as in England; but murders, forgeries, and robberies are from two to three times as frequent in England as in France.

The greater density and misery of the English population, and its accumulation in manufacturing cities, may be supposed to partially explain these great differences, for it cannot be admitted that they are attributable to a greater degree of wilful criminality amongst the English. The cause, however, is not in question here, the result alone is before us, and it is very bad for England.

The comparatively high moral condition of the agricultural classes in France comes out strikingly, confirming what has already been said of

their relative morality in the preceding article on Population. There is a real importance in this circumstance, for the rural inhabitants constitute two-thirds of the whole nation; but it is somewhat counterbalanced by the excessive proportionate criminality found amongst the educated classes.

The constantly growing tendency to attacks against persons, the augmentation of rape, and the diminution of robberies, would almost seem to imply that violence of character is increasing, while want and dishonesty are diminishing; but this would be too general a conclusion to rest on such slight evidence. The criminality of France, while diminishing as a whole, is simultaneously changing its objects, and, as in all other matters which are in a state of transition, time and experience alone will show the effects of the movement it is making.

CONTINENTAL REVOLUTIONS.*

OUR readers may possibly remember M. Garnier Pagès as member of that provisional government which fretted its brief hour in France, during the troubles of 1848, until the good sense of the nation turned him out among the rest. Since his retirement into private, M. Pagès has been "eating his leek" and swearing most horrible revenge, which he has perpetrated by the publication of a ponderous work, in which he purposes to study the causes and consequences of the tornado of 1848, from his point of view. We are, in so far, thankful to him that he has for the present abstained from offering us any "warmed-up cabbage" about the French revolution (though he threatens his much-suffering countrymen with three other volumes on that subject), and has wisely devoted the volume with which we now deal to the affairs of Italy. In the first place, it is a very taking subject of the hour; and secondly, the author is enabled to show-at any rate, by implication-that France was quite prepared to do in 1848 what she carried out in 1859. Her only mistake was, that, at the former period, she had the modesty to wait for an invitation, which, however, was not given.

We have generally been of opinion that revolution is like cholera, which breaks out suddenly under perfectly normal conditions of society, and dashes over the Continent, spreading desolation and confusion far and wide. But M. Pagès teaches us differently: it is his proud boast that France did it all in 1848. If there be anything to boast about in perpetrating bloodshed and checking the cause of progress for at least ten years, we are perfectly willing to leave France the responsibility. But we deny, absolutely and utterly, that France originated the Italian upheaval of 1848 it must have taken place even had no republic been proclaimed at Paris. For eighteen years the revolutionary volcano had Histoire de la Révolution de 1848. Par Garnier Pagès. Tome 1er, Italie. Paris: Pagnerre.