NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10428, 28 April 1897, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The moral budged for 1895, as the English criminal statistics just published have been called, is, on the whole, encouraging. The standing army of crime is certainly not increasing rapidly, and Mr. Troup, in his interesting introductory report, gives some reasons for thinking that this army is decreasing. The slight increase of crime noted in 1891 has not continued; and in the figures for 1895 we again find what for some years had been, as a rule, distinctly observable—a tendency to diminish. Indictable offences, including forma of crime which rose in number in 1894, have fallen, and there is even a decline in certain varieties of crime the increase of which, owing partly to the diffusion of licentious literature, had been, here and in most other countries, noted with alarm. Coining promises to become soon almost extinct; and the number of persons tried for forgery is, considering the multitude of temptations in the path of the unscrupulous, surprisingly small. Almost the only increase in indictable offences is in the case of threats with a view to extortion; and the editor remarks that this is " a crime of so very serious a character, and prevails to so great an extent in France, that any tendency to its increase in England ought to be watched with care by the police and judicial authorities." In non-indictable offences there is also a diminution. Prosecutions for drunkenness, for example, are far below the high-water marks of 1884 and 1890.

There was just cause of anxiety at the great increase in recent years in the number of juvenile offenders; but in 1895 there was so great a falling off in their number that the editor thinks that there is room forhopo " that the many reforming agencies now at work are not wholly ineffectual in checking the production of youthful offenders." It has long been known that crime is, more or less, a matter of weather and season ; that certain classes of offences are committed in June or July, others in November and December, others in March, April, and May; that there are summer, winter, and spring crops of offences; and that moralists, like meteorologists, ought to study the thermometer and barometer. Not often, however, has it been shown so clearly as in this excellent report how much the criminal may be the creature of temperature. There was in the early part of 1895 a long spell of excessively cold weather, accompanied as was inevitable in consequence of the continued frost, by much poverty and distress. This abnormal cold and distress coincided with a great decrease in the number of crimes reported to the police, persons apprehended, and persons received in prison. Even more striking was the effect of the excessive and prolonged low temperature on suicides and attempts to commit them. Both fell much below the winter average, which is lower than the summer average; the attempts were less than half the winter average.

A recent English exchange says the startling announcement that a discovery has just been made on the scene of the work of the Egyptian Exploration Fund of the so-called Logiaor "discourses "of our Lord, is one of interest to all students of Scripture, and may lead to the final settlement of not a few vexed questions of speculation. Every recent " find "of lost ancient works has tended to the establishment of the authenticity of the Gospels, and the refutation of sceptical conclusions. If this discovery is that of Papias's missing " Exposition of the Logla of the Lord," it will dispose of not a few wildand doubtful theories, builo on the fact that no trace has been pre* served, exeept by tradition, of this important work. Since Papiaa is known to. have illustrated the "sayings" of Jesus with firsthand reports from people who had seen and heard Him, this recovered treasure may contain priceless information of a date earlier than what is contained in extant literature, and throw much light on the Gospels. The world will wait with eagerness for further news of this remarkable discovery.

Discussing Lord Salisbury's speech at the farewell banquet given to Mr. Bayard at the Mansion House, the Spectator says :— "He remarked on the singularly rapid spread of the English race and the English language over the eurfaceof our planet, and expressed the belief that what is said in that language will, before long, be intelligible, and not only intelligible, bat actually understood, over almost all the world. And he insisted that this might turn oat to be either a great blessing or a great curse, according to the spirit in which those who mould the convictions of the English, speaking races choose to guide the formation of those convictions. It is, in fact, a sort of reversal of the effect which the confusion of tongueswbich is said to, have fallen upon the different families of the human race in the vain attempt to build a tower intended to scale the heavens-was supposed to hare S™ £ Urd S-'i-b"/. view, the difficulty; which different races have found in mastering each other'i language, has not been by any mwni M unmixed evil. It ha, WTed M » kind of non-conducting medium to limit the mischief which irresponsible and mischievous ; talk so often produces. Had this non-conducting medium ,■«* Mined, cm ii be doubted that toe

■ SBgy fit irritation of Trance against England, »njd® England against Prance would often h»« i been far gretter than'it has been * And cab if it be doubted that if Diokefia had written his 'Change for American Notes' and his ft ' Martin Chualewit' in a language which ( the masses d the United States could no) 1 have understood there would have been $m less angry MinK between the two people Let English become something like a i&M versal language, and we shall soon find thai the velocity .which either clever '<jM ignorant ill-mture propagates its mischief oua influence over the world will beindeg nitely increased. . . . If there wert ( Mr. Bayard, in every English colony ifS dependency, and every American Stated and if tfe people of every Englijl . colony and dependency and of every II American Sato had the good feeling and the good taite to look up to him for counsel H and follow sis lead, the universal spread o! 1 the English tongue would prove to be the-If greatest security for order and peace which 1 had ever b;en known in the history of thi ' 1 world. Bit if Englishmen learn to scream and Americans to bluster, and pablia opinion to discharge itself violently in ■< muddy gejsers of boiling passion in « vet , separate cdony and State, then the unirer* sal spread of English may prove a great' calamity, aid may some day issue in a great' ' catastrophe." ■ >

The latestnews from the theatre of war 1 in Greece is that the Greeks have suffered a : serious defeat, and are in full retreat, if' not flight. They must have been hiti pressed when they had to abandon their •' wounded. Tboisands of women and child. ren have left tteir hemes, and are fleeing before the approach of the Turkish troops. At Volo, where many thousand Qreek refugees have gathered, a state of unit prevails. The news of the dl»s>at«M to the Greek army was received it Athens with consternation, and the pop* lace, principally women and children, for all the men have been sent to the front ' sobbed in the street). The scenes in the ■ city must have been of the most heart-'-,' rending character. It is true that th« % Greeks have brought all their troubles upon v themselves, but at the same time om would require to be made of stuff as hard .' as tbeir own marble not to feel sorry for them in their present dilemma. Affairs in South Africa are growing distinctly ugly. War preparations are being pushed along by both the Boers and the British. Ger. many recognising the likelihood of an' outbreak, is intriguing to secure the cooperation of France and Russia to embarrass England.