INCREASE OF CRIME IN ENGLAND

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1182, 22 January 1869, Page 4

INCREASE OF CRIME IN ENGLAND

Crime has grown, says the Weekly Dispatch, with every mitigation of our code. The dangerous classes have waxed daily more fearless and reckless as severity has relaxed, and " grim-visaged law has smoothed hia wrinkled front," until the transit of a marching regiment has left London for the time in possession of the mob, and ruffianry has beeu made so daring by impunity that it is perilous to venture into our streets in broad aud open day. Forgeries have multiplied in the very ratio of the relaxation of their penalties. Garotting threatens to become a domestic institution. Burglary and highway robbery prevail in daylight, on our thoroughfares—within hail of our very police stations. A contemporary avers that four assaults with robbery of the person occur in our metropolitan streets every day—that is to say, four offences which, within a little more than a quarter of a century, would have brought the offenders to the gallows. "We all recollect the execution of Fauntleroy— the last of the executed forgers. We have relaxed the law, but forgery has greatly outstripped our humanity, and again threatens the security of all mercantile transactions. The gigantic frauds which would have been " a hanging matter " in the " good old days when George the 111. was King," are entirely of modern growth—the spawn of unasserted authority. It is almost an entirely new feature of our social history that crime should ascend into high places, and that we should count misdemeanants and even felons among our upper classes.