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Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3855, 12 July 1873, Page 2

To recur to the question raised by some remarks which fell from his Honor Mr Justice Johnston on Tuesday last : we shall adduce a few figures to show that since the year 1866 our criminal statistics have steadily marked a decrease. Altogether, the charge was not a very happy effort. It did not evince that judicial severity of thought which so eminently distinguishes his Honor when dealing with the niceties of law. In some instances the phraseology might be called at least inappropriate. We submit that when his Honor speaks of the "dangerous and criminal classes" of the colony, he is merely using a figure of speech. We can scarcely be said to have arrived at that stage of advancement which would justify us in speaking of our " criminal classes." No doubt we may, in the fullness of time, enjoy that undesirable distinction ; but until then it would be as well to abstain from using language calculated to mis. lead the unthinking, especially when coming from the lips of a learned judge. We have a few criminals, certainly, but they are not in ol asses nor batal lions ; and if we can continue to keep alive the flame stimulus to industry now workingso admirably throughout the colony, our criminal and eleemosynary contrivances will become fewer still. Since its foundation as a colony, New Zealand has been very fortunate in the class of people who

were landed on her shores. Probably no British colony was ever built upon a better foundation. The first immigrants drafted out here were in every sense of the word unexceptionable, and as free from criminal taint as it is possible to obtain men. The exigencies of our immigrational needs, and the like causes in other countries operating against us, resulted in the influx of an inferior class of immigrants who were generally known as the " Blackballed." Since their advent we have had to submit to contamination from other quarters. We have outlived the fears then raised by those over-fastidious people who would carry their exclusive notions into the other world ; as we expect to outlive and laugh at the dire forebodings regarding the "crop of crime" liow ripening. "We have a deeper faith ] in the generous instincts of humanity than to expect any such catastrophe. " The Devil ia "not so black as he is painted," nor are the socalled dangerous classes as dangerous as alarmists would make people beljeve. Give men an opportunity to earn an honest living, Bparing them from the indignities incidental to the competition arising from an overstocked market, and 99 out of 100 will earn their biead by the sweat of their brow ; and there is more than a forty-parson power in honest labor in ennobling the morally weak and wayward, by driving out the peccant humors of sin and sloth. It is rather singular that with all the judicial attention this question has received, the real, the only, cause of the diminution' of eritne in the colony should not have been divined, and the credit given in the proper quarter. The real secret appears to be this ; that in proportion as we provide work for our population, so is the expense of our gaols and charitable institutions lessened. This has been very noticeable since the inauguration of the Publio Works policy throughout the colony, and has been pre-eminently so in this province since the expenditure of large sums of money on public works. Work is easily obtained, and men are not driven to those dishonest shifts which an ill-balanced mind suggests under the influence of want and despondency. His Honor said '• he thought he might safely appeal to the experience of every officer [of the law] in the community to say that it was too much to be feared that persons who went into our prisons comparatively innocent men generally came out of them in a moral condition likely to cause them to join the dangerous and criminal classes as soon as a little more prosperity seemed to make it a profitable thing" (to enter upon the path of crime, it is to be presumed). Had this observation a particle of truth in it, the number of offenders against the laws of the colony must have gone on increasing year by year, instead of showing a directly opposite result. We speak more particularly of this province, but there is no doubt whatever that our case is not exceptional. Only a few days ago Mr Justice Chapman, in his charge to the Dunedin Grand Jury, remarked upon the diminution of crime in that province ; and we make no doubt that the meagreness of the criminal calendars of the Otago province arises from precisely the same causes which are at work throughout the colony. Had Mr Justice Johnston consulted the records of his Court he would have seen what a very small average of his own convictions reappear before him ; and had he more intercourse with the outside world than that which he is so vain of, and a better knowledge of the outskirts of this province, he would have had no occasion to consult any of the officers of justice on the point. He would have Been on every hand men who have been purged by the law earning a living by honest labor; and in those portions of this province now being reclaimed from a wilderness of bush he could see dozens of men, sentenced in the Supreme Court of Wellington, who have not joined the " dangerous classes," but who, taking advantage of the abundance of employment have become useful members of society. The following figures will show how crime has steadily decreased in this province since 1866. Within the early portion of the period to which the figures apply, the gaol could not have had fewer than 100 persona incarcerated. At present, and for some time back, rarely more than 40 at one time have partaken of Mr Reid's bill of fare. In 1866 there were 326 persons committed to gaol for various offences ; in 1867, 316 ; in 1868, 818 ; in 1869, 244 ; in 1870, 238 ; in 1871, 196 ; and although in 1872 there were 232, so many of these were for minor offonces that the average of " criminal" offenders is considerably lower than in the previous year. Taking the Supreme Court records of Wellington and Wanganui, we find a corresponding phase of the criminal record. In 1866 there were 50 cases tried, and 34 convictions ; in 1867, the like number tried, with only | 29 convictions ; in 1868, 27 cases, and I only 18 convictions; in 1869, 30 cases, ! and 20 convictions ; in 1870,23 cases, j and 17 convictions ; in 1871, 14 cases, and 7 convictions; in 1872, 30 cases, j and 18 convictions ; but these include a number of cases held over since 1871. In the returns for 1869 and 1870, | several treason cases are included, as well as some from the Taranaki province. On the whole, these figures may be considered as very good evidence that the anticipated " crop of crime" is a very remote contingency indeed.