+---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------------+ | Census Years. | Population. | Number of | Proportion. | | | | Commitments. | | |---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------------| | 1841 | 15,914,148 | 27,760 | 174·6 per 100,000 | | 1851 | 17,927,609 | 27,960 | 156·2 " " | | 1861 | 20,066,224 | 18,326 | 91·3 " " | | 1871 | 22,712,266 | 16,269 | 71·6 " " | | 1881 | 25,974,239 | 14,704 | 56·6 " " | | 1891 | 29,002,525 | 11,605 | 40·0 " " | +---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------------+ Such is the remarkable result obtained by taking the whole number of indictable offences sent for trial at Assizes and Quarter Sessions in each Census-year since 1834, nor is there any reason to suppose that the process of amelioration has slackened to any appreciable extent during the last decade. When the Census returns for 1901 are published it will probably be found that the population of England and Wales now totals to about thirty-two millions; and assuming that the amount of crime committed during the current year is not abnormal, the number of commitments will work out at a little more than thirty for every hundred thousand inhabitants. That is to say, during the last sixty years, serious offences have decreased nearly sixty per cent. in actual volume, and some eighty per cent. if considered relatively to population--or in other words, between two-thirds and five-sixths of the type of crime, which sixty years ago brought men to trial, is now prevented. These figures, of course, deal with detected crime only: if it were possible to include all grave offences, irrespective of whether their authors were discovered or not, the results would be even more striking, because owing to the increased activity on the part of the police, and to the greater readiness to prosecute on the part of the public, comparatively few serious crimes now remain mysteries for any length of time. Calculations based on the number of offences disposed of by Courts of Summary Jurisdiction are valueless if the object in view is to estimate the prevalence of crime, because not only are new minor offences continually being created (thus rendering such returns too intricate for purposes of ready comparison) but the inclusion of trivial breaches of the Licensing Acts, Education Acts, Vaccination Acts &c. reduces the plane of the enquiry from one which deals only with crimes to one which is mainly concerned with misdemeanours.