Nor let it be said that these dangers affect only a limited portion of the community, and that, provided only society holds together, and property is upon the whole secure, it is of little consequence to the great bulk of the nation whether its criminals are doubling or tripling every ten years, whether its convicts are hanged, imprisoned, or transported. Doubtless that is the view taken by the majority of men, and which ever makes them resist so strenuously any measures calculated to arrest the general evils by a forced contribution from all classes of the state. But is such a view of so very serious a matter either justified by reason, or warranted by a durable regard to self-interest? Considered in reference only to immediate advantage, and with a view to avert the much-dreaded evil of an assessment, is it expedient to allow crime to go on increasing at the fearful rate which it has done in this country during the last forty years? Can we regard without disquietude the appalling facts demonstrated by the Parliamentary returns of population and commitments--that the people are augmenting three times as fast in the manufacturing as the agricultural districts--that detected and punished crime is multiplying in the former three times as fast as the people--and crime really committed three times as much as that which is brought to light? What can be expected from a state in which crime, in the manufacturing districts, is thus increasing TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES _as fast as mankind in the rural_? From what sources does this overflowing stream of recklessness, profligacy, and misery, which overflows our workhouses and fills our jails, mainly spring, but from this prodigious and unrestrained increase of crime and depravity among the working classes in the manufacturing districts? Must not such a state of things lead to a constant augmentation of poor-rates, county rates, and jail assessments? And how short-sighted is the policy which allows these oppressive burdens to go on constantly increasing, merely from terror of incurring additional expense in striving to arrest them, and hopes to avoid danger, like the partridge, by putting its head in the bush, and ceasing to look it in the face?