generally girls of known bad character. I believe that in the rural districts few professed prostitutes would be found." The clerk, to the magistrates at Lampeter observes:-- "Perjury is common in courts of justice, and the Welsh language facilitates it; for, when witnesses understand English, they feign not to do so, in order to gain time in the process of translation, to shape and mould their answers according to the interest they wish to serve. Frequently neither the prisoner nor the jury understand English, and the counsel, nevertheless, addresses them in English, and the judge sums up in English, not one word of which do they often understand. Instances have occurred when I have had to translate the answers of an English witness into Welsh for the jury; and once even to the grand jury at Cardigan I had to do this. A juryman once asked me, 'What was the nature of an action in which he had given his verdict.' "Truth and the sacredness of an oath are little thought of; it is most difficult to get satisfactory evidence in courts of justice." Upon the above evidence, Mr Symons, the inspector, remarks:-- "Notwithstanding the lamentable state of morals, the jails are empty. The following comparison between the relative criminality of the three counties in my district with that of the neighbouring agricultural county of Hereford, exhibits this moral anomaly in the Welsh character very forcibly:-- | | Committals | | | for Trial at | Centesimal | | Assizes and | Proportion Counties of|Population|Quarter Sessions |of Offenders | in 1841 | for the 5 years |to Population | |ending with 1845.| -----------+----------+-----------------+------------- Brecknock | 55,603 | 261 | .46 Cardigan | 68,766 | 135 | .19 Radnor | 25,356 | 140 | .55 Hereford | 113,878 | 1,198 | 1.05 "Crimes, therefore, are twice as numerous in Herefordshire as in Radnorshire or Brecknockshire, and five times more so than in Cardiganshire.