“Supposing that West Flanders, which has more dependents in proportion than East Flanders, has the same proportion of children, we arrive at a total for the two provinces, of 225,894 indigent persons whose age is not above 18. In this number there are 174,588 who have not passed their twelfth year! And there are thousands of orphans! “Notwithstanding the improvement that begins to make itself felt, thanks to the resumption of work and the low price of provisions, many of these young unfortunates continue to give themselves up to begging and vagrancy. But lately driven from their homes by cold and hunger, they form a wandering population, incessantly buffeted from almshouse to almshouse, from prison to prison. “In Brussels at this present moment (July, 1849) there are still to be found in the annex of the prison, about 250 mendicants, among whom are 97 children below the age of 17. In the prisons of Ghent and Bruges their number is equally great.” [36] “It is an established fact, then, that the increase of criminality in Flanders has gone hand in hand with the extension of poverty. The latter brings about the abandonment of homes; ... from this come mendicity, vagrancy, marauding, and theft. The incarceration of so great a number of unfortunates brings the most disastrous consequences. The germs of corruption, brutality, and crime are continually injected into a large fraction of the population. The habit of working is lost, energy is relaxed, idleness becomes incurable. When we think especially of the mass of children who, during the last few years, have passed through the prisons and almshouses, we cannot picture without pity, mingled with fear, the future of this generation, initiated at an early age into the existence of criminals, and condemned to the dangers and evils inseparable from the abandonment and degradation to which they are a prey.” [37] IV. L. M. MOREAU-CHRISTOPHE. [38] In speaking of England, after having sketched how industrialism, as it spread more and more, drew after it an increase of pauperism, the author says of the connection between criminality and economic conditions: “Parallel with the ascending figure for pauperism, rises the growing figure for criminality. The number of persons arraigned at the assizes of England and Wales has increased as follows: =============+==========+=============== Years. | Totals. |Annual Average. -------------+----------+--------------- 1814 to 1820 | 78,762 | 11,252 1821 to 1827 | 99,842 | 14,263 1828 to 1834 | 134,062 | 19,152 1834 to 1840 | 162,502 | 23,214 1841 to 1847 | 193,445 | 27,760 =============+==========+=============== “Thus in a space of thirty-four years the number of crimes has more than doubled in England, while, in the same interval, the increase of the population has hardly passed 40%.