No. 2.-Sentences for Offences against Property, passed by This is a very great decrease on two years, and in looking at the years preceding those given in the first table, the diminution is yet more gratifying to behold. For instance, adulteries were, from 1816 to 1818, in number 95; felony and misdemeanour, in the same years, 376; showing a decrease on the former of 75 cases; and on the latter of 2691. In the second table there is also a marked improvement in the country. 1 It would be too voluminous to give the tables containing all these data. But if the foregoing Circuit Court returns be refreshing to humanity, those of the Magistrates' courts for the Lower Western provinces of Bengal are much more so, for the decrease of crime is yet more extraordinary, whether as regards offences arising from revenge, from destitution, from blood-thirstiness, or from immorality. The following shows the sentences of two years; if we had them of a more recent date, I am convinced we should observe a still greater diminution 1. 1 The evidence of Mr. Mangles (Lords, 4th March, 1830), is confirmatory of this assumption in reference to the very great diminution in the number of crimes. Q. Can you state in what proportion the number of crimes has diminished? A. I think in the Lower Provinces the average of dacoities of late years is about as one and a fraction to seven, as compared with the state of things twenty-five or thirty years ago.' Mr. Mangles adds, 'in the district of Kishnagur, formerly most notorious for dacoities, that crime has decreased, from an average in former years of 250 or 300, to eighteen or twenty.' Comparative Statement of Offences against Property and against the Person, on which the Magistrates passed Sentence in the Lower and Western Provinces of Bengal, during the Years 1826 and 1827. Decrease of offences against property in one year, No.... 4,465 ditto 4,162 ditto 5,794 14,421 Decrease of various other offences in Total decrease of crime in one year In arson, burglary, fraud, larceny, bloodshed, bribery, perjury, &c. we see a rapid decrease, amounting altogether in one year to upwards of 14,000! In India, offences decreased one-half in one year; in England they increased i five years at the enormous rate of upwards of a 1000 per annum ! When commencing these tables, I have shown the number of persons sentenced to death and transportation, or imprisoned for life, by the Nizamut Adawlut exile or incarceration sentences for seven years have thus decreased before this court :— Sentences of seven years' transportation or imprisonment by the Nizamut Adawlut. A decrease, after one year's interval, of 269 sentences. Another method exists for testing the efficacy of the police and of the laws, which is by looking at the returns of the higher classes of crime, whether murder or robbery with violence; I have, therefore, prepared the following table to exhibit the result of the two periods of two years each, and I would fain indulge the hope that the view these tables, one and all, exhibit, will have some effect in England, by leading those who have heretofore opposed the abolition of capital punishment, to reflect seriously on the consequences of their perverseness. In the execution of the laws there ought to be no such hopes held as those of clemency; the strictest justice is the greatest mercy, not only to the unfortunate individual but to society; but by strict justice, I mean the proportioning of the punishment to the offence, due consideration being had to extenuating circumstances. |