Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/44

36 numbers is better than that which the fortunate few alone obtained before.

Next as to crime: the facts to note are that rather more than forty years ago, with a population little more than half what it is now, the number of criminal offenders committed for trial (1839) was 54,000; in England alone, 24,000. Now the corresponding figures are, United Kingdom, 22,000, and England, 15,000; fewer criminals by a great deal in a much larger population. Of course the figures are open to the observation that changes in legislation providing for the summary trial of offenses that formerly went to the assizes may have had some effect. But the figures show so great and gradual a change that there is ample margin for the results of legislative changes, without altering the inference that there is less serious crime now in the population than there was fifty years ago. Thus an improvement as regards crime corresponds to the better education and well-being of the masses.

Next as regards pauperism: here, again, the figures are so imperfect that we can not go back quite fifty years. It is matter of history, however, that pauperism was nearly breaking down the country half a century ago. The expenditure on poor-relief early in the century and down to 1830'-311830-'31 [sic] was nearly as great at times as it is now. "With half the population in the country that there now is, the burden of the poor was the same. Since 1849, however, we have continuous figures, and from these we know that, with a constantly increasing population, there is an absolute decline in the amount of pauperism. The earliest and latest figures are:

Thus in each of the three divisions of the United Kingdom there is a material decline, and most of all in Ireland, the magnitude of the decline there being no doubt due to the fact that the figures are for a period just after the great famine. But how remote we seem to be from those days of famine!

Last of all we come to the figures of savings-banks. A fifty years' comparison gives the following results for the whole kingdom: