years, in the county of Hants, stated, that offences of an atrocious character have diminished, excepting horse and sheep stealing; but petty offences increased to a very great degree. There have been frequently as many as fifty, sixty, and seventy, prisoners in the house of correction for offences against the game-laws exclusive of offences against the game-laws of greater magnitude.

Sir James Graham, bart., had acted for the last eight years as a magistrate for the county of Cumberland; until within the last eighteen months he has not observed any increase of crime: but since the commencement of distress among the hand-loom weavers in Carlisle and its vicinity, crime has increased in that particular district. In the county of Cumberland it is universally the custom to refuse any payment of wages out of the poor-rates; the consequence is, that the rate of wages is higher in Cumberland than in almost any other agricultural county. A ploughman there receives at least 12s. a week; in many cases the cottagers have rooms rent free, and in no case does a field labourer receive less than 1s. 6d. a day if he be a good workman. Mr. Sturges Bourne's act has been carried almost universally into execution; select vestries assemble regularly according to the provisions of that act; neither rent nor wages are paid out of the poorrates; except in special cases, relief is refused; and the poorrates, notwithstanding the increase of manufacturing poverty, have diminished even in the manufacturing districts since 1819. "In the parishes with which I am more particularly connected, as being the principal proprietor within

them, upon the first passing of Mr. Sturges Bourne's act, I availed myself, with the concurrence of the vestry, of a provision contained in it for raising money for the purpose of enlarging the poorhouse. At that time the parishes to which I allude were in the habit of paying rents out of the poor-rates; they became convinced that this was an unwise and prodigal expenditure; and though the outlay in enlarging the workhouse was considerable, amounting to somewhat more than 400., at least half of one year's rate, yet, when the workhouse was finished, they were enabled at once to refuse relief to all persons unwilling to go there, and the number of applicants diminished so much, that in the course of two years the parish was reimbursed for the whole outlay; and at the present moment, as I mentioned before, no rents are paid out of the poorrates, and no persons are relieved, except under very special circumstances, at their own houses. The habits of the agricultural labourers are moral, industrious, and economical. There still exists a great spirit of independence, and the utmost want and distress are often endured with patience, in preference to an application to the vestry. In Cumberland, however, both the farmers and agricultural labourers are content with very mean and scanty food: the sustenance of the labourer consists almost entirely of milk, potatoes, and oatmeal; he very rarely eats meat. The situation of the farmer is very little better, or more luxurious. Upon the whole, neither the farmer nor the agricultural labourer is in a worse condition than he was thirty years ago." Sir James Graham is of opinion, "that

the power given by Mr. Sturges Bourne's act of enlarging workhouses, and of making them capable of containing all persons to whom the parish is bound to give relief, and a steady adherence to the principle of never giving it out of the workhouses, coupled with such regulations of the workhouse itself as are now consistent with the law of the land (the utility of which is exemplified in the management of the workhouse at Liverpool), would supply the means of checking the natural improvidence of the labourer, and his disposition to early marriage; he would fear to make himself dependent on parish relief; he would look at the workhouse with dread, not, as at present, almost with indifference; and by the increased exertions of the labouring classes themselves, by greater prudence on their part, formed by a wiser administration of the existing law, I am disposed to think that the poor-rates might be reduced throughout England; at all events, that their rapid inroads might be arrested." The select vestries exercise the power vested in them, with sound discretion: character is almost invariably an ingredient in their decisions. The most fertile source of crime is the preservation of game; the lower orders, in common with the highest, have a natural love of the sport, even stimulated, perhaps, by the risks attendant on its gratification; the tameness of the pheasants, which were formerly almost unknown in this neighbourhood, and which are now seen constantly in the fields close to the road, is a great temptation to the lower orders to take them. "Persons going armed at night on a marauding excursion seldom confine their depredations to the taking of game, and many

cases of petty thefts, such as robbing of hen-roosts and outhouses, have been brought before me, which I have been able clearly to trace to persons going out at night with the intention of poaching. On the whole, I should think poaching the cause, rather than the consequence, of criminal habits." When an unemployed labourer applies to the parish for relief, he is usually sent to break stones upon the turnpike-road, which work is paid by the square yard of stone broken; he is fed and clothed at the expense of the parish, his earnings are carried to the account of the parish; if he does not break the average quantity of stones, the keeper of the workhouse brings the pauper before a magistrate, who has it in his power to send him to the house of correction.

In a gaol and house of correction at Carlisle, the tread-mill has been at work about eighteen months. Sir James Graham cannot perceive that the work appears very irksome to the prisoners. to the prisoners. The severity of the tread-mill at Carlisle is about the average severity; the severity of this punishment very much depends upon the height of the steps and the frequency of the rotation of the wheels. These vary in almost every gaol. "I have always been of opinion that by legislative interposition the degree of labour ought to be regulated and made the same in every gaol and house of correction throughout England; because it does appear to me absurd, that where the crime is the same, and the punishment is intended also to be the same, from the accidental circumstances of the hard labour in one gaol being more severe than in another, the punishment ordained as uniform should vary to any degree."

The number of prisoners confined in the Penitentiary at the 31st of December last, was 423 males, and 102 females. But the number now within the walls is 452 males and 105 females. The former are distributed through the four pentagons belonging to male prisoners, but the latter are all contained in one of the two pentagons allotted for the reception of females, the other of those pentagons being yet unoccupied.

The fact of there being nothing injurious to the human constitution, either in the site of the building, or in the discipline or mode of life to which the prisoners confined in it are subjected, is further confirmed since the last report of the committee in March last, by the good health which has constantly prevailed in the prison during that period. The number of those who died in 1826 is fifteen; of whom eleven were males, and four females; but several of these died of disorders under which they laboured when they came into the prison; and it may be said with truth, that the health of the prisoners, taken as a body, is better now than when they came into the penitentiary.

The prison not having been reopened for the reception of prisoners till the 9th of August, 1824, no recommendations for the royal mercy having since taken place on the part of the committee, with the exception of that of a prisoner who had assisted in repelling an outrageous assault made by one of his fellow-prisoners on one of the

officers of the prison, and who received his majesty's pardon on that account, as soon as it could be ascertained that employment would be provided for him by his friends.

No other male prisoner has left the prison; but one female prisoner has been pardoned, owing to circumstances connected with her original conviction. Her conduct had been uniformly good while she remained in the prison.

The conduct and behaviour of the respective officers during the period to which this report applies, has been satisfactory; and that of the prisoners in general orderly; and the committee have great reason to be satisfied with their readiness to receive instruction, and with their improvement in religious knowledge, as well as with the progress made by them in reading and writing; but there are among them some profligate and turbulent characters, for whose outrageous conduct the punishments in use under the rules and regulations of the penitentiary are by no means sufficient.

The committee have found, by experience, that confinement in a dark cell, though in most cases a severe and efficacious punishment, operates very differently on dif ferent persons. It appears to lose much of its effect from repetition: it cannot always be carried far without the danger of injuring the health of the prisoner; and there are individuals, men as well as boys, on whom it is found to produce little or no effect.

The committee are convinced

that the framers of the statutes under which the Penitentiary is now governed, acted erroneously in omitting the power of inflicting corporal punishment, when they re-enacted most of the other provisions of the 19th Geo. 3rd., the Act originally passed for the introduction of the Penitentiary system; and they are satisfied, that the revival of this power (a power

which is possessed in every other criminal prison in this country) would be highly advantageous in the management of this prison, provided such power were accompanied by regulations adequate to control the exercise of it, and to guard against its being abused.

BEXLEY, Chairman.

General Penitentiary, Feb. 17.

The Select Committee appointed to consider the Subject of Emigration from the United Kingdom, and to whom the Report of the last Session, and the several Petitions which have been presented to the House in the present Session of Parliament, on the same subject, were referred; and who were empowered to report their Observations and Opinion thereupon, together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before them from time to time, to the House; have further considered the Matters to them referred, and have agreed upon the following Report:

The inquiry into the general subject of emigration is connected with so many important questions, and involves considerations so various and complicated, that although upon many of them your committee have received a mass of very valuable and satisfactory evidence, they do not feel themselves in a situation to present to the House, so soon as they would have desired to do, a general and final report. But in the prosecution of their investigations, a

special case has been submitted to them, so serious and so urgent, as to induce them to devote to it, for the present, their principal attention, and without further delay to lay it specially before the House.

In addition to those ordinary causes which in many parts of the United Kingdom appear to have led to a superabundant population, or rather to a disproportion between the demand and the supply of labour, an important change has been wrought, and is still in gradual but certain progress, in the condition of some of the manufacturing districts, by the transition from hand-loom to power-loom weaving. For some time the advance in the cotton trade was so rapid as nearly, if not altogether to absorb, in the more productive system, the hands thus thrown out of employment. But difficulties arising from a temporary check in trade shortly fell upon the weavers with the double pressure of these two combined causes, a diminished demand for the produce of their industry, and an increased facility of production.

Your committee are fully sensible that, to a certain extent, these

disastrous consequences to a portion of the community must follow upon every new invention by which human labour is abridged: and that it is more especially the interest of a commercial country, far from discouraging, to afford every protection to such inventions: and while your committee lay down this doctrine in its fullest extent, they feel themselves bound to add, that those who in the present instance are the chief sufferers, appear to manifest juster ideas, and a more ready acquiescence in this general principle, than could have been expected from their situation in life, and from the personal feelings with which their view of the case must be mixed up. But your committee would wish to call the attention of the House to two circumstances which appear to distinguish this special case from those of ordinary occurrence. Independently of the extent of the change, the time at which it has taken place, with reference to their peculiar branch of trade, is for the weavers most unfortunate; and most, if not all, the ordinary channels of labour are in such a state of repletion, that it is difficult for them to transfer their industry elsewhere.

Though the state of distress bordering upon actual famine, which these causes have produced in districts extensively concerned in the cotton trade, is so notorious as hardly to require pressing upon the House, your committee have had it confirmed by the strongest and fullest evidence. These districts appear to embrace in England a large portion of the county of Lancaster, together with parts of Cheshire, of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and of Cumberland: and in Scotland principally, so far

as the evidence before your committee has gone, the counties of Renfrew and Lanark. In mitigation of this extensive distress, sums to a very large amount have been raised from various funds, by legal provision, by spontaneous contribution, and recently by the king's letter, and have mainly tended to preserve those districts from the immediate horrors of famine, and from the possible evils of riot and disturbance. But your committee deem it their duty not to conceal from the House, that, notwithstanding the temporary aid thus afforded, the long-continued pressure of the lowest class upon the poor-rates legally raised in England, and of the same class of persons on the funds raised in various ways in Scotland, has extended the distress to the ranks immediately above; and that not only the local funds appear in many instances nearly exhausted, but the lower order of rate-payers, far from being able to contribute to the relief of their pauper neighbours, are become themselves dependent upon casual or parochial assistance.

Under these circumstances, the Manufacturers' Relief Committee, with the fullest daily information before them, concurring in the statement above made, agreeing with your committee in opinion, that there is little hope that any revival of trade can bring back the employment of the distressed handloom weavers, and that the fulness of other branches of labour renders it difficult for them to transfer their industry; aware also, that temporary aid, however valuable in itself, and however judiciously applied, can only produce temporary benefit, have been led to turn their attention to the objects which