efforts are making to obtain a commutation
of her sentence, on the ground of insanity.
What evidence there may be to demonstrate
a moral condition of irresponsibility, we have
no right to consider at this time.

But, while this last Suffolk horror surpasses
all others in the fruitful country, we must
not allow its peculiar enormity to blind us to
the more alarming fact of the extraordinary
increase of crime in the district. In the
year 1847, there were five hundred and
thirty-two commitments; in 1848, there was
an increase of one hundred and thirty; 1849
shows an increase of only twenty; but 1850
displays an increase of nearly one hundred;
and it is stated that " the numbers for the
last quarter of the present year are
comparatively much greater than those of any
previous year—- in fact, nearly double."

Other crimes, either of savage murder,
poisoning, or atrocious violence, have also
been very recently committed in the
neighbourhoods of Ilford, Warrington, Eastwood,
Lincoln, and at the little village of
Rosemarket near Haverfordwest. But we forbear
to add to our already too dreadful catalogue of
crimes—- awful visits of Cain to our green fields.

It may be said of one bad character in a
village, that he is like one bad sheep, and
taints half the flock. There are no regular
"schools " of thieves, no large gangs with
regular haunts, in the country, as there are
in great cities; but, on the other hand, there
are the acquaintance one man has with another
in every village, and the frequent association.
The simple ploughboy, who goes, with
his honest shining face and shining can, to
the hedge alehouse for beer to take to the
men at work in the " nine-acre," may at any
time come across the most notorious poacher,
who is boasting of his midnight prowlings,
his successes and profits; or may overhear
the drunken conversation of burglars, and see
them sport their gold and silver on the ale-
dabbled table. The ploughboy returns to his
friends at the plough with a different mind.
Evil has entered into him, and who can tell
what may spring up from such seed?

Now, among the causes of this wickedness
in the country—- which word we use in this
paper as the common generic name for the
rural parts of England—- we do nothing original
in placing foremost, ignorance, bad cottages,
the holding of assizes at too long intervals,
and an inefficient rural constabulary.

In the last published reports of the
Inspectors of Schools, the two counties of Essex
and Suffolk, in which the most atrocious of
the crimes to which we have referred were
committed (to say nothing of others to which
we have not referred) are marked as very
deficient in public instruction. The criminals
were densely ignorant and stupid. The
monster who killed his sweetheart supposed
that because no one saw him do it, he must
necessarily escape. The woman who killed her
child supposed that there was a legal distinction
between burying it alive and burying it
after she had murdered it—- though for the
matter of that, there are not a few legal
distinctions quite as outrageous to common sense.
Nor does this plain kind of evidence stop
short with the criminals. The Juries, in
such ignorant districts, write themselves down
asses in their verdicts; and the men in the box
are too often on an equal intellectual footing
with the man at the bar.

The agricultural population, far below the
manufacturing in intelligence, and far less
vigilantly checked by police, aro particularly
exposed to the degrading influences of crowded
homes. However fresh and good the air
without, it is too often foul within. Into the
secrets of cottage life, where there is no
possibility of decent and natural separation,
it is not for a journal like this to enter. It
is enough to say that the domestic histories
arising out of them are too often repellant to
every human feeling, and suppressive of every
human virtue.

In such a state of things, with game
preserves and beer-shops close at hand, the
constable a long way off (and of no use if he were
near), and the trampers and vagabonds whom
an active town police have driven forth, infesting
every little haunt of village dissipation, the
down-hill way is smoothed to the commission
of a first crime. The offender is committed
to the county jail for trial. There, under
the comparatively lax regulations to which
untried prisoners, whose guilt is not yet
proved, can be subjected, he lies, for months
together, morally rotting. All his associates
and associations are of the vilest character,
and he breathes an atmosphere of contagion
and pollution. Has he a good mother,
a virtuous sister, a steady industrious father
or brother? These are all laboring for
their bread, and the jail is miles and miles
distant from the hamlet where they live. It
would not be an easy matter to go to the
county town and return within the compass
of their only day of rest, even if they could
see their lost relation on that day, and could
make the journey without expense. When he
is tried and punished (sometimes slightly, for
a trivial offence, in consideration of his long
imprisonment—- as if anything could undo its
effects) he is turned out on society, a man
forbid, a sullen dangerous brute with his
hand against every human creature, and every
human creature's against him. He is perfected
in the only real practical education he has had.

We do not dwell on these sad truths to
irritate or reproach. We know that very
many English gentlemen, of all opinions, the
most upright and conscientious gentlemen in
the world, do munificently apply themselves,
on their own estates, to the remedy and
prevention of these great evils, regardless of cost
and trouble  But, what we would indicate to
the whole Country party is, that herein lies
the true " Protection "—- that it were, O how
much better steadily to battle with these