is tried for this offence when no murder has been committed; and it
may, therefore, be assumed that the crime has taken place when a man
haw to stand his trial for it. Estimating then the prevalence of
murder in the various countries by trials, rather than convictions,
it will be found that Germany, with a much larger percentage of
convictions than England, has just as few cases of murder for trial.
And the reason the number of convictions, as between the two nations,
differs, arises from the fact that a prisoner's chance of acquittal in
England is a hundred per cent. greater than it is in Germany. It is
not, therefore, accurate to assume that a greater number of murders
are committed in Germany than in England because a greater number
of persons are annually convicted of this crime; all that these
convictions absolutely prove is, that the machinery of the criminal
law is more effective in the one country than in the other. To take
another instance, more persons are annually tried for murder in
Ireland than in France; but more cases of conviction are recorded in
France than in Ireland. These contrasts show that, while the French
are less addicted to this grave offence than the Irish, they are more
anxious to secure its detection, and that a greater body of public
opinion is on the side of law in France than in Ireland. All these
instances (and more could easily be added to them) are intended to
call attention to the importance of looking at the number of persons
tried, as well as the percentage of persons convicted, if we desire to
form an accurate estimate of the comparative prevalence of crime.

While thus showing that the number of trials for murder is the best
test of the prevalence of this offence, it is not meant that the test
is in all respects indisputable. At most it is merely approximate. One
obstacle in the way of its entire accuracy consists in the circumstance
that the proportion of persons tried, as compared with the amount of