According to this table, the remarkable fact is established that the
number of cases of homicide in India committed by persons over ten
years of age and reported to the police is smaller per 100,000
inhabitants than the number of cases of the same nature brought up for
trial in England. In order to appreciate the full importance of this
difference it has to be remembered that in England a great number of
cases of homicide are reported to the police, for which no one is
apprehended or brought to trial. In the case of the notorious
Whitechapel murders which horrified the country a year or two ago no
one was ever brought to trial, hardly any one was arrested or
seriously suspected. These crimes and many others like them materially
augment the number of homicides reported to the police, but they never
figure among the cases annually brought for trial before assizes. As a
matter of fact, no one is ever tried in more than one half of the
cases of homicide reported to the police in the course of the year. In
the year 1888, for instance, 403 cases of homicide were reported to
the police in England and Wales; but in connection with all these
cases only 196 persons were committed for trial. In short, double the
number of homicides are committed as compared with the number of
persons tried; and if a comparison is established between India and
England on the basis of homicides reported to the police, the outcome
of such a comparison will be to show that there are annually more than
twice as many murders committed per one hundred thousand inhabitants
over the age of ten in England than there are in India.

An objection may be taken to these figures on the ground that the
crime of infanticide is much more prevalent to India than it is in
England, and that the perpetrators of this crime are much less
frequently brought to justice in the former country than with us. That
objection is to some extent valid; at the same time it is well to