played by destitution in the production of crime.

The total number of cases tried in England and Wales either summarily
or on indictment during the year 1887-88 amounted to 726,698. Out of
this total eight per cent. were cases of offences against property
excluding cases of malicious damage, and seven per cent. consisted of
offences against the Vagrancy Acts. Putting these two classes of
offences together we arrive at the result that out of a total number
of crimes of all kinds committed in England and Wales, 15 per cent.
may conceivably be due to destitution. This is a very serious
percentage, and if it actually represented the number of persons who
commit crime from sheer want of the elementary necessaries of life,
the confession would have to be made that the economic condition of
the country was deplorable. But is it a fact that destitution in the
sense we have been using the word is the cause of all these offences?
This is the next question we have to solve, and the answer springing
from it will reveal the true position of the case.

Let us deal first with offences against property. As has just been
pointed out these constitute eight per cent. of the annual amount of
crime. But according to inquiries which I have made, one half of the
annual number of offenders against property, so far from being in a
state of destitution, were actually at work, and earning wages at the
time of their arrest. Nor in this surprising. The daily newspapers
have only to be consulted to confirm it. In a very great number of
instances the records of criminal proceedings testify to the fact that
the person charged is in some way or other defrauding his employer,
and when these cases are deducted from the total of offences against
property, it considerably lessons the percentage of persons driven by
destitution into the ranks of crime. Add to these the great bulk of