training 2,500 teachers. No department now wants an establishment for the training of teachers; but ten are associated with others for the support of a common establishment, and many instructors throughout France are engaged in rearing educators from their most successful pupils.

The state of primary instruction at the end of the year 1837, was as follows:

The want of schools in some departments is still very great. The number of children attending school amounts to 2,654,492, whereas it is calculated from recent official returns of the population that the number of children between the age of five and twelve years, is upwards of 4,800,000; but one-fourth of the children in the schools are above twelve years of age; the number of children therefore between five and twelve in actual attendance on the schools is 1,989,000; and on these premises it is calculated that there are

From these facts it appears that only five-twelfths of the whole number of children attend school.

The Report proceeds to deplore the fact that 2,811,000 children in France receive no other instruction than that which is given by their parents, the greater part of whom are the hardest worked and the most ignorant of the population. In 1830, however, the number of children of both sexes attending the primary schools was only 1,642,206, since which period an

increase of 1,009,000 has occurred. In 1830 there were only 10,000 schools for girls; now there are 14,000. The Report continues :-Young people seldom instruct themselves when their infancy has been neglected. Of this, sufficient proof is given by the return made respecting those who are called by their age to partake in the operations of the military service.— A table has been prepared, in which they are classed according to the degree of instruction. From 1833 to 1836, the proportion of this class who could neither read nor write was nearly one. half. It should be remarked that this return relates to young men who should have been at school between the years 1825 and 1828, a period when primary instruction was encouraged in France more by the zeal of voluntary associations than by the intervention of the State. Now the whole influence of the Administration is applied to induce children to accept the instruction which is offered them, and it is evident that the number of the illiterate has diminished.

If, continues the Report, the influence of ignorance on crime were doubted, all uncertainty would be dispelled by the official table of the persons accused and convicted, just published by the Minister of Justice, for the administration of 1836, and which differs but little from previous returns.

Accused; neither able to read nor to write
Ditto, imperfectly instructed in reading

and writing

Men. Women. Total. 3172 1067 4239

1853 220 2073

Ditto, well instructed in reading & writing 620 45 665 having an instruction one degree superior

Ditto,

248 7 255

5893 1339 7232

France cannot be cited as a country exhibiting the effects of a well devised system of Education on the moral and religious condition of the people, because sufficient time has not yet been afforded for the success of the exertions of the French Government in the improvement and extension of the means of

primary education in that country; neither can France be cited as an example that a high degree of secular instruction is found connected with a diminution of violence, but an increase of the crimes of fraud.

Mr. Porter has shewn that M. Guerry's conclusion respecting the diminution of the crimes of violence and the increase of the crimes of fraud in the direct ratio of the extent of primary instruction in France was drawn from one year only (1831), but was not found to be supported, as far as the extent of this increase of the crimes of fraud is concerned, by an examination of the same facts in a series of five years, including that selected by M. Guerry. The yearly average of 1829-30-31-32-33, was as follows in the four most instructed departments, and in the four least instructed, the population being nearly the same in the departments compared.

See Trans. of Statistical Society of London, Vol. I. p. 97, folio edition.

This result reduces the annual average excess of offenders against property in the four most instructed departments to 4 in 132, or about three per cent. We have before shewn that France cannot be regarded as a country enjoying the benefits of a well devised system of primary instruction, either as respects the extent or quality of the existing means of education, and we are inclined to agree with the following remarks of Mr. Porter on these facts as applicable to a country in that stage of civilization:-" Crimes against property may be considered as among the consequences of civilization, since it is evident

that the temptation to commit them must be greatest when the artificial wants of man are the most numerous and urgent, and where the accumulation of the means for their gratification is most considerable."

We have already shewn that nearly all the crime in France is committed by persons who are ignorant, and, within a fraction, all the crime is confined to those whose instruction has been limited to reading and writing merely. Mr. Porter proves that this was equally true in the year selected by M. Guerry, and that therefore the excess of crimes against property in the four most instructed departments in that year is attributable solely to the physical influences of civilization on the uninstructed part of the population. If we separate the criminals of the eight departments under examination according to this classifi cation, we shall find that, in the year 1831, they were divided as follow:

The deductions of M. Guerry are thus entirely disproved from his own data, a result which it is to be regretted should have been overlooked in some recent discussions.*

* The following extract from Mr. Porter's paper contains facts too important to be omitted, though, perhaps, too elaborate for the text.

"We have seen that in the more enlightened departments the proportion of persons who can read and write is 73 in 100, while in the least instructed it is no more than 13 in 100. The population of the first being 1,142,454, it follows that only 308,463 persons are wholly uninstructed; and the number of offenders in this class being 101, it further follows that one person in 3,054 among them has been

The influence of instruction superior to that of mere reading and writing may be estimated also from the subjoined table from which" it will be seen that out of 50 persons sentenced to death, not one belonged to the well educated class; that 47 in that class were subjected to only slight correctional punishments, and four to simple surveillance; leaving only 49 well educated persons out of the whole population of more than 32 millions, or 1 in 664,678 persons, who, in the course of the year 1833 were considered deserving of punishments in any degree severe."

Results exactly similar are contained in the returns for 1834,

brought before the tribunals; whereas, among the three instructed classes the offenders are 131 among 833,991 instructed persons, or only one in 6,366..

"In the least instructed departments a similar examination gives us the following result; the population being 1,134,280, of whom only 13 in 100 are instructed, there will be 986,824 wholly ignorant, and 147,456 who can read or write. The number of wholly ignorant offenders being 158, gives in that class only one offender in 6,245 persons; whereas the instructed classes, amounting in number to 147, 456, include 29 offenders, or one in every 5,084 individuals.

"It is not difficult to account for these results. In situations where education is pretty generally imparted, the wholly ignorant will find themselves at a disadvantage, through the greater portion of employments being occupied by those who are instructed. The ignorant man is therefore more impelled to lawless courses than in other situations, where the great bulk of the people being equally uninstructed, all have a nearly equal chance of obtaining honest employment."