THE INCREASE OF CRIME by D. T. Taylor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 16, 1877

THE INCREASE OF CRIME.

By D. T. Taylor

“I am convinced that the world is daily growing better,” said a reverend gentleman to a brother clergyman; “my congregation is constantly decreasing.” “Yes,” replied the other, who happened to be a penitentiary chaplain; “and so is mine.” And so the early arrival of Whitby’s temporal millennium, suggested by the first speaker, ceased to be discussed.

Is the world growing better? Are sin and crime decreasing? Are there signs of a nearing world’s conversion? Or, does the ever-abounding iniquity of our age grow in strength? Does crime intensify? Among civilized nations does crime grow faster than population? Compared with the number of people, is there more bloodshed, homicide, murder, violence, and criminal offense of all kinds, than there used to be? Let the following array of facts and figures answer. The facts are startling. The figures are terrible.

In 1871 a copy of my little tract, “The Age of Murder,” fell into the hands of Marble Manton, the able editor of the New York World. Mr. Manton devoted forty-four lines to a notice of the work; and appeared so impressed by it as frankly to admit “that the phrases ‘carnival of crime’ and other such alluring alliterations which we periodically see in the newspapers have some foundation in fact, and that the mania of murder rises higher every decade, and almost every year, at a more rapid rate than the mere increase of population would warrant.” Mr. M. remarks upon the increase of crime in Boston, where in the six years between 1843 and 1849 it had run up 520 per cent. faster than the population; and also upon the figures I gave showing a similar rapid increase in Great Britain during the present century; and while deploring the absence of “accurate comparison on a scale large enough to arrive at scientific certainty,” he yet admits (reluctantly and ironically, I think) that the writer of the tract “fully makes out his case.” If he failed to do so, he here and now proposes to add a convincing supplement.

The World editor had just been greatly excited over the Government census figures for 1870, which gave the astounding number of 2,052 homicides occurring in the United States in the single year beginning June 1, 1869, and ending June 1, 1870. This was more than a thousand more than in 1860. The increase of violent deaths seemed incredible to Mr. Manton. He doubted it. He denied it. An appeal to the Census Bureau at Washington established the truth of the terrible figures, and the wondering journalist gave up his caviling, to ponder on human wickedness.

From a formidable array of evidences gathered and preserved by me, I select the following, of indisputable veracity. They tell the story of man’s sin, of Satan’s intense activity, and of the actual presence of the last days of time, preceding the era of judgment. I begin with

ITALY. The facts herein given are collected by order of the Government. “There is something actually appalling in them,” says a secular journal. In 1867 there were no less than 2,626 murders committed in the kingdom; of which number all but 264 were the work of deliberate, stealthy assassination. This is eleven murders to every 100,000 inhabitants. At this date in the Papal States the murders were one to every 5,358 inhabitants. Then, in 1870, all Italy came under the rule of Victor Emmanuel. But for two years previous there was no diminution of crime. Murderous outrages increased during these two years, 1869–70, from eighty to one hundred per cent. in the large towns, so that while in 1863 bloody crimes reached 29,634, by the year 1870 they showed a total of 55,825; an increase of a hundred per cent.

In the year 1872 it was declared there was in Rome one homicide for every 750 inhabitants, and the Eternal City was called “the wickedest place in the world!” It was only the year previous that a stringent law was passed to check crimes of blood, but 2,286 murders were committed in the whole kingdom during the first nine months of that same year—1871; 33,352 persons receiving bloody wounds. Besides the actual killing, there were 1,486 cases of assaults with intent to kill. Two thousand homicides a year, for year after year. A distressing exhibit truly. The Gazzetta d’ Italia recorded the last number. Nowhere was life safe. Our figures go no further. There may be a better showing for Italy during the last five years, but I have not seen it.

In SPAIN statistics show as bad a state of things. One murder to every 4,113 inhabitants is the ratio of blood! This does not reach the ratio in Naples, which was one for every 2,750; nor Rome, where was one for every 750. Nevertheless it would give fair Spain no less than 4,500 murders each and every year, an exhibit a hundred per cent. more sanguinary than our own country, or even Italy as a whole. Such are the annals of crime, among more than forty millions of people, in but two of Europe’s kingdoms. And this includes but one single phase of crime, viz., the bloody. Think of all the multitudinous remainder!

Passing by Prussia, where there is a murder to every 200,000; Holland, where there is one to every 163,000; and Austria, where it is worse, and a murder is perpetrated to every 57,000 inhabitants, I come to

BELGIUM. Here it seems the death punishment is not in vogue. Murder, therefore, runs riot. So terrible is crime that the Catholic journals all cry out in alarm. The Montreal Witness (June 13th) says: “The number of crimes of violence is fearfully on the increase in Belgium. At the prison of Charleroi alone there are now thirteen murderers awaiting trial.” Belgium is an intensely Romish country.—D. T. Taylor.