Karl Marx in New-York Tribune 1859

From Population, Crime and Pauperism

Abstract

Source: Marx and Engels on Ireland, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971;
First Published: in New-York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1859;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery, and increases in crimes even more rapidly than in numbers. It is true enough that, if we compare the year 1855 with the preceding years, there seems to have occurred a sensible decrease of crime from 1855 to 1858. The total number of people committed for trial, which in 1854 amounted to 29,359, had sunk down to 17,855 in 1858; and the number of convicted had also greatly fallen off, if not quite in the same ratio. This apparent decrease of crime, however, since 1854, is to be exclusively attributed to some technical changes in British jurisdiction; to the Juvenile Offenders’ Act^[77] in the first instance, and, in the second instance, to the operation of the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, which authorises the Police Magistrates to pass sentences for short periods, with the consent of the prisoners. Violations of the law are generally the offspring of economical agencies beyond the control of the legislator, but, as the working of the Juvenile Offenders’ Act testifies, it depends to some degree on official society to stamp certain violations of its rules as crimes or as transgressions only. This difference of nomenclature, so far from being indifferent, decides on the fate of thousands of men, and the moral tone of society. Law itself may not only punish crime, but improvise it, and the law of professional lawyers is very apt to work in this direction. Thus, it has been justly remarked by an eminent historian, that the Catholic clergy of the medieval times, with its dark views of human nature, introduced by its influence into criminal legislation, has created more crimes than forgiven sins.

Strange to say, the only part of the United Kingdom in which crime has seriously decreased, say by 50, and even by 75 per cent, is Ireland. How can we harmonise this fact with the public-opinion slang of England, according to which Irish nature, instead of British misrule, is responsible for Irish shortcomings? It is, again, no act on the part of the British ruler, but simply the consequence of a famine,^[78] an exodus, and a general combination of circumstances favourable to the demand for Irish labour, that has worked this happy change in Irish nature. However that may be, the significance of the following tabular statements cannot be misunderstood:

	I. — Crimes in Ireland. — Committed for Trial —
Years	Males	Females	Total	Convicted
1844	14,799	4,649	19,448	8,042
1845	12,807	3,889	16,696	7,101
1846	14,204	4,288	18,492	8,639
1847	23,552	7,657	31,209	15,233
1848	28,765	9,757	38,522	18,206
1849	31,340	10,649	41,989	21,202
1850	22,682	3,644	31,326	17,108
1851	17,337	7,347	24,684	14,377
1852	12,444	5,234	17,678	10,454
1853	10,260	4,884	15,144	8,714
1854	7,937	3,851	11,788	7,051
1855	6,019	2,993	9,012	5,220
1856	5,097	2,002	7,099	4,024
1857	5,458	1,752	7,210	3,925
1858	4,708	1,600	6,308	3,350

II. — Paupers in Ireland.
Years	No of Parishes	Paupers	Years	No. of Parishes	Paupers
1849	880	82,357	1854	883	78,929
1850	880	79,031	1855	883	79,887
1851	881	76,906	1856	883	79,973
1852	882	75,111	1857	883	79,217
1853	882	75,437	1858	883	79,199

Notes

<"n77">77. The reference is to the setting up in England in 1854 of corrective schools to which juvenile delinquents, aged from 12 to 16, were sent for crimes which according to former laws were punishable by short-term imprisonment.

<"n78">78. In 1845-47 a grievous famine blighted Ireland due to the ruin of farms and the pauperisation of the peasants, who were cruelly exploited by the English landlords. Although there was a great dearth of potatoes, the principal diet of the Irish peasants, the English landlords continued to export food from the country, condemning the poorest sections of the population to starvation. About a million people starved to death and the new wave of emigration caused by the famine carried away another million. As a result large districts of Ireland were depopulated and the abandoned land was turned into pastures by the Irish and English landlords.