Although little more than two-thirds of its population are strictly urban, the remainder being among the choicest in Ireland, it yet produces more than double the serious crime of Birmingham, in which town only 1,776 indictable offences were reported in 1873, the population of both places being almost exactly equal.

The Volume of Irish Judicial Statistics is compiled with infinite industry and signal ability. But surely the facts I have just produced demonstrate the inapplicability and uselessness of those laborious comparisons between the crime of England and that of Ireland, which occupy so many of its pages. What profit can be derived from the comparison of countries the circumstances of which are so widely different in all that relates to crime? The crime of Wales, in proportion to population, is but half that of England; yet I have never heard that superiority referred, as in the comparison between Ireland and England, to the greater numbers of the Welsh Police, or to a better system of public prosecutions. We all know that it is mainly due to certain favourable circumstances. If a comparison must needs be drawn between Ireland and England, I would venture to suggest that it should be made between Ireland and as many English counties as would most nearly represent the distribution of population and wealth in Ireland. Some light might then be thrown upon the value of the respective systems of police and justice pursued in the two countries.

In the meantime I feel bound to say that my inquiries have forced me to the conclusion that an excessive proportion of the crime in England and Scotland is committed by Irish-born residents.

Whence does this arise? Why do Irishmen, comparatively free from crime at home, fall so readily victims to its seductions in England, Scotland, and America? The only explanation I can offer is that, even more than the migrating Englishman or Scotchman, the Irishman suffers from being removed from his home and the many safeguards, social and religious, which there environ him. There is much to be said for a system under which the more ignorant submit themselves, their consciences, and their actions to the guidance of those whom they believe to be wiser and more virtuous than themselves. Only that guidance must be continual; for, once withdrawn, its objects fall a helpless and easy prey to temptation or bad example. Removed from the influence and precepts of their guide, philosopher, and friend' they wander from the right way far more readily and more fatally than those who have been accus

tomed to rely upon themselves and to seek guidance from their own thoughts and convictions.

It is a necessity of our national position that a large part of our population should forsake the shelter of their homes. They cannot avoid temptation; they must learn to face and conquer it, or to perish. And, such being the law of our existence, it follows as the night the day' that a good education, in the largest sense of that elastic word, is at once the best instrument of success in life, and the strongest security against vice and crime.

While neglecting no precaution, while attacking the great citadel of crime on every side and with every weapon, our most assured hope of success must ever rest upon the increased morality and the manly intelligence of our people. Not that I venture to dream of a Utopia from which crime shall have disappeared. We may improve, we cannot radically change our human nature. And the moral I would draw from the history of the past and the picture of the present is not that we should contentedly and lazily acquiesce in the present state of things, as being about the best which human means and human effort can attain, but that, gathering confidence from past experience, we should extend and enlarge those direct agencies which have been successfully tried, and enter resolutely upon those new and indirect paths which are opening around us with so fair a promise of good. We have received from those who immediately preceded us a world much better than they found it; let it not be our fault if we do not transmit it to our successors improved, purified, and invigorated. • Absolute perfection, indeed,' said Archbishop Whately, in his Thoughts on Secondary Punishments,' the entire prevention of crime is a point unattainable; but it is a point to which we may approach indefinitely; it is the point towards which our measures must always be tending, and we must estimate their wisdom by our approach to it.'

Address

ON

JURISPRUDENCE AND THE AMENDMENT OF

THE LAW.

BY

SIR EDWARD S. CREASY.

I HAVE to initiate the consideration by this meeting of a very copious and complex subject. I think I can be most useful if I mainly limit myself in this address to Jurisprudence, including International Law, and if I endeavour to point out some of their leading characteristics, and to give such advice as may aid students in the acquirement of sound principles and in their self-advancement towards full and practical knowledge.

There is no need for conciliating attention to these studies by arguments about their dignity and utility. All this is now universally acknowledged. The wise educational reforms instituted by our Inns of Court must, before long, thoroughly efface the stigma of ignorance and inattention respecting the higher departments of Jurisprudence, which used to apply to the mass of the legal profession in England. But I address myself not merely to lawyers, or those who have the profession of the law in view; I speak to all who wish to qualify themselves for statesmanship. And every man in this country, who possesses, or who may acquire a vote, is, or ought to be a Statesman, so far at least as to be able to judge intelligently and rationally of the main purport of domestic laws and of the main scope of measures of imperial and foreign policy, although he cannot himself originate or expound them even as many are fair judges of poetry and music who cannot compose either. The capacity for this Appreciative Statesmanship is generally and deeply implanted in our nature. Were it not so, liberal government would be impossible, and ex

Address on Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law. 47

tended civilisation would be difficult. But these divine germs must be cultivated, or else they become stunted and they perish.1

In order that he may exercise them, a man must have Principles as to each topic that comes before him, or he must at least have the power of recognising and adopting true principles when pointed out by others. The great philosopher of antiquity has, in his Nicomachean Ethics taught pithily and earnestly the importance of training the mind to this power with reference to political and moral duties. He who has been well-disciplined in the study of things honourable and just, when any broad question of legislation or politics comes before him, is in possession of moral facts, which are either to him already enlightening principles, or which become so at once when demonstrated by a competent adviser. He who can neither discern principles for himself nor recognise them, is a worthless member of the community.2 And even as in religion there is a development of Faith from Faith,3 so in Jural and Political Philosophy there are developments of Principles from Principles. So far as time permits me, I shall now bring before you views as to the principles of Jurisprudence and of International Law. It is, of course, impossible to deal with either topic exhaustively. I venture, however, to hope that my thesis, as you hear it, will not be so far fragmentary as to be chaotic. I hope it may serve as part of a platform on which a loftier and more extensive fabric of knowledge may be reared.

The question meets one at the very outset : What is meant by Jurisprudence?' It is a question which must be answered, although I am not fond of Definitions. By their unavoidable dryness they are apt to disgust a student at the threshold of the science; and I am also well aware that the framing of Definitions is the part of an expounder's work in which he is most apt to trip, and in which his stumbles are most certain to be observed and censured.4

1 See in the Protagoras of Plato (p. 320, C. et seq.) the beautiful myth as to Aidŵs and Aíkŋ being given by the Deity to all mankind, so that men should form and preserve political communities by all being able to take counsel about political and social virtue.' Mr. Grote's observations on this (Grote's Plato, vol. 2, p. 84) deserve careful attention. See, too, the eulogy on the Athenian Democracy in the funeral oration of Pericles in the 2nd book of Thucydides, and Arnold's The illustration in the text of this address as to the appreciative judgment of the many in politics from poetry and music is entirely Arnold's.

notes.

See the Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, ch. 5, sec. 4. Page 431, vol. 2, of Sir Alexander Grant's edition.

3 Ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. Εp. Rom. 1. 17.

* See in the Digest, book 50, the emphatic warning of Javolenus against dabbling in Definitions. Omnis Definitio in Jure civili periculosa est: parum est enim ut non subverti posset.

The very acute and powerful, though somewhat narrow and intolerant reasoners of the Benthamite school, whose influence in England has been so great during the last half-century, have been vehement in asserting the proposition that the province of Jurisprudence should be limited to Positive Law. If I do not pause here to explain what Positive Law' means, I shall be to many illustrating obscurum per obscurius; and though, in giving such explanations, I may fatigue some present by a repetition of mere rudiments of our science, those who know the subject best will also best appreciate the need of commencing a popular address on it by an exposition of its Terminology; and, indeed, this process will bring us at once to the investigation and selection of Principles with regard to some of its most important portions.

The word Law' is used in our language in many various senses. It sometimes means a mere habit, or a tendency; and sometimes it merely expresses the general uniform sequences. of phenomena which we observe in external nature. Dismissing these and other metaphorical usages of the term, and dealing only with the word Law' as it applies to Man, to his rights and duties, we find one great line of distinction between the modes in which the term is employed. In one class of meanings, Law' comprises general doctrines of right and wrong, and of man's general duties towards his Creator and towards his neighbour; whereas in another class of meanings. Law' is narrowed towards the precise sense of a definite imperative rule of conduct prescribed by a political superior, who has the power and the will to enforce by practical means the observance of such rule. Law' in the first and ampler sense may be called Moral Law.' In its narrower and stricter sense, it is generally called Positive Law.' The penalty imposed for the breach of a positive law, is called the Sanction of the Law.' In the internal administration of justice in each State, law-suits and prosecutions apply this Sanction. the administration of justice between State and State, this Sanction is applied by War.

1

6

In

Both these words Positive' and Sanction' require a little attention, inasmuch as they have meanings in common speech which would be mischievously fallacious, if we adopted them in our minds, when we hear of Positive Law,' or of • The Sanction of a Law.' In common speech the addition of

1 Not only Criminal Law but Civil Law has its penal sanction. A man's person, his lands, and his chattels are liable to seizure by the officers who execute the process of the Civil Court; and if he resists that process he makes himself liable to be tried and punished as a criminal.