The same rule of distinction applies as in the last.

In estimating the influence of instruction, Monsieur Guerry takes as the test of education the list of those returned to the minister of war at the period of conscription, as able to read and write; and making use of the five divisions I have mentioned, he compares the maps which paint the state of instruction with those which depict the state of crime. From this comparison we see, that while the crimes against persons are the most frequent in Corsica, the provinces of the south-east, and Alsace, where the people are well instructed, there are the fewest of those crimes in Berry, Limousin, and Brittany, where the people are most ignorant.

Such is the case in respect to crimes against the person. As for crimes against property, it is almost invariably those departments that are the best informed which are the most criminal. Should M. Guerry not be altogether wrong, then, this must appear certain-that if instruction do not increase crime, which may be a matter of dispute, there is no reason to believe that it diminishes it. But the fact is, that neither by the measure adopted by M. Guerry, nor by any measure that we could adopt, is there any possibility of arriving statistically at the real value of instruction.

Under the denomination of persons" able

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to read and write," are those who read in spelling, and perpetrate an undecypherable scrawl, under the inspection of a village schoolmaster, and those who have received all the advantages of a scholastic and liberal education. Writing and reading," the lowest grade of acquisition to one man, the highest to anotherimportant, I admit, when possessed to a degree that affords an easy access to knowledge, almost useless when it is merely taken to describe a difficult and machinal movement of the lips and fingers, is an absurd and ridiculous definition, thus indiscriminately selected, of the mental state of a district. That province which possesses but two hundred persons able to read and write have twice as many may of all the advantages and the feelings conferred by education, spread over it-as may be found in another province containing four hundred of these readers and writers. Besides, even supposing, which we do not suppose, that a man taken from Brittany writes just as good a hand, reads with quite as much facility, as a man taken from Provence, and that both these scholars can only read and write,—in order to believe that their similar degree of knowledge is to conduct to similar results, it is necessary to believe that they have the same abilities, the same

temperament, the same strength of mind and body. If there be any difference between men which is as great, much more if there be any difference between men which is greater than the being able to read and write, and the not being able to read and write-how, in the name of Providence, are you able to decide that it is that especial difference of reading and writing from which you are to deduce the consequence of their conduct? In short, if we could bring our calculations to the nicest accuracy, as we now found them on the vaguest grounds, we should still, I fear, be as far as ever from the power of forming the accurate conclusion which all these Quixotic calculators are in search of.

It is not then merely on account of M. Guerry's figures that I think the conclusion at which he here arrives probable and likely to be just. No one ever yet pretended to say that in Italy, where there was the most civilization during the middle ages, there was the least crime; and I do not place much faith in the philosopher who pretends that the knowledge which developes the passions, is an instrument for their suppression, or that where there are the most desires, there is likely to be the most order and the most abstinence in their gratification. It is more candid and more wise for the advocate

of knowledge to take a larger and a broader ground to admit at once the existence of the two principles by which the world has ever yet been divided-to admit that the sources of power and pleasure are also the sources of crime and vice-that where there is good, there will be evil-to contend merely that that is good which is more good than evil; for nature is governed by one law, and the stream of civilization but resembles that mysterious river which folds the crocodile in the same wave that is also charged with the golden seeds that fertilize the soil.*

* I find myself in such harmony with the following passage, that I cannot help referring to it:-" Du reste, nous disons à cette occasion notre opinion toute entière sur l'influence de l'instruction. Les avantages nous paraissent infiniment supérieurs à ses inconvéniens. Elle développe les intelligences et soutient toutes les industries. Elle protège ainsi la force morale et le bien-être matériel des peuples. Les passions qu'elle excite, funestes à la société quand rien ne les contente, deviennent fécondes en avantages lorsqu'elles peuvent atteindre le but qu'elles poursuivent. Ainsi l'instruction répand, il est vrai, parmi les hommes quelques semences de corruption, mais c'est elle aussi qui rend les peuples plus riches, et plus forts. Chez une nation entourée de voisins éclairés, elle est non seulement un bienfait mais une nécessité politique.-BEAUMONT ET TOCQUEVILLE. Du Système Pénitentiaire aux Etats unis.