Volume 25 — THE REASON OF PRISON EXPENDITURE.
Reading edition
The following paragraph occurs in the Preston Guardian:—
"The Cost of Crime.—The Reverend Mr. Clay, the Chaplain of the Preston House of Correction, estimates the loss caused to the public by fifteen pickpockets, whose careers he has traced, including the value of the property stolen, expenses of prosecution, and maintenance in gaol, at £26,500."
How many schoolmasters might have been had for the money which fifteen pickpockets have cost the nation?—and how many more than fifteen boys might those schoolmasters have prevented from becoming pickpockets?—and how much larger a sum than £26,500 would have thereby been saved?
Why cannot this great saving of money—to say nothing of vice and misery—be effected?
Simply because Papists and Protestants, High Church, Low Church, and Dissenters, cannot agree as to which of them shall have the privilege of preoccupying the minds of street-children with ideas about which bishops and doctors differ!
Love.
(A Prose Definition by Moses' Poet.)
Love comes from Courtship, and Courtship is a suit that is not made in a day. It is the slow result of several measures, and these measures cannot be taken too carefully; but Love at first sight is a ready-made suit that is entered into at once, and for which, as the result frequently proves, neither party was in the least fitted.
Shock to Russian Credit.—There has been a hard run on the Banks of the Danube. It is said to have been owing to a panic in the Russian army.
The Race of Man.—It is your favourite that generally wins on the "course of true love."
SCOTLAND HUMILIATED.
Tuesday the 29th of November, 1853, was celebrated as a day of humiliation in Edinburgh; and the humiliation consisted in making the day as much like a Scotch Sunday as possible. Recollecting as we do: 1st, That there is more drunkenness in Scotland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom; 2ndly, That there is more drunkenness on Sunday in Scotland than on any other day; and, 3rdly, That the day of humiliation was a close resemblance to a Scotch Sunday;—we may draw the inference that the "humiliation" must have been complete. We have no doubt the number of those that were either moved by the spirit, or kept from the power of moving by the spirit, must have been enormous, on the occasion alluded to.
Original Sketch by Mr. Punch's Little Boy.
Add this to your Dictionaries.
Corporation. Noun. Derived from corps, Fr., "deceased body," oratio, Lat., "speaking," and ration, Eng., "victuals," and means a moribund body, good for nothing but feeding and spouting.
Excessive Mildness of the Season.—A Hansom Cabman took Sixpence for his fare, the other day, without saying a single word.
"Do you believe in this Table Talking, Matilda, that there's such a fuss about?"
"Oh dear No! Why, the other evening a Table was asked how old I was, and it rapped out Forty! Ridiculous; when I'm not Three-and-Twenty till next March!"