Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

691 страница из 895

They have seldom sought for those proximate or remote causes which may have led to the commission of crimes by individuals, and occasioned whole classes of hardened offenders.

Investigation by comparison is the surest road to knowledge; the whole system of daily intercourse throughout the world is carried on by it.

The most exact of the sciences obtains its positive results by no other means.

The passing over all the circumstances connected with the exciting causes to the commission of crime is the result of a motion of very general prevalene.

It is thought that by allowing crimes to be palliated by circumstances we lessen the effects of public examples; but whenever it is proper to publish accounts of persons and events it is always desirable that the truth should be spoken.

And although the task of chronicling the career of such a blot upon the face of society as Laura Stanbridge may be in a measure repulsive, it is nevertheless true to nature.

She had been so early trained in the committal of unlawful acts that she could never go right afterwards.