A Plea for the Criminal Part 3

Concerning life imprisonment much apprehension exists in the public mind. The prevailing idea is that this sentence implies incarceration for a period of twenty years. This is due perhaps to the fact that in England the sentences of "lifers" are reconsidered at the end of that period, and in the majority of cases a pardon is granted. The New Zealand prison regulations contain this section (116) "No rule for the remission of life sentences will be laid down. Such sentences are pa.s.sed on persons guilty of the very gravest offences; and the Governor will only extend the royal prerogative of mercy to such persons in exceptional cases." Under certain conditions life imprisonment is the only way of dealing with criminals who refuse to reform. Those conditions do not exist in our New Zealand prisons, and a life sentence served within their walls is the most cruel form of punishment our laws allow. The prisoner enters the gaol with a long, dark, hopeless future before him. As the years roll by not one ray of light brightens his lot.

He can never better himself. He suffers, he is meant to suffer, the loss of all he holds dear (and even a murderer holds some things dear). This absolute loss, this complete severance of all ties, produces a most agonising mental state and afflicts the poor wretch with untold horrors.

He is made to drag out an existence under most unnatural conditions, conditions in which every effort he makes towards self-improvement is a useless one, every aspiration is routed, the natural affections crave in vain for an object to fasten upon, and where an artificial atavistic process is set in motion so powerful as to defy the resistance of all in time. This is no imaginary picture, a man is a man, and one of the cruellest tortures to submit him to is to deprive him absolutely of hope and make good his evil because it requires an effort which is useless, and evil his good because it is easier and costs the loss of nothing.

Perhaps the majority of lifers are those whose sentences have been commuted from the death penalty. Such a sentence is in reality the death penalty carried out under slow process extending over many years.

Gradually remorse and despair do their work upon the natural instincts, the mind and the body. The man becomes brutalised, insane and dies. An exception here and there may be pointed out; but given twenty men of same age and good health, and sentence ten to twenty years, and ten to life imprisonment, and the chances are that (under reasonable conditions) the ten with the defined sentence will survive it, whereas of the lifers the majority will be insane within twelve years. The following testimony will, however, be of greater weight:--

The Directors of the State Prison in Wisconsin in their report for 1881 add:--

"The condition of most of our life prisoners is deplorable in the last degree. Not a few of them are hopelessly insane; but insanity, even, brings them no surcease of sorrow. However wild their delusions may be on other subjects, they never fail to appreciate the fact that they are prisoners. Others, not yet cla.s.sed as insane, as year by year goes by, give only too conclusive evidence that reason is becoming unsettled. The terribleness of a life sentence must be seen to be appreciated; seen, too, not for a day or a week, but for a term of years. Quite a number of young men have been committed to this prison in recent years under sentence for life. Past experience leads us to expect that some of them will become insane in less than ten years; and all of them, who live, in less than twenty. Many of them will, doubtless, live much longer than twenty years, strong and vigorous in body perhaps, but complete wrecks in mind. May it, therefore, not be worthy of legislative consideration whether life sentences should not be abolished and long but definite terms subst.i.tuted, and thus leave some faint glimmer of hope even for the greatest criminals?"

Sir E. Du Cane stated in 1878 before the Royal Commission on Penal Servitude Acts:--

"I myself do not think much of life sentences at all. I would rather have a long fixed term. I think all the effect on the public outside would be gained by a shorter period."

Mr W. Tallack, late Secretary of the Howard a.s.sociation, writes in his "Penelogical and Preventive principles":--

"Of life imprisonment it may be conclusively p.r.o.nounced very bad in even the best form of it. Years of enquiry and observation have increasingly forced this conviction upon the writer.... A fixed limit of twenty years would greatly aid the discipline of its subjects. And what is of more importance so far as the public are concerned, it would, in most cases, avail to practically incapacitate or effectually deter the persons who pa.s.s through it from any repet.i.tion of their crime. The mere natural operation of age, decay, and disease would tend towards this result; and not only so, but it would, in a considerable proportion of cases, render the limit of twenty years a virtual sentence in perpetuity by the intervention of death. But meanwhile the elements of hope and other desirable influences would be largely present, notwithstanding."

To say the least of it our criminals have a claim for humane treatment, and no sentence should have a greater duration than twenty years. The term also should be fixed when the sentence is imposed.

=Flogging.=--This is an extremely unpopular form of punishment, owing to its abuse in the old convict stations and in the army and navy. Yet there is a great deal to be said in its favour. In 1898 the Howard a.s.sociation inst.i.tuted an enquiry among the most competent authorities as to what were the best methods of dealing with juvenile offenders.

Nearly 40 replies were sent in answer to their circular of enquiry, and with but one or two exceptions these replies advocated whipping as the most expedient method. The Chief Constable of Liverpool stated:--"Whipping has been found a most efficient and HUMANE punishment. During the last FIVE YEARS 489 boys were once whipped. Of these, only 135 have been again convicted. Of the 135, 44 were whipped for the second time. Of the 44 only 10 were convicted a third time, and 2 only for a fourth time. No other punishment can show such a record...."

Our Criminal Code describes a whipping as being a punishment of not more than 25 strokes with the cat-o'-nine-tails inflicted upon a person of not more than 16 years of age. A flogging is limited to not more than 50 strokes and not less than 25 inflicted upon a person of over 16 years.

Three floggings at intervals for one offence is the maximum amount of castigation allowed.

A description of the "cat" may not be out of place. The handle is round and of uniform diameter of one inch. It is about 30 inches in length and is light as cork. The "tails" (nine in number) are made of cord similar to fis.h.i.+ng cord, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and 33 inches in length. In each tail a strand is taken out, wound round and put back, thus making a bob. There are 27 of these bobs in all. A flogging with such an instrument would no doubt be very severe, but it need not draw blood nor leave marks for all time. A flogging properly administered should produce sharp stinging pain and leave no bad results whatever.

Then it becomes a very useful punishment to use upon such men as those whose crimes are characterised by cruelty. Men who violate, torture, or frighten women, who are cruel to children or take advantage of the weak, imbecile or defenceless might well be punished with a flogging. In fact it is questionable whether any punishment is so effective. These men are cowards one and all; they do not dread the lazy life of the prison, but a flogging has great terrors for them, and its moral value is considerable. In bygone years men who were flogged were often worse than before. The flogging had demoralised them. These floggings were, however, shockingly cruel. Nothing is to be admitted but the sharp swis.h.i.+ng and this, when properly carried out, is totally without any objectionable feature.

There seems no necessity to combine a flogging and a long term of imprisonment under one sentence. The maximum punishment of three floggings might be given within a period of two months, and the culprit then in most cases discharged. As to the advisability of ordering more than one flogging a great deal might be said. Fifty lashes and the man discharged within a week would be sufficient for the majority of cases.

For a very brutal crime or for a second offence of the same nature, a second flogging after a period of days might be thought necessary. The very greatest care, however, must be exercised in the administration of this punishment. The crimes of brutality rightly arouse the indignation of the public, but there is no need to show a brute that society can be a greater brute than what he is. Being a brute, leniency invariably fails, but unimpressionable to these methods as his moral and humane instincts are, his skin remains sensitive, and through it his instincts may be appealed to and quickened. Flogging makes him consider that the practice of brutality is in direct variance to his own personal interests and comfort. From this he may be led to moralise further.

Gangs of boys who are becoming a nuisance to the neighbourhood they infest are quickly broken up if their ring-leader is treated to a dozen strokes that he will not feel inclined to boast about. The mercifulness of this punishment is seen in its power in thus effectively stopping the tendency to crime. Larrikins, unnatural husbands and fathers, brutes and torturers, cattle maimers and stack burners, all see their personal interests lying in a very different direction to that which leads to the "cat."

=Capital Punishment.=--The authority to take the life of a fellow-man is based on G.o.d's word to Noah, "whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed;" and upon the abstract idea of justice "a life for a life." These words in no sense contain a command to us of this century to execute all murderers without exception. For the present state of civilisation a new principle has been evolved which is, that when a man shows himself to be unchangeably hostile to society then his life may be forfeited. As the methods of dealing with criminals improve so the word LIBERTY is being subst.i.tuted for the word LIFE. The sin on the man's soul may be left to G.o.d; all that men has to deal with is his anti-social att.i.tude. If impossible to change this att.i.tude then either death or life imprisonment must result. This very question of possibility is so uncertain that few modern criminologists care to adjudicate, and most regard the death sentence as antic.i.p.ating too much.

Life-imprisonment, under the highest moral influences, becomes life-long by and only by the continued resistance of the criminal. It is not the objectionable form of punishment previously described for it encourages the man to put forth his best effort to improve, and substantially rewards these efforts, even to granting him his liberty if he persevere with them. Punishment by death is becoming more and more unpopular. The dislike of juries to bring in a verdict of "guilty" in a murder case is sufficient testimony to this. In the crowds who sign pet.i.tions for the reprieve of the condemned, the hysterical element is too prominent to make any other estimate possible. But the reaction is steady, and it will not be long before capital punishment becomes a thing of the past.

To abolish it before a suitable subst.i.tute were provided would be mistake.

Gradually society is awakening to the fact that the condition of the criminal ought to be ameliorated, and that there can be no real amelioration which does not make definite efforts for the prisoner's reform. The aim should be to a.s.sist every man to recover by his own effort the place in society from which he has fallen. No man is incapable of improvement, and under a wise systematic discipline most men do improve. A remarkable witness is found in the experience of Dr Browning who was engaged as Surgeon-superintendent of convict s.h.i.+ps between 1831 and 1848. Of one voyage from Norfolk Island to Tasmania he was in charge of 346 "old hands." These men had agreed to take terrible revenge upon some of their comrades who had been employed as constables over the others. Under Dr Browning's instruction and discipline their purpose was abandoned. He landed the men in Tasmania without having inflicted a single punishment upon the voyage. He remarks:--"The men were given to me in double irons; I debarked them without an iron clanking among them. I am told that this is the first and only instance of convicts removed from Norfolk Island having had their fetters struck off during the voyage, and being landed totally unfettered. They were almost uniformly double-cross-ironed and chained down to the deck, everybody being afraid of them. I was among them at all hours and the prison doors were never once shut during the day. To G.o.d be all the glory." Three Governors of Tasmania expressed their high opinion of Dr Browning's system and of its subsequent effects upon their behaviour.

(Vide "Christianity amongst Prisoners." Howard a.s.s.:)

In the famous Dartmoor prison and at Borstal in Kent experiments are being made to secure a greater number of reformations among the younger convicts. It is too early to estimate the value of the systems being tried, but they are being watched with much hope and expectation. In America there is a decided tendency to subst.i.tute State reformatories for prisons, especially in the case of the young. The Elmira Reformatory has been established for more than a quarter of a century, and its claims to have reformed 82 per cent. of the men committed to it has been upheld by the special enquiry inst.i.tuted in 1890.

If these different systems were more closely studied there would result a great awakening as to the possibilities of the criminal, and society would discover that its best interests were served by reforming its offenders and making them moral and industrious servants of the State, instead of by committing them to inst.i.tutions where they were brought into contact with consecrated villainy and where the unwholesome influence is calculated to confirm them in criminal habits and make them a constant menace and expense to the community. That our criminal population is on the increase, and that the proportion of recidivists grows larger every year, is scarcely to be wondered at in the midst of such influences. Notwithstanding all that has been done to improve the state of prisons from what they were even fifty years ago, yet the motto "once a criminal always a criminal" is often too sadly true. The report of the English commissioners of prisons shows that amongst those who have been convicted during the year 1902, 51.9 per cent. of the men and 70.6 per cent. of the women had been previously convicted. In the past these results were regarded as inevitable. Now they are regarded with much disquietude. Formerly they were supposed to point to a defect in the criminal, now they are understood to prove a defect in the penal system. The reason for this defect lies in having regarded certain objects as primary which are in reality only secondary. These objects have been defined to be the deterrence of crime by the example of punis.h.i.+ng criminals; the repression of crime by the infliction of punishment, and the protection of society as a consequence. The deterrent value of the penal system has been greatly reduced by the small amount of dread which it excites in the criminally disposed. The representative value is of a minus quant.i.ty. Crime is a.s.sisted more than it is crippled. The protection of society is secured only during the period of incarceration. At the end of that period the criminal must be discharged and he goes forth often a more skilful criminal than before and with a vow to take vengeance upon society.

Regarding these objects as secondary the reformation of the offender has been acknowledged as primary by criminologists, and they turned their attention to study the criminal pathologically, to enquire into the causes of crime and also to make trial of the best methods for securing reformation. "Punishment the principle and reformation the incident,"

was the theory of the old school. The New school reverses the order to "Reformation the principle and punishment the incident." Obviously this course renounces the old principle of retaliation and vengeance and embraces that indicated by Christ in his precept "bear ye one another's burdens."

=The Philosophy of Punishment.=--The threatening att.i.tude of the criminal towards the peace and welfare of society makes it an obvious necessity that society should protect itself against him, otherwise he would soon master the situation and reduce social order to barbarism.

What are the steps which it must take? It must first remember that its right to punish is not an inherent, but a delegated one. Though its powers are sovereign in the sense that there is no appeal from them, yet they must not be exercised in an arbitrary way. So far as there is a capacity for the realisation of responsibility to G.o.d so far must that responsibility be observed. Where this responsibility is disregarded, society immediately becomes the greater criminal itself even though its deeds may be done in the name of the majority of its members. As history is not without examples of this abuse of a sacred trust neither is it without instances of the Divine interference expressed in the destruction of a community which had offended after this manner. This responsibility must be acknowledged firstly--in the end to be attained; and, secondly or subsequently--in the means by which it is attained. We are generally informed that our penal systems exist for the purpose of repressing crime, and that punishment is thus inflicted upon the criminal in order that others may be deterred from following his example. Reformation is sometimes suggested. The public, however, concerns itself very little about its criminals and much less about the objects which its penal system is supposed to secure for it. The att.i.tude of the general public towards the criminal is undoubtedly a vindictive one. His sentence is discussed from this point of view only, viz.:--will the suffering that he will have to undergo be sufficient to accord with the enormity of the crime he committed? The end which is understood is simply suffering, expiatory suffering; suffering which neither man nor society has any right whatever to inflict upon a human being. The old principle of an eye for an eye, while in accord with abstract justice, was often made the occasion for abuse, and the largely prevailing conception of justice amongst us to-day is precisely the abuse of that same principle. Society does well in returning upon its criminals the consequences of their acts, but the consequences should be a natural return and not an artificial one. The criminal should see that by his attack upon society he is excluded from all the benefits of its system. He has isolated himself and this isolation is of itself miserable, and will, if persisted in, become intolerable. Its final state is h.e.l.l, a state in which society is destroyed while the social instinct remains and craves in its unquenched agony. It is perfectly right to show the wrong-doer the ultimate end of his chosen course, but there is no warrant for the strenuous effort which is made to force him towards it. A criminal's punishment should be made purgatorial and not internal. The old penology regarded him as a hopeless individual and proceeded with its h.e.l.lish tortures without undue delay. Beneath its system no reforms were possible, and the fact that none were ever made, was pointed to in order to justify its horrors. Society took no interest in them whatever while they were being pushed lower and lower down the social scale, but met them at the lowest steps, and, halter in hand, gravely professed the utmost concern in their future and eternal welfare.

So far, society has failed to recognise the end of the punishment it is ent.i.tled to impose. In the words of Dimitri Drill, a Moscow publicist, the new penology expresses that it "renounces entirely the law of retaliation as end, principle, or basis of all judicial punishment. The basis and purpose of punishment is the necessity of protecting society against the evil consequences of crime either by the moral reclamation of the criminal or by his separation from society; punishment is not to satisfy vengeance." We must not jump to the hasty conclusion that herein is meant that the criminal must be treated very gently and coaxed back to more virtuous paths. What is meant is that his punishment should be made purgatorial and not infernal. The process of reclamation is accompanied by far sharper pains than those which are expiatory, but they are the pains of a healing surgery and not those of a soul destroying brutality. Where the means for reclamation fail then separation from society is advocated. Separation in the midst of influences which would always tend to awaken the desire to reform and which would give immediate a.s.sistance to that desire when awakened.

Thus the recognition of this fact that the authority to punish offenders against its law has been, by G.o.d, delegated to the social inst.i.tution, brings with it a recognition of the responsibility which accompanies such authority.

In primitive times most offences were punished by the death penalty, not as a vindictive measure but because the offender was hopeless and society helpless. That is, the social state being of a very simple order, any infraction of its laws would declare the offender a most p.r.o.nounced criminal, bitterly hostile to society and irreclaimable by such social machinery as then existed. The death penalty when inflicted must ever be so regarded. Not as a life for a life but as the punishment inflicted upon one who has by his own conduct given complete evidence that his recovery to the social state is impossible. In this century of civilisation it is inc.u.mbent to look upon the criminal as being in a measure a by-product of society and to deal with him accordingly.

Outside of society crime is impossible, therefore society accounts for crime and is also in a measure responsible for it. To this measure exactly (although the measure itself can never be determined with exact.i.tude) is the criminal by-product. In a large measure he is responsible (entire responsibility is conceivable), and it is this sense of responsibility which makes it possible to carry out his treatment.

Large industries find that their by-products are an important a.s.set and to disregard them would be ruinous. Mr Frazer in his book "America at Work" states that the expenses of the meat-packers of Chicago for 1901 amounted to 150,244,848. The sales of meat realised 124,263,998, and yet a net profit of 6,767,638 resulted. What appears to be a paradox is explained by the fact that a sum of no less than 32,748,488 resulted from the sale of by-products. All the waste must be turned to dollars.

Commercial advance has certainly out-stripped social advance, and apparently for the reason that whereas in commerce a pig's tail is regarded as an important a.s.set, in our social system the criminal and the weakling are regarded as a heavy liability. When the point of view is changed society will advance more rapidly. So, too, society finds that it must utilise its by-products and to devise means which it can bring to bear upon the criminal, so as to bring him to a state of usefulness. The enormity of the crime and the degree of criminality are alike impossible to estimate, therefore it is also impossible to define a punishment which makes an attempt to recognise any of these qualities.

It is, however, quite possible to determine within very fair limits the continuance of the criminal habits, also the value from a reformatory point of view, of various social influences, and further there exists the power to apply these influences. To sum up--society possesses within itself the power to reform its criminals (to utilise its by-products) and to determine when they have been reformed.

Separation from society is rendered absolutely necessary by the criminal's own behaviour, if by his behaviour he shows that he is not capable of using freedom profitably. But if his separation is to serve any real purpose whatever it must be accompanied by an educational process which will work him back to that point where he left the social track and then so propel him forward that he may recover his lost ground, and when restored to society be enabled to identify himself with its progressive system.

So far our penal system is a mistake. Whatever it may be theoretically, practically it is only vindictive. Its failure has caused some to despair and others to reflect.

Chapter V.

ELIMINATION--DR. CHAPPLE'S PROPOSAL.

In the last chapter it was shown that capital punishment sought for its justification in the theory that certain criminals had a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of permanent and aggressive hostility towards society. Their presence in society is regarded as a menace to human life, and no moral improvement is expected to result from their imprisonment. So hopeless is this cla.s.s of criminal regarded as being that, so it is declared, no other policy save that of extermination can be considered.

In primitive society criminals were less numerous than in our own time; but those that did then exist belonged, almost all of them, to the worst type. There being no public inst.i.tutions for the administration of justice, practically one course only remained open, and that was, that the person wronged should seek to avenge himself as best he could, and the death of the wrong-doer was generally the satisfaction that he sought. As civilization has advanced, criminals have become more numerous; but they have taken to crime by more gradual steps. Society, too, has deprived the individual of the right of wreaking his own vengeance, and has erected inst.i.tutions for the purpose of determining guilt and apportioning punishment. From the days of Noah, deeds of blood and other crimes of a serious nature, have been punished by death and from then, until this present day, the one idea underlying the administration of justice has been that society should get rid of its criminals as speedily as possible. Repression alone was thought to be efficacious, reformation was scarcely thought of.

Of late years the criminal has been more carefully studied by his fellow-beings. Some have studied him as a monster and believed him to have the heart of a beast; others have studied him as a man and had faith in his possibilities. The former have noticed the failure of repressive methods, such as flogging and other penal severities, and have in despair been led to advocate that the only possible remedy is that of extermination. The latter have discovered that the failure of these repressive methods but imposes upon society the obligation of adopting a system of an entirely different order and with an entirely different object, viz: a system for the reformation of the criminal.

The "exterminators" have studied the criminal objectively and have had regard to his crimes only; the reformers have studied him subjectively and have had regard to his possibilities. The policy of the "exterminators" must be condemned on this ground, viz: that they have made but a half study of their subject, and they do know, and they refuse to listen to, of what the criminal is capable. Neither do they estimate the capacity of the enormous social power that may be attached to the criminal's own, but feeble, effort so as to raise him up, even from the deepest depths of vice and villainy. The careful subjective study--the truly humane study--of the criminal, has shown that all theories which would declare any man to be incapable of improvement, are to be condemned absolutely. The possibilities of reform exist in every case, and the probabilities are never to be denied. None can gainsay this statement nor can it be termed extravagant, for with the imperfect machinery now in use results are being attained which justify every syllable of it. Yet in the face of these results, the "exterminators"

still proclaim their policy. They bid us be deaf to the voice of prejudice and follow the true light of science, ever remembering that we are pa.s.sing through a wonderful stage in social evolution! But the policy that they adopt belies that which is indicated in all this fine talk. They say that we must exterminate the criminal, and this is nothing less than an acknowledgement that, to their minds, the problem of the criminal is one of outer darkness and that we have no means of ever penetrating it. They would take us back to a period anterior to Adam.

Prejudice, indeed, needs to be overcome, but it is the prejudice that prefers vengeance to mercy. And if we follow the true light of science it will lead us to discover that the criminal is best got rid of by converting him into a useful citizen, or to be more exact, society's best effort is to be directed towards separating the crime from the criminal.

Recently a Wellington medical gentleman (Dr Chapple) published a work ent.i.tled "The Fertility of the Unfit." The problem which this gentleman attempts to grapple with in his book is the disproportionate rate of increase among the numbers of the unfit to the fit members of society.

Under the cla.s.sification of the unfit he places all those persons who, on account of mental, moral or physical defect, const.i.tute a burden to society. These are, princ.i.p.ally, the epileptic, the pauper, the insane and the criminal. These either will not, or cannot support themselves adequately and legitimately. For their treatment support and correction, hospitals, asylums, charitable aid boards, gaols and other inst.i.tutions have had to be established, and the upkeep of these has become a great burden which necessarily has to be borne by the healthy, moral and industrious section of the community.

Dr Chapple draws attention to the undeniable fact that there is a tendency on the part of those unfit to increase at a greater ratio than the fit. The rate of increase during the past twenty years has been so great and so disproportionate as to make the cost of their maintenance become an increasingly heavier one for the individual taxpayer to bear, and to cause for this and other reasons, a considerable amount of alarm in the minds of those who have the welfare of society at heart.

The Doctor believes that the cause of this proportionate rate of increase is to be found in the methods adopted largely among certain cla.s.ses for the prevention of child-birth.

In the conclusion of his book he states that s.e.xual inhibition on the part of the better cla.s.ses accounts for their smaller rate of increase as compared with the rate of the inferior cla.s.ses. We cannot accept this conclusion without more evidence. We want to know definitely whether the natural rate of increase among the better cla.s.ses is really lower than that existing among the inferior cla.s.ses. That is to say, are the ranks of the defective being swelled by the influence of heredity or by some extensive force recruiting from among the ranks of the fit? Another question is this: Since the use of preventives is available to both sections alike, the Doctor accounts for the supposed natural disproportion by a.s.suming that the better cla.s.ses restrain themselves.

Is he right? Using the word "restrain" in its absolute sense we beg leave for most emphatic doubt. In an enquiry such as this is, the only factor of any real importance as accounting for a diminished birth-rate, is the use of preventives. If this method is confined to the better cla.s.ses, we must refuse to call them any longer our "best stock," for, if they are not producing a defective offspring, they are, as the recent Australian Birth-Rate Commission has made abundantly plain, speedily making defectives of themselves, besides being guilty of lowering the social moral tone and hardening its sensibility. We are strongly of the opinion that the diminished birth-rate does not account for the increase in the number of criminals and defectives further than that the use of preventives discloses a species of criminality.

Nevertheless, Dr Chapple proposes, not so much to restore the equilibrium as to get rid of the defective altogether. He a.s.sumes that defectives are born and not made, and then makes enquiry into the best possible means for the prevention of their birth. After pa.s.sing several methods in review, he accepts an operation known as tubo-ligature as being the best from all points of view. This operation will render the female permanently sterile without having any deleterious effect upon her health. Absolutely no result follows, he a.s.sures us, but sterility.

If the wives of all defectives were operated upon in this way, Dr Chapple a.s.sures us that the problem concerning the defective would speedily be solved and society would be the happier and wealthier in every way. The proposal might give something of a shock to the moral conscience but such a shock would only unfit us for our work. The criminal is upon us, he threatens us, and we must protect ourselves. The necessities of the case are so pressing and so urgent that we seek for the most effectual remedy and use it unhesitatingly when we have found it. Here it is, says Dr Chapple, and its morality is determined by the relief which it, and it alone, is able to bring.