Carpeggio was often at the house, and in fact grew to be as familiar a presence there as that of the inmates themselves, and still the silent bond went on, seemingly no nearer an outward solution, though the marquis’ favor visibly increased. The colliery prospered and brought in money, and the overseer carefully put by his salary and studied hard at night, till his name got to be first known, then respected, in the scientific world; and one day an official intimation was made to him that the third place on a mining survey expedition to South America was at his disposal. He had written to Schlichter constantly, and at last had made a clean breast of what he called his unspoken but not the less sealed engagement. The two girls had gone through two London seasons; Lord Ashley and Mr. Lawrence had become brothers-in-law by each marrying one of the trio who had so long expected to make a conquest of the overseer himself; and Carpeggio had enough to buy a large share in the concern of either of his two employers. Such was the state of affairs when the proposal of an American trip was made to him; if the survey was satisfactory, and a company formed in consequence, he would be out at least three years, with the chance of a permanent settlement as director of the works and sharer in the company.Both pecuniarily and scientifically a career was open to him, while at home there was success in all but love—nearly as certain. Schlichter strongly advised him to go; the marquis himself saw the thing as a thorough Englishman, and was willing to lose his right-hand man, as he called him, for the sake of this opening; Carpeggio saw the alluring chance of travel, adventure, the prestige of his possible return in a different character, the enlarged field which he could not help looking on as more tempting than success—equally solid, perhaps, but more humdrum—at his very elbow, and the glorious southern climate, like to, and yet more radiant than, the old home one to which he had been used as a boy among the vineyards of Umbria. He knew that Kate would follow him there gladly, as she would had he gone to the North Pole; but there wastheintangible yet terribly real barrier. In everything but the weighty affair of mating he was held as Kate’s equal, and the equal of all whom he met at the marquis’ house; even in London, where he had once stayed with them a week, and gone into that society which was “their world,” he had been received in a way unexceptionally satisfactory; he was put on more than an equal footing with young Englishmen of good standing, but he knew that he shared with them the cruel, tacit exclusion from competition for first-class prizes. He was good enough to dance with, ride with, flirt with, and escort to her carriage the daughter of a duke; so were the many young fellows who made the bulk of the young society of the day; but there were preserves within preserves. The second sons, the young lawyers, the men in “marching”regiments, the naval cadets, the government clerks, and even the sons of admirals, clergymen, and men who had made their mark in the literary and scientific as well as the social world—all these were tacitly, courteously, but inexorably tabooed as regards marriage with their partners, friends, and entertainers. In fact, society had bound these youths over to “keep the peace,” while it encouraged every intimacy that was likely to lead to a breach of it. Carpeggio had lived long enough in England to be quite aware of this and to “know his own place” in the world; but he trusted to time and Kate’s faithfulness. He at last made up his mind to go to South America, and that without saying anything that would weigh Kate down with the knowledge of a secret to be withheld from her father; but he had likewise made up his mind to speak to the marquis on his return. He would be true to his employer, but could not afford to be false to himself; his own rights as a man were as present to his mind as the position and prejudices which he appreciated and tolerated in the person of a man so thoroughly gentlemanlike as his patron; and this compromise of a three years’ absence and silence seemed to him to honorably fulfil all the expectations that could be formed of him. He said good-by to the girls together in their father’s library, and the old man blessed him and bade him Godspeed in the heartiest fashion, almost with tears in his eyes; but of more tender and definite speech there was none. Who is there, however, but knows the delicate, intangible farewell, the firm promise conveyed by a pressure of the hand, and one long, frank, brave look, and all that true love knowshow to say without breaking any other allegiance and without incurring the blame of secrecy?
So Emilio Carpeggio went and prospered, while Kate remained a beauty and a moderate heiress (she had half of her mother’s small fortune), courted and loved, and going through the weary old treadmill of London seasons and country “parties.” People wondered why she did not marry. Her sister did, and made a love-match, though there was no violent obstacle in the way, and the lover was perfectly acceptable as to station and fortune. She was lucky, also, in loving a man who had some brains to boast of. This unknown brother-in-law in after-times became a powerful lever in favor of Carpeggio’s suit; but long before the young engineer came back the kind, tender-hearted old marquis had found out his daughter’s secret, and after some time overcame his natural prejudices, and as generously agreed to Kate’s hopes as he had before vigorously opposed them. And yet all this was done while hardly a word was spoken; for if any courtship was emphatically a silent one, it was this. Everything came to be tacitly understood, and a few hand-pressures, a kiss, a smile, or a long look expressed the changes and chances of this simple love-story. At the end of three years the young man came home on a holiday, which he meant to employ in determining his fate. He had promised the new company to go back permanently and take charge of their interests as a resident, and many of the native members had shown themselves willing and eager to make him a countryman and a son-in-law. He went home, and saw the marquis the first evening of his stay, two hours after he got off the train. To his surprise, hefound his request granted before he made it and his road made plain before him. The old man did not even ask him not to return to America. It is of little use to descant on his meeting with Kate and on his (literally) first spoken words of love. They told each other the truth—that is, that the moment they met in the mine, five years before, was the beginning of their love. They were married with all the pretty pastoral-feudal accessories of a country wedding in England, and spent their honeymoon in the old tower of Carpeggio, where the bride explored the library-room with great curiosity, and was charmed with the old-fashioned figures of the principal people of the town, whom she entertained in what was now again her husband’s own house.
Signor Salviani had built a pretty, villa-like hotel half a mile further, and was as proud on the day when his young master again took possession of the old tower as the bridegroom himself. From there Carpeggio went to his German friends, presented the famous Schlichter to his wife, and got his rough and fatherly congratulations on his choice, his perseverance, and his success. In three months the young couple set sail for their new home, where Carpeggio had sent the last orders needed to set up quickly the nest he had half-prepared already in anticipation of his visit to England. When they arrived, Kate found a lovely, fragile-looking, cool house, half-southern, half-northern, covered with vines which the natives still looked uponwith distrust, but beautiful and luxuriant beyond measure (this was the oldest part of the house, the original lodge which the overseer had lived in when he first came), some rooms with white tile floors, and some partially covered with fancy mats of grass, while one or two rejoiced in small Turkey rugs, suggestive of home, yet not oppressively hot to look at. All his wife’s tastes had been remembered and gratified, and Carpeggio was rewarded by her telling him that if she had built and furnished the house herself, she could not have satisfied her own liking so thoroughly as he had done. One room was fitted up as theirden(or, as the world called it, the library), and was as much as possible the exact counterpart of the room in Torre Carpeggio where the books and curiosities had been found. Of course the collection had been carefully transferred here. Years afterwards this place was the rallying-point of English and American society; travellers came to see it and its owners; its hospitality was the most perfect, generous, and delicate for a hundred miles around; no jealousies arose between its household and those of the natives; the mining company prospered, Carpeggio grew to be an authority even in German scientific circles, and a sort of paradise was once more realized. True, this kind of thing only happens once or twice in a century; but then it really does, so it is pardonable for a story-teller to choose the thousand-and-first couple for the hero and heroine of his tale.
CRIMINALS AND THEIR TREATMENT.[8]
The judicious management of the criminal classes is a question which has long occupied the serious consideration of legislators and social reformers throughout the civilized world; and though much of what has been said and written on the matter is visionary and based on imperfect data, the agitation of the question cannot but be productive of advantageous results. In pagan times penal laws were enacted chiefly with a view to the punishment of crime, and but little account was taken of the criminal. The Julian law and the Justinian Code and Pandects inherited this cruel and unchristian character, which attached itself to them for centuries even after the birth of our Saviour. The influence of Christianity was long powerless to mitigate the horrors of barbarous legislation. In vain did the bishops of the church protest against the atrocities which were everywhere practised on prisoners. So far from listening to these humane appeals, hard-hearted rulers exhausted their ingenuity in devising new modes of penal torture, while for the wretched culprit not a pitiful word went forth from royal or baronial legislative halls. Among the Romans treason was punished by crucifixion, the most cruel of deaths. The parricide was cast into the sea enclosed in a sack, with a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey as companions. The incendiary, by a sort of poetic retribution,was cast into the flames, while the perjurer was flung from the heights of Tarpeia’s rock. But the treatment of prisoners for debt was still more barbarous and quite out of proportion to the magnitude of the offence. The unfortunate being who could not meet the demands of his creditors was compelled to languish in a filthy dungeon for sixty days, during which time he was fed upon twelve ounces of rice daily and had to drag a fifteen-pound chain at every step. If, at the expiration of that time, the claim against him was still unsatisfied, he was delivered over to his obstinate and unrelenting creditors to be torn limb from limb as a symbol of the partition of his goods.
The severity of these provisions was somewhat softened in later times, but throughout the middle ages, and, indeed, down to the latter half of the eighteenth century, the same fierce and Draconian spirit pervaded all laws having reference to the punishment of crime. Vast numbers of prisoners, without distinction of age, sex, rank, or character of crime, used to be huddled together in wretched pens, where they rotted to death amid blasphemous and despairing shrieks. Spiritual comfort and advice were withheld from them; for it was a feature of these miserable laws to pursue their victims beyond the grave by a clause which stipulated that they should die “without benefit of clergy.”
Individual efforts here and there were not wanting to alleviate the sufferings of prisoners, and many abright page of the martyrology grows brighter still with a recital of the noble sacrifices made by the saints of the church to ameliorate the condition of captives. St. Vincent de Paul, a voluntary inmate of thebagnesof Paris, teaching and encouraging his fellow-prisoners, was the prototype of Goldsmith’s kind-hearted Dr. Primrose, with the exception that the saint outdid in reality what the poet’s fancy merely pictured. Other saints, when prevented from offering relief at home, sold themselves into foreign servitude; and we read of their noble efforts to render at least endurable the acute sufferings of captives in Barbary, Tripoli, and Tunis.
But these spasmodic and unsystematic endeavors to better the condition of criminals were attended with no lasting good, and not till the serious labors of the noble Howard invited attention to the importance of the matter was public attention fully awakened. His visits to the prisons of the Continent of Europe, and his frequent appeals to the governments to introduce much-needed reforms and to redress palpable wrongs, enlisted the active sympathies of the wise and good. Then for the first time the doctrine which Montesquieu and Beccaria had so often admirably set forth in their writings was adopted in practice, and legislators and governments assumed as the basis of prison reform the principle that all punishment out of proportion to the crime is a wrong inflicted on the criminal. Advances at first were exceedingly slow, but the true impetus to prison reform was given and a new and higher social lode was struck.
While John Howard was yet engaged in the effort to solve the problem he had set before himself,a new science was springing into existence which was to lend to his labors the full promise of success. The value of statistics was but little understood and appreciated till the latter portion of the last century, and so imperfect in this respect had been the records of town, provincial, and national communities that history has keenly felt the loss of this important adjunct to her labors, and has been compelled to grope in darkness because the light of statistical information could not be had. Since this century set in, however, statistics have risen to the dignity of a science, and the truly valuable information they afford, the floods of light they have shed on all social matters, the service they have lent to medical science, to hygiene, to sanitary reforms, and above all to the prevalence of crime with its grades and surroundings, fully attest the sufficiency of its title.
Through statistics, then, we are placed in possession of the facts relating to crime and criminals, and facts alone can give the color of reason and good sense to all measures of reform, to all projects looking to the suppression of crime and the elevation of the criminal classes. Statisticians, therefore, whatever may be their theories, whatever their pet views about crime and criminals, deserve well of the community; for without their close and painstaking work the most ingenious theorist and the best-inclined philanthropist would be utterly at sea; for as Phidias could not have chiselled his unrivalled Zeus without the marble, neither can the most zealous reformer advance a foot without clear and well-tabulated statistics.
For this reason we bid especial welcome to the interesting monogramof Mr. Dugdale, which is a monument of patient and laborious exploration in a field of limited extent. It is evident that he did not set about his work in adilettantespirit, but spared no effort and avoided no inconvenience—and his inconveniences must have been many—to ascertain the utmost minutiæ bearing on his topic. He has not contented himself with adhering to the methods of inquiry usually in vogue, but has added to the law of averages, which ordinary statistics supply, individual environments and histories which may be considered causative of general results, and as such are the key to common statistics.
“Statistics,” he says, “cumulate facts which have some prominent feature in common into categories that only display their static conditions or their relative proportions to other facts. Its reasoning on these is largely inferential. To be made complete it must be complemented by a parallel study of individual careers, tracing, link by link, the essential and the accidental elements of social movement which result in the sequence of social phenomena, the distribution of social growth and decay, and the tendency and direction of social differentiation. To socio-statics must be allied socio-dynamics. Among the notable objections to pure statistics in the present connection is the danger of mistaking coincidences for correlations and the grouping of causes which are not distributive.”
Thus, Mr. Dugdale recognizes as underlying the testimony of mere figures a variety of factors essentially modifying the inferences which the former, exclusively viewed, would justify us in drawing, and endeavors to catch the ever-shifting influences of individual temperament, age, and environment. Heredity and sex, being fixed, are covered by the ordinary methods of statistical compilation.But as environment is the most potent of the varying factors which determine a career of honesty or crime, so heredity may be regarded among the fixed causes as the most contributive of effect in the same direction. “Heredity and environment, then, are the parallels between which the whole question of crime and its treatment stretches, and the objective point is to determine how much of crime results from heredity, how much from environment.” It is to the solution of this rather complicated problem that Mr. Dugdale addresses himself; and when we say it is complicated we do not exaggerate, so that we may be pardoned if, at times, in the course of the sinuous meanderings the question must necessarily take, we find ourselves at variance with some of his conclusions. Heredity is of two sorts: 1, that which results from cognate traits transmitted by both parents; and, 2, that which exhibits the modification dependent on the infusion of strange blood. This distinction is important as bearing on the question of heredity in its tendency to perpetuate propensities. If consanguineous unions intensify and transmit types of character with any degree of constancy and uniformity, we are justified in conceding that heredity is a criminal factor quite independent of environments, and that its relation to the solution of the problem why crime is so prevalent cannot be ignored. Now, the test furnished by the infusion of strange blood will enable us to judge whether constancy and uniformity of types are confined to consanguineous unions or not; for if, the environments remaining the same, a change of type is induced by non-consanguinity, then to the admixture of freshblood alone can we attribute change of type, and so we must again admit the importance of heredity in the study of the case, but only to the extent and within the limits we shall hereafter point out. Mr. Dugdale is of opinion that both heredity and environment play a very important part in the career of the criminal, and it is with the design of sustaining his opinion that he has given us the history of the “Jukes.” Before we deal further with his conclusions we will here present a brief summary of the facts as related by him.
The term “Jukes” is a sort of pseudonym very considerately intended to cloak the identity of members of the family who may now be engaged in honest pursuits. The family had its origin in the northern part of the State of New York, and has rendered the place notorious by the unbroken chain of crime which, link after link, binds the jail-bird of to-day with the jolly and easy-living “Max” of a century ago, who drank well, hunted well, and ended his days in the quiet enjoyment of animal peace. He certainly was more intent on hospitable cares and the gratification of his passing desires than on the welfare of his progeny; for no man ever left behind him a more serried array of criminal descendants whose name has become the synonym of every iniquity the tongue can utter or the mind conceive. This man had two sons, married to two out of six sisters whose reputation before marriage was bad. The eldest of the sisters is called “Ada Juke” for convenience’ sake, though in the county where the family lived her memory is unpleasantly embalmed as “Margaret, the mother of criminals.” Ada had given birth before her marriageto a male child, who was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of the distinctively criminal line of descendants. She afterwards married, and thus commingled in her person two generations exhibiting characteristics essentially peculiar to each, though they often bear leading features of resemblance. The sisters “Delia” and “Effie” married the two sons of Max, and in this way, though somewhat obscurely, Mr. Dugdale connects Max with the most criminal branch of the Jukes. We say somewhat obscurely; for the reader is first inclined to believe that Ada was married to one of Max’s sons, till on chart No. iv., page 49, he quite casually lights on the remark “Effie Juke married X——, brother to the man who married Delia Juke, and son of Max.” While acknowledging the inherent difficulty of a lucid arrangement of facts so complicated and bearing such manifold relations, we believe that a little more fulness of statement would lead to at least an easier understanding of Mr. Dugdale’s work. “Effie” became, through her marriage with the second son of Max, the ancestress of one of the distinctively pauperized branches of the family. The progeny of Delia inclined more to crime, and Ada thus became the parent stem whence both the criminal and pauperized army of the “Jukes” mainly sprang; for it is a circumstance deserving notice that, whereas the offspring of “Ada” before marriage founded the criminal line of the family, her offspring after marriage inclined rather to pauperism than to crime. So likewise in the case of “Effie,” whose known offspring was the result of marriage; we find few criminals, but nearly all paupers, among her descendants.
In the first chart Mr. Dugdale exhibits a detailed history of the illegitimate posterity of “Ada” throughout seven generations. The first legitimate consanguineous union in the family took place between the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a daughter of “Bell,” from which six children resulted. The branch is considered illegitimate, as far as “Ada” is concerned, so that Mr. Dugdale sets down each collateral branch as either legitimate or illegitimate, according to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of that child of the five sisters which stands at the head of the list. Now, glancing along the column of the third generation, or that exhibiting the six legitimate children of the illegitimate son of “Ada” and a legitimate daughter of “Bell,” we find their history to be as follows: The first, a male, lived to the age of seventy-five; was a man of bad character, though inclined at times to be industrious, and depended on out-door relief for the last twenty years of his life. The sisters and brothers of this man strongly resembled him in character, being all noted for their longevity, their propensity to steal, and their habitual licentiousness. They were, moreover, exceedingly indolent, with one exception, and were a constant burden on the township. It is unnecessary to trace out the history of these or of their descendants, except to present a few typical cases which will enable us to understand the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Dugdale.
The first son of “Ada,” just mentioned, married a non-relative of bad repute, by whom he had nine children. This woman died of syphilis; and it is well to note at what an early period this poisonous strain showed itself in this the illegitimate branch of “Ada’s” descendants.These nine children surpassed their father, their uncles, and their aunts in criminal propensity. They were especially more violent, were frequently imprisoned for assault and battery, and, though no more licentious than their father, were especially addicted to licentiousness in its grosser forms. They inherited the constitutional disease of which their mother died, and with it the penalty of an early death, the oldest having died at the age of fifty-one and the youngest at twenty-four. It will be observed that they were not so constantly dependent on out-door relief as the generation immediately preceding them; this fact being attributable to the greater violence of their temper, which induced them to acquire by robbery and theft the means of livelihood, while the others preferred to beg. One aunt of these nine—viz., the second sister of their father and fourth from him in birth—never married, but had four children by a non-relative; and, for a purpose soon to be understood, we will compare their career with that of their nine cousins, who, it must be remembered, were born in wedlock. These four were illegitimate all the way back to their grandmother, “Ada”; and if there be any force in the statement that prolonged illegitimacy has an influence in the formation of character, we here have an opportunity of verifying it. The first of these, a male, was arrested at the age of ten; was arraigned for burglary soon after, but acquitted; was indicted for murder in 1870, and, though believed to be guilty, was again acquitted; was in the county jail in 1870, and in 1874 was depending upon out-door relief. The second, a female, began to lead a loose life at an early age, which rapidly developedinto a criminal one. The third, a male, was guilty of nearly every known crime, and at last accounts was undergoing a term of twenty years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing for burglary in the first degree. The fourth, also a male, died at the age of nineteen, after having spent three and a half years in Albany penitentiary. Thus, though the record of the nine cousins is not very flattering, the vicious proclivities of these four illegitimates are manifestly more marked and decided.
If we now turn to the chart exhibiting the posterity of the legitimate children of Ada Juke, we will find an order of things entirely different. The husband of “Ada” was lazy, while her paramour, on the contrary, was always industrious. Syphilis likewise showed itself at a still earlier period than in the illegitimate branch; for whereas this disease first appeared in the generation of the illegitimate line, Ada’s first child by marriage became a victim to it at an early age, and her two legitimate daughters are set down as harlots at an equally early age. Ada’s first child, a son, married after the poisoned taint had got into his blood, and transmitted the loathsome heritage to his eight children. The immediate descendants of these eight were for the most part blind, idiotic, and impotent, and those who were not so became the progenitors of a line of syphilitics down to the sixth generation. Moreover, the intermarriages between cousins were much more frequent along this line than in the illegitimate branch. It is a noteworthy fact that in this chart one of the “Juke” blood is, for the first and only time, set down as being a Catholic—the only time, indeed, that reference is made to the questionof religion. Mr. Dugdale allows us to infer from this exceptional allusion that he found but one Catholic in this edifying family. We would recommend this fact to the consideration of our rural friends who think that chiefly in the metropolis abound the criminals,quorum pars maximathey believe to be Catholics. The first time these unco-pious people had the fierce light that beats upon a town turned upon themselves, the spectacle thus revealed is not over-pleasant. Thisen passant. Were we to examine the other statistical exhibits of Mr. Dugdale, we would find pretty nearly the same result made clear. Without, therefore, entering into details that are painful in character and difficult to keep constantly in view, we will give a summary of the conclusions which the detailment of facts seems to justify:
1. The lines of intermarriage of the Juke blood show a minimum of crime.
2. In the main, crime begins in the progeny where the Juke blood has married into X—— (non-Juke blood).
3. The illegitimate branches have chiefly married into X——.
4. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of crime.
5. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of pauperism.
6. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of females.
7. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of males.
8. The apparent anomaly presents itself that the illegitimate criminal branches show collateral branches which are honest and industrious.
We here find a most curious and interesting history and an epitome of conclusions which challenges serious consideration. That thefamily of the “Jukes” was more vicious than their neighbors whose surroundings were similar cannot be disputed, and the question arises, What was there peculiar and exceptional in their case that made the fact to be such? The habits of life of the immediate descendants of Max were bad in the extreme, but partly forced upon them by environments. These people dwelt in mud-built cabins, with but one apartment, which served all the purpose of a tenement. Here they slept and ate, and of course privacy was rendered entirely impossible. Decency and modesty were out of the question, and the anomaly of whole families utterly bereft of all regard for domestic morals began to exhibit itself. We will now lay down a fundamental principle, by the light of which we hope to be able to solve the knotty question of this intense perversity of a series of blood-related generations, and Mr. Dugdale himself will furnish the proofs.
Early impurity beyond all other causes warps the moral sense, blunts the delicacy of womanly modesty, dims the perception of the difference between right and wrong—in a word, is quickest to sear the conscience. Crimes of violence, crimes of any sort, which are not traceable to this origin are outbursts of momentary distemper; but impurity of the sort mentioned lays the foundation of an habitual aptitude to commit the worst crimes, as though the tendency to do so were inborn and natural. Let us examine the facts as exhibited in the history of the Jukes family. Throughout the six generations studied by Mr. Dugdale he found 162 marriageable women, including, as facts required him to do, some of very tender years. Of these 84had lapsed from virtue at some time or other. This is an enormous percentage compared with the police returns of our most crowded seaboard cities. Among the Jukes women 52.40 per cent. were fallen women. In New York, London, Paris, and Liverpool the highest calculation does not exceed 1.80. If such was the moralstatusof the female portion of the family, it is not difficult to conceive what a low ebb morals among the males must have reached. The more closely we look into the facts recorded by Mr. Dugdale, the more irresistible becomes the conclusion that these moral pariahs yielded themselves up without restraint to every excess from the moment sexual life dawned upon them, and blushed not to commit crimes which do not bear mention. In the record of their lives we meet at every line expressions which brand these people as the modern representatives of the wicked ones who 3,700 years ago shrivelled in the fire of God’s anger on the plains of the Dead Sea. Indeed, the fact that the infamous practices which made the “Jukes” family notorious are the beginning of an utter loss of conscience has been long recognized by Catholic theologians, who, while admitting that loss of faith is a more serious loss than that of purity, contend that the latter is more degrading, more profoundly disturbs the moral nature of man, and speedily blinds him to the perception of every virtue. Many more facts might be adduced in support of this proposition, both from the pages of Mr. Dugdale and the various reports of our reformatory and punitive institutions, but what has been said will no doubt be deemed sufficient.
If, then, it be admitted that a corruptlife begun in early youth and continued for a long time is the broadest highroad to crime, it is interesting to enquire how far so-called criminal heredity is influenced by the transmission of impure propensities. It has become the fashion of late days to allow to hereditary influence a vast importance in the discussion and management of crime, so that there is danger even that the criminal will be led to look upon himself as naturally, and consequently unavoidably, vicious, and that society ought not to visit upon him the penalty of his misdeeds any more than it should punish the freaks of a madman. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recent work entitledResponsibility in Mental Disease, holds language startling enough to make every inmate of Sing Sing to-day regard himself as one against whom the grossest injustice had been done. He says:
“It is certain, however, that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complete that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the world, in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they work. There is nothing accidental, nothing supernatural, in the impulse to do right or in the impulse to do wrong—both come by inheritance or by education; and science can no more rest content with the explanation which attributes one to the grace of heaven and the other to the malice of the devil than it could rest content with the explanation of insanity as a possession by the devil. The few and imperfect investigations of the personal and family histories of criminals which have yet been made are sufficient to excite some serious reflections. One fact which is brought strongly out by these inquiries is that crime is often hereditary; that just as a man mayinherit the stamp of the bodily features and characters of his parents, so he may also inherit the impress of their evil passions and propensities; of the true thief, as of the true poet, it may indeed be said that he is born, not made. That is what observation of the phenomena of hereditary [sic] would lead us to expect; and although certain theologians, who are prone to square the order of nature to their notions of what it should be, may repel such doctrine as the heritage of an immoral in place of a moral sense, they will in the end find it impossible in this matter, as they have done in other matters, to contend against facts.”
We have quoted the words of Dr. Maudsley at some length, in order to show to what unjustifiable lengths the recent advocates of heredity are inclined to go.
The argument employed by Dr. Maudsley is very weak—happily so, indeed; for were his conclusions correct man’s misdeeds would be neither punishable nor corrigible, any more than the blast of the tempest which strews the shore with wrecks and desolation. They would be the necessary outcome of his constitution. The trouble is that Dr. Maudsley pushes to excess a doctrine which has in it much that is true. We do not deny the doctrine of hereditary impulses; we know that some are more prone to evil than others, that the moral lineaments are often transmitted from parent to child to no less an extent than physical traits and resemblances; but we know that free will remains throughout, and that, no matter how strong the impulse to do a certain act may be, the power to resist is unquestionable. Habit and association may render the will practically powerless, but, unless a man has lost the attributes of his race, he never becomes absolutely irreclaimable. The allusion to grace and diabolical temptation is, to say the least, stupid. Dr.Maudsley knows as much about the matter, to all appearances, as the inhabitants of Patagonia. No theologian deserving the name ever asserted that man is swayed to good by grace alone, or equally moved to evil by the spirit of darkness, without any will-activity. The doctrine would be just as subversive of free-will and moral order as Dr. Maudsley’s, and consequently as absurd. The truth is that man’s will has been weakened by his fall (labefactata ac debilitata), is weaker in some than in others, but never becomes extinct, unless where the abnormal condition of insanity occurs. We regret that Mr. Dugdale accepts Dr. Maudsley as an authority and quotes approvingly the following words:
“Instead of mind being a wondrous entity, the independent source of power and self-sufficient cause of causes, an honest observation proves incontestably that it is the most dependent of all natural forces. It is the highest development of force, and to its existence all the lower natural forces are indispensably prerequisite.”
This is simply scientific jargon. It conveys no meaning, and in reality substitutes new and more obscure terms for old and well-understood ones. We are told to reject the “wondrous entity” mind, and to consider instead all so-called mental operations as the outcome of force. In a previous article[9]we pointed out the great diversity of meanings annexed to the word force, and proved that none of those who so glibly use it have a clear conception of what it signifies. Mr. Dugdale further accepts the recent materialistic doctrine of Hammond, Vogel, and the so-called modern school of physiologists, whomake will a mere matter of cerebral activity and cell-development.
His system of psychology is exceedingly brief and meaningless, and invites the social reformer to deal with the criminal as the watchmaker would deal with a chronometer out of repair, or as a ship-calker would attend to a vessel that had felt and suffered from the hard buffets of the ocean. Now, while we utterly repudiate the doctrine which views the criminal as a mere machine, we do not wish to reject any doctrine or theory which facts sustain, and we accept the doctrine of heredity in the sense we shall shortly mention, and contend that the facts justify its acceptance to no further extent.
In the first place, most people of good sense will admit that environment is a far more potent criminal factor than heredity, and that the constant similarity of environments where heredity exists disqualifies the observer for ascertaining the exact extent to which the latter operates. The children of the vicious for the most part grow up amid the surroundings which made their parents bad, and no child born of the most depraved mother will fail to respond to healthful influences early brought into play, unless an obviously abnormal condition exists. The advocates of heredity in the ordinary sense point to the vast army of criminals propagated from one stock, and claim this to be an incontestable proof of their doctrine. But right in the way of this argument is the fact that it ignores similarity of environment, and that it overlooks the diversity of crimes. If the law of heredity were strictly as stated by many writers, then the burglar would beget children with burglarious instincts, the pickpocket ditto,and so throughout the whole range of crime. But nothing of this sort is the case. The vicious descendant of a sneak-thief is as likely to be a highwayman or a housebreaker as to follow the safer paternal pursuits. No special propensities to commit crime are transmitted, but appetites are transmitted, and appetites beget tendencies and habits. Now, the two appetites which prove to be of most frequent transmission are the erotic and the alcoholic. The erotic precedes the alcoholic, and, indeed, excites it to action. Mr. Dugdale says (p. 37): “The law shadowed forth by this scanty evidence is that licentiousness has preceded the use of ardent spirits, and caused a physical exhaustion that made stimulants grateful. In other words, that intemperance itself is only a secondary cause.” And again: “If this view should prove correct, one of the great points in the training of pauper and criminal children will be to pay special attention to sexual training.”
It would appear, then, from this that heredity chiefly affects the erotic appetite, and through it the entire character. The impure beget the impure, subject to improvement through grace and will-power, and, despite of changed environments, the diseased appetite of the progenitor is apt to assert itself in the descendant, though it is not, of course, so apparent in the matter of the erotic passion as in the alcoholic. These are the facts so far as they justify the view of crime as a neurosis. This conclusion, while harmonizing with the data of observation, renders the solution of the question, What shall we do with criminals? comparatively easy, and points to the best mode of treatment. Until society holds thatthe virtue of purity is at the bottom of public morality, and that the custom to look indulgently on the wicked courses of young men is essentially pernicious, we cannot hope to begin the work of reform on a sound basis.Corrumpere et corrumpi sœclum vocaturis as true to-day as eighteen hundred years ago, only now we call it “sowing wild oats.” And how is this change to be wrought? By education? Yes, by education, which develops man’s moral character—by that education which gives to the community a Christian scholar, and not a mere intellectual machine. Mr. Richard Vaux, ex-mayor of Philadelphia, who is a believer in Maudsley, and consequently an unsuspected authority, speaks in these significant terms:
“Without attempting to discuss the value of popular instruction for the youth, or to criticise any system of public or private education, we venture to assert that there are crimes which arise directly out of these influences, and which require knowledge so obtained to perpetrate. If the former suggestion be true, that the compression of the social forces induces to crime, then those offences which come from education are only the more easily forced into society by the possessed ability to commit such crimes.If facts warrant this suggestion, then education—meaning that instruction imparted by school-training—is an agent in developing crime-cause....It is worthy of notice that a far larger number of offenders are recorded as having attended ‘public schools’ than those who ‘never went to school.’”[10]
This is a startling exhibit, upheld, it seems, by undeniable figures. Is it possible that the state is engaged in “developing crime-cause,” and that it is for this purpose oppressive school-taxes are imposed? Alas! it is too true. The majority of thosewho get a knowledge of the three “Rs” in our public schools come forth with no other knowledge. God is to them a distant echo, morality a sham, and they finish their education by gloating over the blood-curdling adventures of pirates and cracksmen in the pages of our weekly papers. Mr. Dugdale proposes some excellent means for the reclamation and reformation of the criminal, but they come tainted, and consequently much impaired, by his peculiar psychical theories. On page 48 he says:
“Now, this line of facts points to two main lessons: the value of labor as an element of reform, especially when we consider that the majority of the individuals of the Juke blood, when they work at all, are given to intermittent industries. The element of continuity is lacking in their character; enforced labor, in some cases, seems to have the effect of supplying this deficiency. But the fact, which is quite as important but less obvious, is that crime and honesty run in the lines of greatest vitality, and that the qualities which make contrivers of crime are substantially the same as will make men successful in honest pursuits.”
These remarks are full of significance and point unmistakably to the necessity of supplying work to the vicious. Hard work is the panacea for crime where healthful moral restraints are absent. The laborer expends will-force and muscular force on his work, and has no inclination for deeds of violence or criminal cunning. But how absurd it is to suppose that, as an educational process, its whole effect consists in the changed development of cerebral cells, and not, as is obviously true, in the fatigue which it engenders! Mr. Dugdale thus sets forth the philosophy of his educational scheme for the reformation of the criminal (p. 49):
“It must be clearly understood, and practically accepted, that the whole questionof crime, vice, and pauperism rests strictly and fundamentally upon a physiological basis, and not upon a sentimental or a metaphysical one. These phenomena take place, not because there is any aberration in the laws of nature, but in consequence of the operation of these laws; because disease, because unsanitary conditions, because educational neglects, produce arrest of cerebral development at some point, so that the individual fails to meet the exigencies of civilization in which he finds himself placed, and that the cure for unbalanced lives is a training which will affect the cerebral tissue, producing a corresponding change of career.”
This is downright materialism, and is the result of Mr. Dugdale’s hasty acceptance of certain views put forward by a school of physiologists who imagine that their science is the measure of man in his totality. We admit that crime is closely connected with cerebral conditions, that the brain is the organ of manifestation which the mind employs, and that those manifestations are modified to a considerable extent by the condition of the organ. But this does not interfere with the character of the mind viewed as a distinct entity; indeed, it rather harmonizes with the facts as admitted by the universal sentiment of mankind. Mr. Dugdale makes a fatal mistake when he supposes that a changed cerebral state may be accompanied by a change in the moral character; for it is possible that a chemist may one day discover some substance or combination of substances which might supply the missing cells or stimulate the arrested growth. Man is not a machine; neither is he a mere physiological being. He is a rational animal, consisting of a soul and a body, two distinct substances hypostatically united; and until this truth is recognized no reform can be wrought in the ranks of thecriminal classes by even greater men than Mr. Dugdale. If the “whole process of education is the building up of cerebral cells,” admonitions, instructions, and example are thrown away on the vicious. There is naught to do but to “build up cells” and stimulate “arrested cerebral development.” How false is this daily experience proves; for we know that a salutary change of prison discipline often converts brutal and hardened criminals into comparatively good men. Take as an instance what occurred in theMaison de Correction de Nîmesin 1839. This prison was in charge of certain political favorites who were fitter to be inmates than officials. Mismanagement reigned supreme, and the excesses committed by the prisoners can scarcely be believed. The most revolting crimes were done in broad daylight, not only with the connivance but at the instigation of the keepers. At last things had come to such a pass that the government was compelled to interfere, and, having expelled the unworthy men in charge, substituted for them a small band of Christian Brothers under the control of the late venerable Brother Facile, when an amazing change soon ensued. There was no question with the brothers of studying the increase of cerebral cells or stimulating arrested development. They changed the dietary for the better; they separated the most depraved from those younger in crime; they punished with discrimination; they encouraged good conduct by rewards; they set before the convict the example of self-sacrificing, laborious, and mortified lives; and in three weeks they converted this pandemonium into the model prison of France.
Can these facts be made to accordwith the statement that the whole process of education is “building up of cerebral cells”? If Mr. Dugdale would substitute the term “moral faculties” for “cerebral cells,” he would theorize much more correctly and to better practical effect. Speaking of subjecting the growing criminal to a system of instruction resembling theKindergarten, he says:
“The advantage of theKindergartenrests in this: that it coherently trains the sense and awakens the spirit of accountability, building up cerebral tissue. It thus organizes new channels of activity through which vitality may spread itself for the advantage of the individual and the benefit of society, and concurrently endows each individual with a governing will.”
We agree with Mr. Dugdale that such a system of training is well calculated to bring about these results, but certainly not in the manner he indicates. Let us translate his language into that which correctly describes the process of improvement in the criminal, and we find it to be as follows:
Let the subject on whom we are to try the system of training in question be a boy of fourteen rescued from the purlieus of a large city. His education must be very elementary indeed. His intellectual faculties are to be treated according to their natural vigor or feebleness, but his moral faculties are especially to be moulded with care and watchfulness. He has been accustomed to gratify his evil passions and to yield to every propensity. The will, therefore, is the weakest of his faculties, and constant efforts must be made to strengthen it. With this view he should be frequently required to do things that are distasteful tohim, beginning, of course, with what is easy and what might entail no discomfort on the ordinary boy. The will is thus gradually strengthened, both by this direct exercise and by the reaction upon it of the intellect, which is undergoing a concurrent training.
This is all that Mr. Dugdale means to convey when his words are translated into ordinary language. When he dismounts from his scientific hobby, however, he imparts counsel for the treatment of criminals which we heartily endorse. Thus, in speaking of industrial training, he says (p. 54): “The direct effect, therefore, of industrial training is to curb licentiousness, the secondary effect to decrease the craving for alcoholic stimulants and reduce the number of illegitimate children who will grow up uncared for.” He tells us that with the disappearance of log-huts and hovels—and, we might add, the reeking tenements of our cities—lubricity will also disappear. This is true to a great extent, but surely it is not all that is required. We might cultivate the æsthetic tastes to the utmost, we might have a population dwelling in palaces and lounging in luxurious booths, and be no better morally than those who, while enjoying those privileges, tolerated the mysteries of theBona Deaand assisted at the abominations which have made the city of Paphos the synonym of every iniquity. All attempts at the reformation of our criminal classeswithout the instrumentality of religion will prove unavailing. You may “make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanliness.” These words will for ever hold true of those who inculcate and pretend to practise morality without religion. The attempt has often been made, and has as often signally failed, so that we regard the presentation of proof here superfluous. The student of the history of social philosophy is well aware of the truth of this principle, and none but the purblind or the unwilling fail to perceive it. Religion is the basis of morality, and morality the pivot of reform. Let the friends of the criminals recognize these fundamental truths, and they may then hope to make some progress in their work. Then it will be time to defend and demonstrate the merits of the congregate system of imprisonment; then we might with profit insist upon the proper classification of prisoners, the necessity of proportioning penalty to offence, and not blasting the lives of mere boys by sending them for twenty years to Sing Sing for a first offence, thus compelling them to consort with ruffians of the most hardened description during the period which should be the brightest of their lives. Then all those reforms which philanthropists are ever planning might be wisely introduced, but not till then can we hope for the millennium of true reform to dawn upon us.