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in December, I found in the is insane, savage, degenerate,

skull of a brigand a very long series of atavistic anomalies.... At the sight of these strange anomalies, as a large plain appears under an inflamed horizon, the problem of the nature and of the origin of the criminal seemed to me resolved, the characters of primitive men and of inferior animals must be reproduced in our time.”

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Thus Lombroso's criminology, by means of which a oriminal is as easily detected as a man of genius, came into being. Dr Goring's comment upon the great event is admirably just. "Note," says he, "how, following the anoient astrologers, the time of day, the month, and state of weather are recorded. The 'morning of the gloomy day in December'! That large plain' and and its inflamed horizon' Science knows nothing of them. Newton must work by other laws than Victor Hugo's.' Indeed he must, and it was by the laws of fancy, not by the laws of science, that Lombroso worked when he pretended to have proved that the criminal is distinguished from the law-abiding community by marked differences in physique, revealed by measurements and by the presence of conspicuous physical anomalies or stigmata. Thus Lombroso forced upon the world 8 superstitious belief in an intimate relation between the spiritual and physical conditions of man. According to his doctrine the oriminal is an altruistic anomaly. He

and never in any circumstances a normal human being responsible for his own actions. In brief, he differs, according to Lombroso, very little from the man of genius; and the timid normal product of the Board school might thank his God that he was neither man of genius nor criminal, that he deserved neither the bays nor the gallows.

How, then, should we detect the criminal if we followed the counsels of Lombroso? Nothing is easier; and if only you remember a few simple directions, you may arrest, without fear of trouble, the scoundrel who sits opposite to you in train or tram. If you see a misoreant with dark and thick or woolly hair, who is, moreover, oxy-cephalic, trigonocephalio, soapho-cephalic, plagio-cephalic, hydro-cephalic, or sub-micro-cephalic, you may know at the first glance that you are on the track of one wanted by the police. Should you still be haunted by doubt, look at his eyes: do they differ in colour, are his eyebrows bushy or scanty? Look at his nose: is it defective in shape, and without a bony skeleton? Look at his ears: are they long, voluminous, projecting, and prehensile? If these stigmata are clear to your vision, the highest testimonials as to honourable character will mean nothing. You are in the presence of a criminal, and the best thing you can do is to ring up Scotland Yard at once. Nor are these the only stigmata that need engage your

attention. Pale and wrinkled and Lombrose would show you

skin, cleft lips, absence of wisdom teeth, undeveloped molars, a saddle-shaped palate, a reoeding or projecting chin, a depressed or protruding upper jaw-all these will be found more useful to the follower of Lombroso, in detecting crime, than the oumbrous formalities of the law courts and the tedious deliberation of judge and jury. It is true that the great man complicated the problem of detection by telling us that "the criminal has often the face of an angel," and, on another page, that "the oriminal has a face like a bird of prey." Arrest both the angel and the bird of prey, and haply you will make no mistake.

the stigmata. Charlotte Corday, though she freed the world of a monster, was no exception of the inviolable rule. "Not even the purest political crime," he wrote, "that which springs from passion, is exempt from the law which I have laid down." Such is the method of research and argument which Lombrose called criminology. It is indeed no science, but a kind of parlour game, or, as Dr Goring rightly calls it, "an organised system of selfevident confusion, whose parallel is only to be found in the astrology, alchemy, and other credulities of the Middle Ages."

Thus for Lombroso “murder, And Lombroso could go fur- larceny, fraud, every kind of ther than this. When he had law-breaking, from the most caught his oriminal he knew at elaborate to the simplest ina glance what orime he had stances, were all, in varying committed. "Murderers," he degrees, expressions or revelatold us, “can be detected by a tions of an abnormal state of deficiency in their frontal being." And it is this superourve, combined with a project- stition which Dr Goring, in a ing oooiput and receding fore- book which is a model of head. Thieves are revealed by clever exposition, set himself their enlarged orbital capacity to explode.1 The enterprise and bulging forehead; sexual was not easy, for the superoffenders by their bright eyes, stition of Lombroso had a long rough voices, over-developed start-but it was necessary, jaw, swollen eyelids and lips, for, as Dr Goring said, "the and by the fact that occasion- recovery of truth is as valually they are hump-backed. able as its original discovery." The nose of the thief is recti- The method by which Dr linear, short, and large; the Goring recovered the truth is eye of the homicide is glassy, anthropometrical and statistioold, and fixed, while the forger cal. He measured and examhas generally a clerical appear- ined some 3000 convicts, and ance, and singular air of bon- the results of his observations homie." Find him a criminal were studied and tabulated

1 The English Convict. A Statistical Study. By Charles Goring, M.D. London: Printed under the Authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office.

with the advice and under the direction of Dr Karl Pearson. The result of the inquiry is to establish the fact that there is no such thing as a oriminal type at all, The anthropological monster, invented by Lombroso, has no existence. "The physical and mental constitution of both oriminal and law-abiding persons," wrote Dr Goring, "of the same age, stature, olass, and intelligence are identical. There is no such thing as an anthropological criminal type." The conclusions, then, to which Dr Goring's statistical study of eight years brought him are not startling. The first conclusion, dogmatically stated, is "that the criminal is differentiated by inferior stature, by defective intelligence, and, to some extent, by his anti-social proclivities; but that, apart from these broad differences, there are no physical, mental, or moral characteristics peculiar to the inmates of English prisons." The second oonolusion reached by Dr Goring is this, "that, relatively to its origin in the constitution of the malefactor, and especially in his mentally defective constitution, orime is only to a trifling extent (if to any) the product of social inequalities, of adverse environment, or of other manifestations of what may be comprehensively termed the force of oircumstances." This conelusion will be a heavy blow to the sentimentalists, in Parliament and out of it, on the benoh and off it, who have wasted their pity upon the

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poor conviot, and declared, with tears in their eyes, that if only he had had a better chance, if only he had known the early blessings of comfort and education, he would never have stood in the dock. Those who believe that man is but the product of his surroundings, that all have an equal start, and that the unfortunate are penalised by early incentives to orime, are confuted by a stubborn array of statistics. Nor are our prisons the places of torture which philanthropists delight to picture them. The imprisoned — and this is Dr Goring's third conclusion— lose by incarceration neither weight nor intelligence. They are protected from accidents and infectious fevers. On the other hand, they are more prone to suicide, when shut up, and die more easily under major surgical operations. The one foree which tends to make criminals is the force of heredity. "The criminal diathesis," says Dr Goring, "revealed by the tendency to be convicted and imprisoned for orime, is influenced by the force of heredity in much the same way, and to much the same extent, as are physical and mental qualities and conditions in man.' 99 And even here Dr

Goring guarded himself by asserting that "no rational definition of the hereditary nature of crime supposes the oriminal's predestination to inevitable sin."

The statistics gathered and elassified by Dr Goring are a sound basis upon which justice

having that is founded on dishonour. his honour. Friendship should be a tie which unites two men or two countries in a bond of equality; it is not the watchful relation which exists between two poker-players, each of whom is attempting to bluff the other. The Americans, for purposes of their own domestic politios, choose to interfere with our government of Ireland. They do not know anything about that government, or they would see at once that the Unionists of Great Britain are fighting for the same cause in Ireland which inspired Abraham Lincoln in their own civil war. The Irish enjoy geater freedom than do the separate States which make up the American Union. They are vastly over-represented in our Parliament, and they have carried a weight in our legislature for many years to which their numbers do not entitle them. If they broke away from our United Kingdom, they would put us in far greater danger than was threatened to the North by the secession of the South. And since we do not wish to expose our flank to the next enemy who may attack us, we shall, we hope, insist upon settling the Irish question in accord with our national safety and dignity, and not in accord with the political necessities of the United States. To which party the Irish vote will be given in the next presidential election is to us matter of supreme indifference, and we shall, if we are wise and honest, decline to be dragged into an obscure political dis

and statesmanship may build, There is a rigidity in his method of collecting facts, a sternness in his conclusions, which leave no space for the reckless superstitions of politios. For him it was enough to know the truth. He made no attempt in his inquiry to please or to conciliate somebody else. And when we turn from his researches to the everpresent question of Ireland, we pass from the realm of fact to an inferno of wicked inventions. For many months we have been promised a Bill or a plan which shall solve at a blow the problems which have irked us for centuries. And, And, that we may be quite sure that the plan will fail or the Bill be rejected, we are told officially that it is designed to flatter the susceptibilities of the United States. If this be so, then Great Britain is, indeed, enslaved. She has fought Germany, as we have often been told, for her freedom, and now she is ready to send that freedom, post-paid, across the Atlantio, in the fall consciousness that she will get nothing in exchange for it. In dealing with Ireland one thing only is necessary to see that justice is done not only to Ireland but to Great Britain herself. If in doing this act of double justice we keep an eye upon the domestic polities of the United States, we are disloyal to the Irish and to ourselves. We are told, and we are willing to believe, that a close friendship with the United States is an excellent thing for us both and for the world. But no friendship is worth

pute which affects only a own parochial elections; and foreign country. if they have their way, England and Ireland too will suffer for the parish pump of the United States.

And the interference of the United States in our domestic disputes, the zeal of our Ministers to conciliate the Ameri

Nor do the Americans

cans, come, as it seems to us, trouble to understand the at the wrong moment. The Irish problem, which they United States entered late would see solved accordinto the war; they have gone ing to their own desire. If early out of the peace. The we thought that they had Treaty, signed at Versailles, any wish to understand it, we was weakened and spoiled in would commend to them an deference to their President. excellent little book by the The egregious Fourteen Points, Rev. Walter MacDonald, D.D., made in Germany, were sent entitled 'Some Ethical Questo us by way of Washington. tions of Peace and War.' Dr Had it not been for Mr MacDonald, who is Prefect of Wilson, the future of Europe the Dunboyne Establishment, would not have been ham- St Patrick's College, Maypered by the inevitable plots nooth, is an Irishman and a and intrigues of the League Catholic. He declares in his of Nations. And now, when preface that "few can show a we have done ourselves an strain of Gaelic blood more injury to please the United ancient and pure than his.” States, those States reject the With a fearless courage he Treaty, largely framed to speaks out what is in his mind, ohime with their sentimental- and what he says can hardly ity. They decline, we are be pleasant to the most of his told, to be drawn into Euro- countrymen. "To my own pean disputes. They reject all people, of the Gael," he writes, the responsibilities of a bel- "is due the best I have: truth, ligerent. They refuse to ao- if indeed I have it. A little cept any one of the mandates south of Ivesk, among the which they themselves de- Deisi, there is a proverb, vised. But one claim of in- first uttered, folk say, by a terference they make with rock that split in delivery: feverish insistency: they claim Truth is bitter. Like other the right of interfering with bitter things, it is wholesome : England's legitimate and kind- in politics and economics, as ly rule in Ireland. Why, when in things spiritual, it and it they are detached from all alone makes us free." else, they meddle in this, which, even under the preposterous League of Nations, they may not touch, is only too plain. It affects their

Such is the temper in which Dr MacDonald approaches the Irish question-in the temper of truth and candour. His argument is always close, and

1 London: Burns & Oates.

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