Every community is more or less
terrorised by him; our property is liable to be plundered, our houses
invaded, our women ravished, our children murdered. To restrain him we
must build gaols, and keep immense staffs of highly paid officials to
tend him in confinement, and watch him when he is at liberty.
Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says
Douglas Morrison:--"It is perfectly well known to every serious student
of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of
habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the
increase, and was never so high as it is now.... The population under
detention in reformatory institutions is increasing more rapidly than
the growth of the community as a whole, and, as far as it is possible to
see, the juvenile population in prisons is doing the same thing."
Havelock Ellis ("The Criminal," p. 295), Boies, and McKim, all
corroborate this testimony. "Among the three or four millions of
inhabitants of London, one in every five dies in gaol, prison, or
workhouse." ("Heredity and Human Progress," p. 32.)
All these defectives are prolific, and transmit their fatal taints. "In
a certain family of sixteen persons, eight were born deaf and dumb, and
one at least of this family transmitted the defect as far as the third
generation.
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