CONCLUSIONS 244
PART TWO
BOOK I
THE PRESENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER I
THE PRESENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM 247
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES
A. The Bourgeoisie 263
B. The Petty Bourgeoisie 267
C. The Proletariat 269
D. The Lower Proletariat 275
CHAPTER III
THE RELATION OF THE SEXES AND OF THE FAMILY
A. Marriage 291
B. The Family 307
C. Prostitution 321
CHAPTER IV
ALCOHOLISM 357
CHAPTER V
MILITARISM 374
BOOK II
CRIMINALITY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
A. Definition of Crime 377
B. The Origin of Egoistic Acts in General 381
C. Egoistic Tendencies Resulting from the Present
Economic System and its Consequences 401
a. The Present Economic System 402
b. The Proportion in which the Different Classes
are Guilty of Crime 436
c. Marriage 449
d. The Criminality of Women 463
e. The Family 478
f. Prostitution 504
g. Alcoholism 508
h. Militarism 516
i. The Penalty 519
j. Imitation 528
k. Conclusions 532
D. Individual Differences 534
E. The Classification of Crime 536
CHAPTER II
ECONOMIC CRIMES
A. Vagrancy and Mendicity 546
B. Theft and Analogous Crimes 563
a. Thefts Committed from Poverty 564
b. Theft Committed from Cupidity 571
c. Crimes Committed by Professional Criminals 579
C. Robbery and Analogous Crimes 589
D. Fraudulent Bankruptcy, Adulteration of Food, and
Analogous Crimes 599
CHAPTER III
SEXUAL CRIMES
A. Adultery 609
B. Rape and Indecent Assaults upon Adults 612
C. Rape and Indecent Assaults upon Children 621
CHAPTER IV
CRIMES FROM VENGEANCE AND OTHER MOTIVES
A. Crimes Committed from Vengeance 625
B. Infanticide 644
CHAPTER V
POLITICAL CRIMES 648
CHAPTER VI
PATHOLOGICAL CRIMES 656
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSIONS 667
BIBLIOGRAPHY 673
INDEX 701
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE MODERN CRIMINAL SCIENCE SERIES.
At the National Conference of Criminal Law and Criminology, held in
Chicago, at Northwestern University, in June, 1909, the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology was organized; and, as a part
of its work, the following resolution was passed:
“Whereas, it is exceedingly desirable that important treatises on
criminology in foreign languages be made readily accessible in the
English language, Resolved, that the president appoint a committee of
five with power to select such treatises as in their judgment should be
translated, and to arrange for their publication.”
The Committee appointed under this Resolution has made careful
investigation of the literature of the subject, and has consulted by
frequent correspondence. It has selected several works from among the
mass of material. It has arranged with publisher, with authors, and
with translators, for the immediate undertaking and rapid progress of
the task. It realizes the necessity of educating the professions and
the public by the wide diffusion of information on this subject. It
desires here to explain the considerations which have moved it in
seeking to select the treatises best adapted to the purpose.
For the community at large, it is important to recognize that criminal
science is a larger thing than criminal law. The legal profession in
particular has a duty to familiarize itself with the principles of that
science, as the sole means for intelligent and systematic improvement
of the criminal law.
Two centuries ago, while modern medical science was still young,
medical practitioners proceeded upon two general assumptions: one as to
the cause of disease, the other as to its treatment. As to the cause of
disease,—disease was sent by the inscrutable will of God. No man could
fathom that will, nor its arbitrary operation. As to the treatment of
disease, there were believed to be a few remedial agents of universal
efficacy. Calomel and blood-letting, for example, were two of the
principal ones. A larger or smaller dose of calomel, a greater or less
quantity of bloodletting,—this blindly indiscriminate mode of treatment
was regarded as orthodox for all common varieties of ailment. And so
his calomel pill and his bloodletting lancet were carried everywhere
with him by the doctor.
Nowadays, all this is past, in medical science. As to the causes of
disease, we know that they are facts of nature,—various, but
distinguishable by diagnosis and research, and more or less capable of
prevention or control or counter-action. As to the treatment, we now
know that there are various specific modes of treatment for specific
causes or symptoms, and that the treatment must be adapted to the
cause. In short, the individualization of disease, in cause and in
treatment, is the dominant truth of modern medical science.
The same truth is now known about crime; but the understanding and the
application of it are just opening upon us. The old and still dominant
thought is, as to cause, that a crime is caused by the inscrutable
moral free will of the human being, doing or not doing the crime, just
as it pleases; absolutely free in advance, at any moment of time, to
choose or not to choose the criminal act, and therefore in itself the
sole and ultimate cause of crime. As to treatment, there still are just
two traditional measures, used in varying doses for all kinds of crime
and all kinds of persons,—jail, or a fine (for death is now employed in
rare cases only). But modern science, here as in medicine, recognizes
that crime also (like disease) has natural causes. It need not be
asserted for one moment that crime is a disease. But it does have
natural causes,—that is, circumstances which work to produce it in a
given case. And as to treatment, modern science recognizes that penal
or remedial treatment cannot possibly be indiscriminate and
machine-like, but must be adapted to the causes, and to the man as
affected by those causes. Common sense and logic alike require,
inevitably, that the moment we predicate a specific cause for an
undesirable effect, the remedial treatment must be specifically adapted
to that cause.
Thus the great truth of the present and the future, for criminal
science, is the individualization of penal treatment,—for that man, and
for the cause of that man’s crime.
Now this truth opens up a vast field for re-examination. It means that
we must study all the possible data that can be causes of crime,—the
man’s heredity, the man’s physical and moral make-up, his emotional
temperament, the surroundings of his youth, his present home, and other
conditions,—all the influencing circumstances. And it means that the
effect of different methods of treatment, old or new, for different
kinds of men and of causes, must be studied, experimented, and
compared. Only in this way can accurate knowledge be reached, and new
efficient measures be adopted.
All this has been going on in Europe for forty years past, and in
limited fields in this country. All the branches of science that can
help have been working,—anthropology, medicine, psychology, economics,
sociology, philanthropy, penology. The law alone has abstained. The
science of law is the one to be served by all this. But the public in
general and the legal profession in particular have remained either
ignorant of the entire subject or indifferent to the entire scientific
movement. And this ignorance or indifference has blocked the way to
progress in administration.
The Institute therefore takes upon itself, as one of its aims, to
inculcate the study of modern criminal science, as a pressing duty for
the legal profession and for the thoughtful community at large. One of
its principal modes of stimulating and aiding this study is to make
available in the English language the most useful treatises now extant
in the Continental languages. Our country has started late. There is
much to catch up with, in the results reached elsewhere. We shall, to
be sure, profit by the long period of argument and theorizing and
experimentation which European thinkers and workers have passed
through. But to reap that profit, the results of their experience must
be made accessible in the English language.
The effort, in selecting this series of translations, has been to
choose those works which best represent the various schools of thought
in criminal science, the general results reached, the points of contact
or of controversy, and the contrasts of method—having always in view
that class of works which have a more than local value and could best
be serviceable to criminal science in our country. As the science has
various aspects and emphases—the anthropological, psychological,
sociological, legal, statistical, economic, pathological—due regard was
paid, in the selection, to a representation of all these aspects. And
as the several Continental countries have contributed in different ways
to these various aspects,—France, Germany, Italy, most abundantly, but
the others each its share,—the effort was made also to recognize the
different contributions as far as feasible.
The selection made by the Committee, then, represents its judgment of
the works that are most useful and most instructive for the purpose of
translation. It is its conviction that this Series, when completed,
will furnish the American student of criminal science a systematic and
sufficient acquaintance with the controlling doctrines and methods that
now hold the stage of thought in Continental Europe. Which of the
various principles and methods will prove best adapted to help our
problems can only be told after our students and workers have tested
them in our own experience. But it is certain that we must first
acquaint ourselves with these results of a generation of European
thought.
In closing, the Committee thinks it desirable to refer the members of
the Institute, for purposes of further investigation of the literature,
to the “Preliminary Bibliography of Modern Criminal Law and
Criminology” (Bulletin No. 1 of the Gary Library of Law of Northwestern
University), already issued to members of the Conference. The Committee
believes that some of the Anglo-American works listed therein will be
found useful.
Committee on Translations.
Chairman, John H. Wigmore,
Professor of Law in Northwestern University, Chicago.
Ernst Freund,
Professor of Law in the University of Chicago.
Maurice Parmelee,
Professor of Sociology in the State University of Missouri.
Roscoe Pound,
Professor of Law in Harvard University.
Edward Lindsay,
Of the Warren, Pa., Bar.
Wm. W. Smithers,
Secretary of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar
Association, Philadelphia, Pa.
EDITORIAL PREFACE TO THE PRESENT VOLUME.
By Edward Lindsey.
Any adequate study of the phenomena of crime and of the criminal must
take into account the economic phase—must consider the subject matter
of the study from the economic standpoint; for while few will follow
the socialist theorists in the controlling importance they assign to
the economic factors of social life it is nevertheless manifest that
these factors are powerful elements in the totality of social
conditions and must be given due consideration in the survey of all
societal phenomena, including that of crime. The work selected to
represent this viewpoint in the Modern Criminal Science Series is that
of one of the younger criminalists—an able and thorough study of the
effect of economic conditions on crime and distinguished by the
extensive and critical use made of a wide range of statistical data.
William Adrian Bonger, the author of the work here translated, of
Amsterdam, Holland, is a Dutch Publicist, a pupil of Professor Van
Hamel, well known as one of the founders of the International Union of
Penal Law and the most eminent of Dutch students of criminology. He was
born at Amsterdam, September 6, 1876, and received the degree of Doctor
in Law from the University of Amsterdam in June, 1905. The first part
of the present work, which consists of a survey, with copious extracts
and critical comments, of the previous literature upon the subject of
the relation of crime to economic conditions is a revision of a thesis
originally presented at the University.
Dr. Bonger is also the author of “Religion and Crime: A Criminological
Study”; Leiden, 1913, and numerous articles in Dutch and German
periodicals. Among these are the following in “Nieuwe Tijd” (The New
Age), a well-known Dutch socialist review: “An Apology for War”, a
critical review of “Die Philosophie des Krieges” by Professor Steinmetz
(1908); “Capital and Income in the Netherlands” (1910); “Marxism and
Revisionism” (1910); “Crime and Socialism: A Contribution to the Study
of Criminality in the Netherlands” (1911); and “Religion and Irreligion
in the Netherlands” (1911). Two noteworthy contributions to “Neue Zeit”
are “Cesare Lombroso” in Vol. XXVIII, number one (1910), and
“Verbrechen und Sozialismus: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Studium der
Kriminalität im Deutschland” in Vol. XXX, number two (1912). In 1912
also appeared “The Social Factors of Crime and their Significance in
Comparison with the Individual Causes” in Vol. XXIII of the
“Tijdschrift voor Strafrecht”, the only Dutch journal of criminal law.
In the first part of this work, instead of stating in his own language
the views expressed in the previous literature on the subject Dr.
Bonger has by extracts from the various authors given us their opinions
in their own language, adding brief critical comments of his own. The
second part contains Dr. Bonger’s own discussion of the phenomena of
crime based upon an unusually thorough collection of statistical data
and the elaboration of his views. In the selection of authors from whom
he quotes Dr. Bonger shows his sympathy with the social philosophy of
socialism which appears as well in the exposition of his own
explanation of criminality; but the facts which he collects together
with the evidence on which they rest are so explicitly set forth and
his own conclusions so carefully distinguished that the value of the
study is not diminished even for those who are not disposed to accept
his social philosophy.
Dr. Bonger sees clearly that the concept of crime is a social and not a
biological one. It is the social value or harmfulness of acts or
conduct that is involved in the concept and if we use terms that have a
predominantly biological connotation such as “normal” or “abnormal”, we
must be careful to distinguish that use as referring to a social
standard or we will be in danger of a confusion of thought. That some
of the acts which society has classed as crimes may be deemed
pathological is incidental; it is not on this account that they are
termed crimes but because they are socially detrimental. That some of
the individuals who have committed crimes may be called “abnormal” is
incidental; it is not because of this that they are classified as
criminals. That the economic factor has a large influence in connection
with that kind of conduct the social significance of which stamps it as
criminal the author abundantly shows. The extent to which this is the
case and the extent to which the economic conditions involved are
inherent in our present social organization are matters on which there
will be difference of opinion with the author. Dr. Bonger’s expressed
belief that his main positions will be received without sympathy in
this country we venture to think will not prove to be well founded. On
the contrary so clearly has he set them forth and so well has he
supported them that they can hardly fail of appreciation. If this work
serves to some extent as a corrective to a too prevalent tendency
toward a confusion of thought between biological and social concepts
and standards in the study of human conduct—and especially that kind of
conduct which we have deemed so socially detrimental as to brand as
crime—its inclusion in this series will be amply justified.
Warren, Pa.
February 26, 1916.
INTRODUCTION TO THIS VOLUME.
By Frank H. Norcross. [1]
Dr. Bonger’s work—“Criminality and Economic Conditions”—will arrest the
attention of students of criminology, sociology and kindred subjects.
In it, also, the political economist may delve with profit.
The eminent scholar and author in his preface to the American edition
expresses the conviction that his “ideas about the etiology of crime
will not be shared by a great many readers of the American edition,”
and, also, “that the book is sure to meet with many disapproving
critics on this side of the ocean.” The distinguished author may be
agreeably disappointed in the number of American readers who will agree
in a large measure with his conclusions as to the causes of crime
generally. I am inclined to think that the remedy which Dr. Bonger
proposes is more apt to elicit controversy than the correctness of his
diagnosis. The great value of Dr. Bonger’s work to Americans, however,
will be independent of the number of readers who concede the force of
his reasoning or accept the logic of his conclusions. Disagree with the
author’s conclusions as the reader may and its value to the reader will
not be impaired. One cannot take issue with the conclusions of a
scholar based on study and research, without an exercise of processes
of the mind valuable to the reader, and probably so to others. From the
right quantity and quality of criticism comes the truth. One of the
most valuable portions of Dr. Bonger’s work will be found in his own
criticisms of the writings of other European authors, particularly
those comprising the so-called Italian and French schools.
“Criminality and Economic Conditions” is the nearest approach to an
exhaustive treatment of the question of the agencies productive of
crime which has thus far been published in this country. The work is a
result of great study and research, and little existing data can have
been overlooked. Agree or not with the conclusions of the author, doubt
the force of his reasoning if one will, nevertheless, such reasoning
and conclusions have their basis in statistics and data furnished, from
which other reasoning or conclusions may be formed if the reader thinks
the author’s conclusions are not supported by the facts.
Whether existing economic conditions are fundamentally wrong, and crime
is but the natural concomitant of a false economic basis upon which
society is organized, is a controversial question which is so
forcefully presented by the author that the reader must concede that
his views have been presented by a master.
Dr. Bonger’s thesis, doubtless, will have the effect of increasing the
number of Americans who regard environment as the greatest contributory
cause of crime and who place heredity or innate criminality in a
subordinate position, though many may continue to regard these matters
as of greater importance than the author attributes to them. The author
does not hesitate to express his contempt for the theory recently
espoused by some Americans that “sterilization” may be an effective
method of reducing the “army of criminals.” “One should be inclined to
ask,” he says, “if the advocates of ‘sterilization’ have never heard of
Australia, where a considerable number of inhabitants have descended
from the worst of criminals and where yet the rate of criminality is
low.” The Australian might reply that this is not a fair test, for at
the time England was transporting so many of her criminals to
Australia, the English criminal code was so drastic that “the worst of
criminals” constituted but a small per cent of those who became its
victims. But this observation does not militate against the correctness
of the Doctor’s observation that “sterilization” is “as useful as the
efforts to stop with a bottle a brook in its course.” If the advocates
of “sterilization” are wrong in their theory, it is only illustrative
of the fact that we Americans have been so busy developing a new
country that, until very recent years, we gave no thought to the
immense problem of the causes of crime, or attempted to apply to the
subject any sort of intelligent, to say nothing of scientific,
consideration. When at last it dawned upon a few of the American people
that the cost in dollars and cents of dealing with our crime problem,
to say nothing of the incidental economic waste, exceeded a billion
dollars annually, or, as Professor Münsterberg in one of his books
forcibly puts it: “that this country spends annually five hundred
millions of dollars more on fighting the existing crime than on all its
works of charity, education, and religion”,—it began to be considered
worth while to study this tremendous social problem with a view, if
possible, of improving conditions. Those who investigated the subject
found little in the way of statistics or reliable data upon which to
base a study of conditions with a view of applying remedies. Some few
had written upon various phases of the subject. It was not, however,
until the organization of the American Institute of Criminal Law and
Criminology in 1909 that intelligent direction along practical lines
was given to a study by Americans of this great social and economic
problem. The Journal of the Institute was the first periodical of its
kind published in the English language. In Continental Europe a number
of such journals were being published and many students of the problem
had contributed valuable works upon different phases of the subject.
The American Institute has deemed the quickest way for Americans to
become abreast of the best modern thought on criminal law and
criminology, is to make available for American readers the best
scientific thought of European writers, hence, “The Modern Criminal
Science Series,” of which Dr. Bonger’s work becomes one of the most
valuable volumes.
Until very recent years, most American judges and prosecuting attorneys
gave little thought to the underlying causes of crime. It was the
general assumption that courts and court officers had performed their
full functions when the guilt or innocence of a defendant had been
determined and he was discharged or committed to some penal
institution. Here again little thought was given to the one
incarcerated other than to hold and generally to exploit him until by
law he was entitled to be discharged. Those whose province it was to
get men into prison and those whose duty it was to keep them in custody
gave little attention to the question whether the convict was a better
or a worse unit of society when he came out than when he entered upon a
prison term. Even less thought was given to the more important
question—why so many commit crime at all. If normal human beings under
normal conditions do not commit crime, then crime is evidence of the
abnormal, either in the person or in the condition. If this is a
correct hypothesis, then the administration of criminal law must to a
greater degree in the future than in the past be predicated upon a
comprehension and due consideration of this fact.
If, in order to materially reduce the quantum of crime, it is necessary
to change the economic basis upon which modern society rests and
reorganize it “based upon the community of the means of production”,
then the outlook for an early diminution in the volume of crime may not
be overly encouraging. Such a change in the economic basis of society
is hardly to be expected otherwise than as the result of the slow
process of social evolution. Progress in this respect has not been
perceptibly rapid since Moses gave to the world the Book of
Deuteronomy. Many abuses of our present economic system, however, may
be modified or abolished without waiting for or conceding the necessity
of the change which the eminent scholar holds is fundamental.
Again, in conclusion, let me reiterate that the value of Dr. Bonger’s
work does not depend upon an agreement with all the views of the
author. The book will bring to the American reader a depth and breadth
of view most valuable to the administrators of criminal law and to
those interested in the wider field of general social progress.
Carson City, Nevada,
February 18, 1916.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
This translation is based upon the Amsterdam edition of 1905, but the
translator has been furnished by the author not only with special notes
for the American edition, but also with the latest corrections to the
French text. Dr. Bonger has also furnished a revised bibliography, and
kindly wrote the American preface in English. In the translation some
slight condensation of the work has been made, with the approval of the
committee, by the omission of a few passages of a parenthetical nature,
in quotations and notes. The very valuable bibliographical notes have
been retained intact. Grateful acknowledgment is due to the Editorial
Committee for suggestions as to some difficult legal terms, and to Mr.
Georgio de Grassi for assistance in the translation of Italian
passages.
Henry P. Horton.
Ithaca, N.Y.,
September, 1914.
CRIMINALITY AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
The resolution of the “Committee on Translations of the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology” to include my book
“Criminalité et conditions économiques” among the European works, that
were assigned for translation was welcomed by me with gladness. The
fact that the difference of language is an obstacle for many to become
acquainted with a book, is for its author very disagreeable. This was
also the reason which obliged me to publish my work not in my own but
in the French language.
I am fully convinced that my ideas about the etiology of crime will not
be shared by a great many readers of the American edition. As far as I
can see, in the English-speaking countries the causes of criminality
are sought in man himself rather than in his surroundings. Heredity,
too, is considered there of great importance. Hence the attempts to
reduce the army of criminals by so-called “sterilization.” Against this
point of view my book is in sharp opposition; I consider it one of the
most fatal errors. There was a time in Europe when it was thought with
Lombroso that crime was rooted in man himself; the progress of
sociology has shown more and more clearly that the roots are found
outside man, in society. There is nothing more variable than man! That
heredity plays a great part on the scene of criminality has never been
proved. Have the advocates of “sterilization”, one should be inclined
to ask, never heard of Australia, where a considerable number of the
inhabitants are descended from the worst of criminals, and where yet
the rate of criminality is low? The army of prostitution has been for a
great many centuries by far more “sterile” than the army of criminals
can ever be made, and yet prostitution is not decreased; the increase
and decrease of this phenomena is ruled by social factors. In short,
the effect of “sterilization” seems to me as useful as the efforts to
stop with a bottle a brook in its course, as Manouvrier once called it.
On the other hand I beg the adherents of the individualistic theory of
crime to take into consideration that in some European countries the
beginning of the rise of the lower classes, who form the greatest
contingent of criminals, has been sufficient to arrest the increase of
crime, even in many cases to occasion a decrease.
My book will thus be sure to meet with many disapproving critics on the
other side of the ocean. I fear them not. If only facts are opposed to
facts, truth will come to light. “Du choc des opinions jaillit la
vérité!”
According to my undertaking I have stated in notes the principal
literature of the latest years. In concert with the desire of the
Committee I have shortened the text as much as possible. The whole
passage about “race and crime” I have omitted because—maintaining in
general what I had written about it—I now have much more to say on the
subject, but the space therefor was not at my disposition. For the same
reason I left the passage on “Physical Environment and Crime” as it
was. The treatment in detail of both these questions will take place in
due time elsewhere.
I will not close this preface without assuring the Committee on
Translations how highly I value their broad view and large-minded
resolution to give a hearing to one whose opinions differ so much from
the usual. To my translator, my hearty thanks for the good care
bestowed on my book.
W. A. Bonger.
Amsterdam,
June, 1914.
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
Honorable mention has been given to the first part of this work, which
was written upon a subject proposed by the juridical faculty of the
University of Amsterdam, and entitled “A Systematic and Critical
Exposition of the Literature Dealing with the Relation between
Criminality and Economic Conditions.” To this exposition I have added
the opinions of some additional authors, and have treated some others
more fully than in the original; but on the whole this part of the work
has been little changed. The second part, on the other hand, is almost
entirely new; though it is true that in my thesis I had already marked
out a line of investigation which, in my opinion, required a profound
study of the relation between criminality and economic conditions. The
period of one year fixed by the faculty was too limited a time in which
to give more than a brief survey of the question. I have left the
exposition as it was without restating it in the second part (now the
more important division of the work), although I am aware that
objections might be made, especially as to the form. However, I have
not felt that these are of sufficient importance to demand a complete
recasting of the work.
I take advantage of this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to
those who have expressed their good will by lending me their aid;
especially to my highly esteemed colleague, Professor G. A. van Hamel,
and my friends Dr. A. Aletrino and N. W. Posthumus.
Amsterdam,
February, 1905.
I have taken great pains neither to deride human actions,
nor to deplore them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
—Spinoza.
INTRODUCTION.
In systematizing the literature of my subject I have pursued the
following method: I begin with some significant extracts from authors
who wrote before the birth of modern criminal science. After these I
take up the statisticians, that is to say, those who, without belonging
to any special school of criminologists, have treated the subject
principally by the aid of statistics. Next I give an exposition of the
school which insists especially upon the individual factors in crime,
and ascribes only a secondary place to economic factors (the Italian
school); following this I treat of the school which considers the rôle
played by environment as very important (the French school); and
afterwards that of the bio-sociological doctrine which forms the
synthesis of the two schools. Then follow the “spiritualists”, that is
to say the religious authors who have been more or less influenced by
modern criminal science; and finally, the authors who belong to the
“terza scuola”, and the socialists who consider the influence of
economic conditions as being very important or even decisive. The
authors coming under the same heading have been treated in
chronological order.
Like every classification this is more or less arbitrary. Several
authors might have been placed under two different headings. We may add
that as time goes on the differences between the Italian and French
schools are becoming less and less marked, so that their opinions and
those of the bio-sociologists no longer show any great divergences as
far as our subject is concerned.
PART ONE.
CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF THE LITERATURE DEALING WITH
THE RELATION BETWEEN CRIMINALITY AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRECURSORS.
AUTHORS WHO TREATED THE SUBJECT BEFORE THE BIRTH
OF MODERN CRIMINAL SCIENCE.
I.
THOMAS MORE. [2]
In the first part of his “Utopia” More severely criticises the economic
conditions of his time in England, and adds some observations upon the
criminality of that period.
Raphael Hythloday, whom More makes the speaker in his work, and through
whom he expresses his own opinions, says:
“It chanced on a certain day, when I sat at the Cardinal’s table, there
was also a certain lay man cunning in the laws of your realm. Who, I
cannot tell whereof taking occasion, began diligently and earnestly to
praise that strait and rigorous justice, which at that time was there
executed upon felons, who, as he said, were for the most part twenty
hanged together upon one gallows. And, seeing so few escaped
punishment, he said he could not choose but greatly wonder and marvel,
how and by what evil luck it should so come to pass, that thieves
nevertheless were in every place so rife and so rank.
“Nay, Sir, quod I (for I durst boldly speak my mind before the
Cardinal) marvel nothing hereat; for this punishment of thieves passeth
the limits of justice, and is also very hurtful to the public weal. For
it is too extreme and cruel a punishment for theft, and yet not
sufficient to refrain and withhold men from theft. For simple theft is
not so great an offense, that it ought to be punished with death.
Neither is there any punishment so horrible, that it can keep them from
stealing, which have no other craft whereby to get their living.
Therefore in this point, not you only, but also the most part of the
world, be like evil schoolmasters, which be readier to beat, than to
teach their scholars. For great and horrible punishments be appointed
for thieves, whereas much rather provision should have been made, that
there were some means, whereby they might get their living, so that no
man should be driven to this extreme necessity, first to steal, and
then to die.
“Yes (quod he) this matter is well enough provided for already. There
be handicrafts, there is husbandry to get their living by, if they
would not willingly be nought. Nay, quod I, you shall not scape so; for
first of all, I will speak nothing of them that come home out of the
wars, maimed and lame, as not long ago, out of Blackheath field, and a
little before that, out of the wars in France; such, I say, as put
their lives in jeopardy for public weal’s or the king’s sake, and by
reason of weakness or lameness be not able to occupy their old crafts,
and be too aged to learn new; of them I will speak nothing, forasmuch
as wars have their ordinary recourse. But let us consider those things
that chance daily before our eyes. First there is a great number of
gentlemen, which can not be content to live idle themselves, like
drones, of that which others have labored for; their tenants, I mean,
whom they poll and shave to the quick, by raising their rents (for this
only point of frugality do they use, men else through their lavish and
prodigal spending, able to bring themselves to very beggary) these
gentlemen, I say, do not only live in idleness themselves, but also
carry about with them at their tails a great flock or train of idle and
loitering serving men, which never learn any craft whereby to get their
livings. These men as soon as their master is dead, or be sick
themselves, be incontinent thrust out of doors. For gentlemen had
rather keep idle persons, than sick men, and many times the dead man’s
heir is not able to maintain so great a house, and keep so many serving
men as his father did. Then in the mean season they that be thus
destitute of service, either starve for hunger, or manfully play the
thieves. For what would you have them do? When they have wandered
abroad so long, until they have worn threadbare their apparel, and also
impaired their health, then gentlemen because of their pale and sickly
faces, and patched coats, will not take them into service. And
husbandmen dare not set them a work, knowing well enough that he is
nothing meet to do true and faithful service to a poor man with a spade
and a mattock for small wages and hard fare, which being daintily and
tenderly pampered up in idleness and pleasure, was wont with a sword
and buckler by his side to jet through the street with a bragging look,
and to think himself to be as good as any man’s mate.
“Nay, by Saint Mary, sir (quod the lawyer), not so. For this kind of
man must we make the most of. For in them as men of stouter stomachs,
bolder spirits, and manlier courages than handicrafts men and plowmen
be, doth consist the whole power, strength, and puissance of our army,
when we must fight in battle. Forsooth, sir, as well you might say
(quod I) that for war’s sake we must cherish thieves. For surely you
shall never lack thieves while you have them. No, nor thieves be not
the most false and faint-hearted soldiers, nor soldiers be not the
cowardliest thieves; so well these two crafts agree together. But this
fault, though it be much used among you, yet is not peculiar to you
only, but common also almost to all nations. Yet France besides this is
troubled and infected with a much sorer plague. The whole realm is
filled and besieged with hired soldiers in peace time (if that be
peace) which be brought in under the same color and pretense, that hath
persuaded you to keep these idle serving men. For these wise fools and
very archdolts thought the wealth of the country herein to consist, if
there were ever in readiness a strong and sure garrison, specially of
old practised soldiers, for they put no trust at all in men
unexercised. And therefore they must be forced to seek for war, to the
end that they may have practised soldiers and cunning manslayers, lest
that (as it is prettily said by Sallust) their hands and their minds
through idleness and lack of exercise, should wax dull. But how
pernicious and pestilent a thing it is to maintain such beasts, the
Frenchmen by their own harms have learned, and the examples of the
Romans, Carthaginians, Syrians, and of many other countries do
manifestly declare. For not only the empire, but also the fields and
cities of all these, by divers occasions have been overrunned and
destroyed by their own armies beforehand had in a readiness. Now how
unnecessary a thing this is, hereby it may appear, that the French
soldiers, which from their youth have been practised and inured in
feats of arms, do not crack nor advance themselves to have very often
gotten the upper hand and mastery of your new made and unpractised
soldiers. But in this point I will not use many words, lest perchance I
may seem to flatter you.
“No, nor those same handicraftmen of yours in cities, nor yet the rude
and uplandish plowmen of the country, are not supposed to be greatly
afraid of your gentlemen’s idle serving men, unless it be such as be
not of body or stature correspondent to their strength and courage, or
else whose bold stomachs be discouraged through poverty. Thus you may
see, that it is not to be feared lest they should be effeminated, if
they were brought up in good crafts and laborsome works, whereby to get
their livings, whose stout and sturdy bodies (for gentlemen vouchsafe
to corrupt and spill none but picked and chosen men) now either by
reason of rest and idleness be brought to weakness or else by easy and
womanly exercises be made feeble and unable to endure hardness. Truly
howsoever the case standeth, this methinketh is nothing available to
the public weal, for war’s sake, which you never have, but when you
will yourselves, to keep and maintain an innumerable flock of that sort
of men, that be so troublesome and noyous in peace, whereof you ought
to have a thousand times more regard than of war.
“But yet this is not the only necessary cause of stealing. There is
another, which, as I suppose, is proper and peculiar to you Englishmen
alone. What is that? quod the Cardinal. Forsooth my Lord (quod I) your
sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now
as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat
up, and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy,
and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of
the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there
noblemen and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, holy men no doubt, not
contenting themselves with the yearly revenues and profits, that were
wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their lands, nor
being content that they live in rest and pleasure nothing profiting,
yea much noying the public weal, leave no ground for tillage, they
inclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down
towns, and leave nothing standing, but only the church to be made a
sheephouse. And as though you lost no land by forests, chases, lands,
and parks, those good holy men turn all dwelling places and all
glebeland into desolation and wilderness. Therefore that one covetous
and unsatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country may
compass about and enclose many thousand acres of ground together within
one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else
either by fraud, or by violent oppression they be put besides it, or by
wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell
all. By one means therefore or by other, either by hook or crook they
must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls, men, women,
husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers, with
their young babes, and their whole household small in substance and
much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I
say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest
in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it
might well abide the sale; yet being suddenly thrust out, they be
constrained to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they have
wandered abroad till that be spent, what can they do but steal and then
justly pardy be hanged, or else go about begging. Yet then they also be
cast into prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not, whom
no man will set to work, though they never so willingly profer
themselves thereto. For one shepherd or herdman is enough to eat up
that ground with cattle, to the occupying whereof about husbandry many
hands were requisite.
“And this is also the cause why victuals be now in many places dearer.
Yea, besides this the price of wool is so risen, that poor folks which
were wont to work it, and make cloth thereof, be now able to buy none
at all. And by this means very many be forced to forsake work, and to
give themselves to idleness. For after that so much ground was inclosed
for pasture, an infinite multitude of sheep died of the rot, such
vengeance God took of their inordinate and insatiable covetousness,
sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain, which much more
justly should have fallen of the sheep-masters’ own heads. And though
the number of sheep increase never so fast, yet the price falleth not
one mite, because there be so few sellers. For they be almost all comen
into a few rich men’s hands, whom no need forceth to sell before they
lust, and they lust not before they may sell as dear as they lust.
“Now the same cause bringeth in like dearth of the other kinds of
cattle, yea and that so much the more, because that after the farms
plucked down and husbandry decayed, there is no man that careth about
the breeding of young stock. For these rich men bring not up the young
ones of great cattle as they do lambs. But first they buy them abroad
very cheap and afterward, when they be fatted in their pastures, they
sell them again exceeding dear. And therefore (as I suppose) the whole
incommodity hereof is not yet felt. For yet they make dearth only in
those places where they sell. But when they fetch them away from thence
where they be bred faster than they can be brought up; then shall there
also be felt great dearth, stock beginning there to fail where the ware
is bought. Thus the unreasonable covetousness of a few hath turned that
thing to the utter undoing of your island, in the which thing the chief
felicity of your realm did consist. For this great dearth of victuals
causeth men to keep as little houses and as small hospitality as they
possibly may, and to put away their servants, whither, I pray you, but
abegging or else (which these gentle bloods and stout stomachs will
sooner set their minds unto) astealing?
“Now to amend the matter, to this wretched beggary and miserable
poverty is joined great wantonness, importunate superfluity and
excessive riot. For not only gentlemen’s servants, but also
handicraftman, yea and almost the plowmen of the country, with all
other sorts of people, use much strange and proud newfangledness in
their apparel, and too much prodigal riot and sumptuous fare at their
table. Now bawds, queans, whores, harlots, strumpets, brothel-houses,
stews, and yet another stews, winetaverns, alehouses and tippling
houses, with so many naughty, lewd, and unlawful games, as dice, cards,
tables, tennis, bowls, quoits, do not all these send the haunters of
them straight astealing when their money is gone?
“Cast out these pernicious abominations, make a law that they, which
plucked down farms and towns of husbandry, shall reëdify them, or else
yield and uprender the possession thereof to such as will go to the
cost of building them anew. Suffer not these rich men to buy up all, to
engross and forestall, and with their monopoly to keep the market alone
as please them. Let not so many be brought up in idleness, let
husbandry and tillage be restored, let clothworking be renewed, that
there may be honest labors for this idle sort to pass their time
profitably, which hitherto either poverty has caused to be thieves, or
else now to be vagabonds, or idle serving men, and shortly will be
thieves. Doubtless unless you find a remedy for these enormities, you
shall in vain advance yourselves of executing justice upon felons. For
this justice is more beautiful in appearance, and more flourishing to
the show, than either just or profitable. For by suffering your youth
wantonly and viciously to be brought up, and to be infected, even from
their tender age, by little and little with vice, then in God’s name to
be punished, when they commit the same faults after being come to man’s
state, which from their youth they were ever like to do; in this point,
I pray you, what other thing do you, than make thieves and then punish
them?” [3]
II.
JEAN MESLIER. [4]
In speaking of the faults which cling to society Meslier, among other
things, says the following about crime:
“Another abuse, and one that is almost universally accepted and
authorized in the world, is the appropriation of the wealth of the soil
by individuals, in place of which all ought to possess it equally in
common and enjoy it equally in common. I mean all those of the same
district or territory, so that they as well as those who inhabit the
same city, town, village, or parish should compose but one great
family. They should all regard themselves as being brothers and sisters
one to another and all children of the same fathers and mothers, who,
for this reason ought to love one another as brothers and sisters and,
in consequence, live peaceably together, having all things common. All
should have the same or similar food, should be equally well lodged,
clothed and shod, but should also apply themselves equally to their
business, that is to say, to work or to some other honest and useful
employment, each following his or her profession, or whatever is most
necessary and fitting to be done according to the time or season or the
things especially needed. And all this should be done, not under the
direction of those who would like to dominate over others tyrannically
and imperiously, but only under the direction of the wisest and best
intentioned, for the maintenance and advancement of the public weal.
All cities and other communities should also on their own account take
great pains to make alliances with their neighbors and keep inviolable
the peace and union between them, in order to aid and succor one
another in time of need; for without this the public well-being cannot
be maintained, and the greater part of mankind must be wretched and
unhappy.
“For first, what results from this individual appropriation of the
wealth of the soil for each to enjoy it severally apart from the
others, as it seems good to him? It results that each is eager to get
as much as he can, in all sorts of ways, good and bad. For cupidity,
which is insatiable and, as we know, the root of all evils, looking
through an open door, so to speak, toward the accomplishment of its
desires, does not fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and makes
all men do whatever they can in order to have an abundance of goods and
riches, and to be so protected from indigence as to have the pleasure
and contentment of enjoying whatever they wish. From this it happens
that those who are the strongest, the most crafty, the most skilful,
and often even the most wicked and unworthy, have the largest share in
the wealth of the soil and are best provided with all the good things
of life.” [5]
“This is not all, but it also results from this abuse of which I have
been speaking, namely that wealth is so badly distributed among men,
some having everything, or at least much more than their true share,
and others having nothing, or lacking a part of what is useful and
necessary ... it results from this, I say, that hatred and envy first
of all arise. From these spring in turn murmurings, complainings,
commotions, insurrections, and wars, which cause an infinity of evils
among men. From these again proceed thousands and millions of
mischievous lawsuits which the private owners are obliged to have among
themselves to defend their property and to maintain what they consider
their rights. These suits cause thousands of pains to the body, and
tens of thousands of disquietudes to the mind, and often enough cause
the entire ruin of both parties. From this it also happens that those
who have nothing, or who have not all that they need, are constrained
and obliged to employ evil means to get subsistence. From this come the
frauds, deceptions, rascalities, injustices, extortions, robberies,
thefts, murders, assassinations, and brigandages which cause such an
infinity of evils among men.” [6]
III.
J. J. ROUSSEAU.
I believe that the following observation, which I find in the
“Discourse upon the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men”, is
worth quoting.
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, took it into his
head to say, ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe
him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, and
murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been
spared if some one had torn up the stakes, or filled the ditch, and
cried to his comrades: ‘Beware of heeding this impostor. You are lost
if you forget that the fruits of the ground belong to all, and the
ground itself to no one.’” [7]
IV.
MORELLY.
In his “Code de la nature” this author seeks to show that the harmony
in which men lived in primitive society (when common property existed)
has been destroyed by the institution of private property, which,
coming in little by little, has changed common interests into contrary
interests. He expresses himself on this point as follows:
“Every division of goods, whether equal or unequal, and all individual
appropriation of the portions so formed are what Horace calls ‘Summi
materiam mali.’ All political or moral phenomena are the effects of
this pernicious cause. It is by this that we can explain all theorems
and problems with regard to the origin, development, connection, and
affinity of virtues or vices, disorders, and crimes; also with regard
to the true motives of good or bad actions, the determinations and
perplexities of the human will, the depravity of the passions, the
inefficacy of precepts and laws to restrain them; and, finally, with
regard to the monstrous creations resulting from the aberrations of the
mind and the heart. The reason, I say, for all these things can be
ascribed to the general obstinacy of legislators about breaking or
letting any one else break the cord with which sociability was first
bound by those who usurped to their own use soil that ought to belong
indivisibly to all humanity.” [8]
Farther along he defines the same idea more exactly when he says: “Take
away property, I repeat without ceasing, and you destroy forever a
thousand factors which lead men to desperate extremities. I say that,
delivered from this tyrant, it is totally impossible that man should
give himself to crimes, that he should be a thief, an assassin, or a
conqueror. The laws which authorize property punish him, it is true,
for these crimes. Even his own remorse and fears, sprung from the
prejudices of the moral system in which he has been raised, punish him
still more. But the most severe chastisement of the offender is the
primitive and innate feeling of benevolence. This inner voice of
Nature, though commonly confined to the indifferent admonition not to
injure, has still force enough to make the criminal feel keenly.” [9]
V.
C. BECCARIA.
The following passage taken from the introduction to Beccaria’s “Des
délits et des peines” is not without importance for our subject:
“The advantages of society ought to be equally divided among all its
members. However, when men are gathered together we note a constant
tendency to collect privileges, power, and happiness in the hands of a
small minority, and to leave for the multitude only poverty and
weakness. It is only by good laws that this tendency can be checked.
But ordinarily men leave the regulation of the most important matters
to temporary laws and to the caution of the moment, or even entrust
them to the discretion of those whose interests are opposed to the best
institutions and the wisest laws.” [10]
“If we turn to history we shall see that laws, which ought to be
agreements freely made between free men, have oftenest been only the
instrument of the passions of the minority or the result of the chance
of the moment, never the work of a wise observer of human nature who
has known how to direct all the actions of the multitude to this single
end: The greatest good of the greatest number.” [11]
In Section 35 (“On Theft”) we read, among other things, as follows:
“A theft committed without violence ought to be punished merely by a
fine. It is just that he who takes the property of another should be
deprived of his own. But if theft is ordinarily the crime of poverty
and despair, if this offense is committed only by that class of
unfortunate men to whom the right of property (a terrible right and
perhaps not a necessary one) has left no possession but mere existence,
the imposition of a fine will contribute only to multiply thefts, by
increasing the number of the indigent, and robbing an innocent family
of bread to give it to a rich man who is perhaps himself a criminal.”
[12]
VI.
S. N. H. LINGUET.
In his “Théorie des lois civiles”, directed principally against
Montesquieu’s “L’esprit des lois”, in which Linguet seeks to defend the
thesis, “The spirit of the laws is Property”, there are some
interesting passages. After having shown that private property has been
founded upon violence, he treats of the origin of the laws and, at the
same time, of the causes of crime, and says:
“Among men all equal, all robust, passionate, sanguinary, and
accustomed to arms, dangerous disputes would continually arise. It
would be impossible but that chance and intelligence should produce
great inequality of fortune. He who believed that he had been injured
would wish to get justice for himself. The association formed to secure
the booty would be troubled by the difficulty of enjoying it. These
inconveniences occurred to the clearest thinkers and they sought to
find a remedy. It was a totally new art that they created. But as it is
almost always science that misleads, and as truth is never so easy to
discover as at a distance from the Doctors, they looked about to see
what route they should take.
“They thought that a primary act of violence was incontestably
necessary. They could not disavow it, since it was the sole basis of
their rights. But they also saw that it was necessary to prevent any
further violence, since this would fall upon themselves. They conceived
that the primitive usurpation ought to be regarded as a sacred title;
but they perceived no less clearly that it was necessary to proscribe
any new usurpation, which would contradict the ancient one and destroy
it. In order to succeed in this they proposed to authorize only those
brigandages which were carried on in common, and to punish severely
those persons who dared to commit individual acts of spoliation. In
response to their suggestions it was decreed that society should have
the right to take everything, but that the members of society, as
individuals, should be deprived of this right. They agreed that each
should have peaceful possession of the part allotted to him, and that
whoever tried to take it from him should be declared a public enemy and
prosecuted as such.
“Here, then, in a few words is the source of all human laws. From it
spring laws of every kind except the divine law, the source of which is
as pure as its author. Upon this basis are founded all imaginable
constitutions. This it is which sanctions the law of nations and the
civil law, of which the one legitimates conquests, and the other
proscribes robbery, only punishing, however, the thefts not committed
by a large company. Finally this same principle has directed the steps
of all politicians and of all founders of governments and empires.
“They have come by different ways, the details of which it is useless
to discuss here, to change the original social anarchy, in which these
principles were discovered, into administrations more or less
imperfect. Violence thus formed the foundation of their rights, but all
wished to keep with justice what they got possession of very unjustly.
They took precautions to prevent those who assisted them in their
wholesale conquest from imitating them in detail. After making sure of
the general domain they did not wish any one to be able to dispute the
particular distribution of it. They confirmed by regulations all their
accomplices in the possession of what they had had the address or the
good fortune to seize. They decreed that any one who, seeing these
possessions stolen by force, should attempt to secure restitution by
the same method, should be punished as guilty of an offense against
society.” [13]
In the chapter “Good and Evils which Laws Produce” Linguet pronounces
the following trenchant and satirical judgment:
“The aim [of justice and law], as we have said, is to give society a
fixed position. There results from them an invariable order which keeps
each member in his place. It is by their means that the multitude who
do not know them, even while they respect them, submit without
repugnance to the small number who are armed by them. In this sense
there is nothing so admirable as the law. It is the most sublime
invention that ever presented itself to the human mind. It offers to
any reflective individual the most satisfying, the most beautiful of
spectacles. To restrain force and violence by pacific means; to
subjugate the liveliest passions; to assure to painful virtues the
preference over easy and delusive vices; to direct the eyes, the hands,
and the hearts of men; to subdue them without preventing them from
believing themselves free; to prescribe duties capable of securing the
repose of docile souls who performed them, and of protecting them
against rebellious spirits, who wish to be exempt from them; all this
the laws do or ought to do. It would be difficult to join together so
much greatness with so many benefits.
“But as the theory of the laws is honorable to the humanity which has
been able to grasp it, so the practical application of the laws has
been most distressing, when, after the observance of them has been
recommended, it is necessary to pass on to the punishments decreed for
the offenses which violate them. The passions which self-interest
unceasingly incites often necessitate this grievous extremity. Then we
see men authorized by general consent to exercise an inflexible rigor
upon their fellows. We hear justice pronounce sentences which would
pass for cruel if they were not indispensable. It makes use of prisons,
executioners, gallows. Liberty and even life become pledges of which
justice deprives men at pleasure when they abuse them. To make good the
losses which the state suffers from the crimes that disturb it, it
comes back upon the criminals, and consequently suffers almost equally
from the crime and from the punishment.” [14]
VII.
P. H. D. D’HOLBACH.
In the third section of his “Système social”, under the heading, “The
Influence of Government upon Morals”, Holbach, in treating of the
causes of crime says among other things:
“In China they punish the mandarin in the department in which a great
crime has been committed. A bad government has its own negligence or
its own injustice to blame for the great number of malefactors who are
found in a state. The multiplicity of criminals proclaims an
administration as tyrannical and careless. The severity of taxes, the
vexations and hardships inflicted by the rich and great multiply the
number of the unfortunate, whom poverty often reduces to despair and
who avail themselves of crime as the promptest means of escape from
their condition. If wealth is the mother of vices, poverty is the
mother of crimes. When a state is badly governed and wealth is too
unequally divided, so that millions of men lack the necessaries of
life, while a small number of citizens are surfeited with luxuries,
there we commonly see a great number of criminals, whose number
punishments do not diminish. If a government punishes the unfortunate
it leaves undisturbed the vices that are leading the state to its ruin;
it erects gibbets for the poor, whereas by bringing men to poverty it
has itself made thieves, assassins, and criminals of every kind; it
punishes crime, while it continually invites men to commit crime.” [15]
“The man who has no share in the wealth of the state is not held to
society by any bond. How can we expect a crowd of unfortunates to whom
we have given neither principles nor morals to remain quiet spectators
of the abundance, the luxury, the unjustly acquired riches of so many
corrupt individuals, who seem to insult the general poverty, and are
only rarely disposed to relieve it? By what right can society punish
the thieving servant who has been a witness of the unpunished robberies
and extortions of his master, or has seen public thieves strutting
along, enjoying the consideration of their fellow citizens, and
shamelessly displaying the fruits of their extortions under the very
eyes of the heads of the state? How can we make the poor respect the
property of others when they themselves have been the victims of the
rapacity of the rich, or have seen the property of their fellow
citizens snatched away by violence or fraud with impunity? Finally how
can we successfully preach submission to men to whom everything proves
that the laws, armed against themselves alone, are indulgent toward the
great and happy, and are inexorable only for the unhappy and poor? ‘A
man dies but once’ and the imagination of the criminal familiarizes
itself little by little with the idea of the most cruel punishments. He
ends by regarding them as a ‘mauvais quart d’heure’, and would as soon
perish by the hand of the executioner as die of hunger, or even work
all his life without reward.” [16]
VIII.
G. B. DE MABLY.
This author’s opinion of crime is best expressed by the following
quotation taken from his “De la législation ou principes des lois”:
“The more I reflect upon it the more I am convinced that inequality of
fortune and condition disorders man and alters the natural sentiments
of his heart, for the habit of luxury gives him a desire for things
that are useless for his true happiness and fills his mind with the
most unjust and absurd prejudices and errors. I believe that equality,
while satisfying modest requirements, keeps those requirements modest,
and preserves in the soul a peace which is opposed to the birth and
progress of the passions. By what strange folly should we have
cultivated a studied elegance and refinement in our needs if inequality
of fortune had not accustomed us to regard this ridiculous
fastidiousness as a proof of superiority, and attained thereby a
certain consideration? Why should I consider as below me a man who is
perhaps my superior in merit; why should I pretend to have authority
over him and so open the door to tyranny, to servitude, and all the
vices most fatal to society, if the inequality of conditions had not
exposed my soul to ambition, as the inequality of fortune has exposed
it to avarice? It is inequality alone that has taught men to prefer
many useless and harmful things to virtue. I believe that it has been
demonstrated that in a state of equality nothing would be easier than
to prevent abuses and maintain the law. Equality is certain to produce
all good, because it unites men, elevates their souls, and prepares
them for mutual feelings of benevolence and amity. Inequality, on the
other hand, produces all evil, because it degrades men, humiliates
them, and sows division and hatred among them.” [17]
IX.
J. P. BRISSOT DE WARVILLE.
In his “Théorie des loix criminelles” we find among others the
following passages that are of interest in connection with the subject
which occupies our attention:
“A man is not born an enemy to society. It is circumstances which give
him that title, such as poverty or misfortune. He does not disturb the
general tranquillity until he has lost his own. He ceases to be a good
citizen only when the name becomes meaningless in his case; and it is
when poverty has destroyed his own privileges that he dares to attack
those of his fellows. To make all citizens happy is, then, to prevent
the inception of crime; and the rarity of crime is in direct ratio to
the goodness of the administration. This simple principle, however
unknown to administrators even to the present day, is no less solid on
that account, no less luminous, and ought no less to serve as the basis
for government. If it has been neglected, it is because it has appeared
easier to rulers to punish the unfortunate being who demands the rights
that nature gave him, than to satisfy his just demand; to stifle the
cries of anguish, than to change them to shouts of applause. The penal
code of every nation is much like the bull of Phalaris; its imposing
garb of juridical forms, like the timbrels and other instruments
surrounding the brazen monster, prevent the cries of the victims from
reaching the ear. Tyrants cry out to the credulous spectators that
blood is necessary to the public safety; good legislators are greedy of
it.
“The first and most efficacious means of preventing crimes consists,
then, in a wise administration that procures the general happiness.
When the rays of the beneficent star that rules extend their influence
even to the lowest ranks of society, they are rarely sullied by
punishments; each, concentrating itself upon the spot where heaven has
thrown it, makes the day that it lightens joyous and blessed (and crime
is so near to the man who is forced to curse his fate!). If the taxes
are light and not severely felt, if subsistence is easy, the number of
marriages increases, they are happy, and the population multiplies. The
people then do not regret their labors, since they are interspersed
with pleasures. They are attached to the fatherland, which offers them
good fortune, and to life, which gives them the means of enjoying it. A
man does not disturb the public peace, because his own prosperity is
the fruit of it. A property-holder himself, he takes good care not to
do any violence to the right of property, and even where he would not
naturally have a horror of bloodshed, his days are too precious to him
for him to dare to cut short those of his fellow-citizens.” [18]
“... What sovereign, I say, cannot easily see that he has in his hand
the true means of restraining crime, namely to secure the public
well-being by means of civil legislation. Yes, the more perfect civil
legislation becomes the less need there will be for criminal
legislation. And this need will disappear entirely when the twofold
basis upon which civil legislation ought to rest becomes fixed and
invariable; when the property and the liberty of subjects are respected
by the monarch; when the unfortunate man who has been born without
property (though with the same needs as others) can, by working,
correct the injustice of fate, and destroy the inequality of the
distribution of wealth; when, finally, the fruit of his labor will not
be the prey of the greedy tax-gatherer. The rich man can then enjoy his
wealth in safety, because despair will no longer expose him to the
knife of the poor man whom his proud opulence insults. We posit here as
the foundation of good legislation the security of real and personal
property, but a masterpiece of statesmanship would be, to make them
useless, if it were possible, by abolishing them altogether. This would
be to tear up crime by the roots. It was thus that Lycurgus, whose laws
have been so calumniated because to narrow minds they seemed impossible
of imitation, cleverly dried up the source of all crime. To avoid
attacks upon property he abolished it; to prevent adultery he had all
women held in common; to make the Spartan a hero he made him the slave
of his harsh legislation; finally to prevent the sad effects of the
passions he permitted none but the passion for the public weal. This is
why crimes were so rare in Sparta as long as these laws were faithfully
observed. But when Lysander brought back from the fatal conquest of
Athens treasures, the taste for art and the rage for luxury, all the
vices were rapidly introduced. Then crimes broke out; ambition made men
commit perjuries, assassinations, treasons; then the virtuous Agis, who
wanted to revive morality, perished under the perfidious knife of the
royal servitude; then men like Nabis and Machanidas appeared; and
finally a penal code was introduced, and Sparta was reduced to the
status of an ordinary city.” [19]
“Ought we to be astonished that the attacks upon the social laws are so
multiplied to-day, and that there are always so many thieves and
assassins, when to the causes of crime which we have developed it is
necessary to add that horrible malady of European states, mendicity?
When the water destined by nature to quench the thirst of all men is
artificially diverted into particular channels for the exclusive use of
certain individuals, the unfortunate man, tormented by need, falls into
despair, and in a rage breaks these fatal channels, making the
fragments fall upon the heads of his enemies. Exclusive possession of
property has everywhere produced poverty in the most numerous class,
and poverty has given birth to mendicity, which, robbing with one hand
to satisfy hunger, with the other plunges a dagger into the bosom of
the rich to stop their cries. Here we have in two words the origin of
theft and murder. To destroy the roots of these it would be necessary
to restore among men the equality of condition so praised by modern
philosophers, but not at all included in the programs of modern
governments. It would be necessary to distribute wealth equally among
all citizens, to eradicate from their hearts the corrosive desire of
ambition, and to blunt the spur of their personal interest.” [20]
In his “Recherches philosophiques sur la propriété et sur le vol”
Brissot gives an exposition of natural property, and of property as
established by society. He says of crime: “Civil property is very
different from natural property, as we have shown. It is not based upon
the same title, and has not the same aim or the same bounds. Need is
the limit of natural property. Civil property goes further and includes
superfluities. In nature each man has a right to everything; in society
the man to whom his parents have left no property has a right to
nothing. In nature he would be guilty if he did not satisfy his needs;
he is guilty in society when he satisfies them if he has no property.
Society has, then, upset all the ideas of property given by nature. It
has destroyed the equilibrium between human beings which nature
established. Equality banished there appear the odious distinctions of
rich and poor. Society has been divided into two classes, the first
consisting of citizens with property, living in idleness; the second
and more numerous class composed of the mass of the people, to whom the
right to exist has been sold dear, and who are degraded and condemned
to perpetual toil. To confirm this new right of property the most cruel
punishments have been pronounced upon all those who disturb or attack
it. The breach of this right is called theft; and see how far we are
from nature! The thief in the state of nature is the rich man, the man
who has a superfluity; in society the thief is he who robs this rich
man. What a complete transposition of ideas!” [21]
“If man retains, even in society, the inalienable right of property
which nature has given him, nothing can take it from him, nothing can
prevent his exercising it. If the other members of society concentrate
in their own persons the possession of all the soil; if those who are
robbed by this spoliation and forced to have recourse to labor cannot
by this means secure their whole subsistence, then they have the right
to exact from the others, who hold property, the means of satisfying
their needs. They have a claim upon the wealth of others in proportion
to their own necessity, and force used to resist this claim is
violence. The rich man is the only thief; he alone ought to hang from
those infamous gallows which are raised only to punish the man born in
poverty for being needy; only to force him to stifle the voice of
nature, the cry of liberty; only to compel him to subject himself to a
harsh servitude in order to avoid an ignominious death.” [22]
X.
W. GODWIN.
In the third chapter of the First Book of his “Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice”, Godwin treats of two important kinds of crime,
theft and fraud.
Of these he says: “Two of the greatest abuses relative to the interior
policy of nations which at this time prevail in the world, consist in
the irregular transfer of property, either first by violence, or
secondly by fraud. If among the inhabitants of a country there existed
no desire in one individual to possess himself of the substance of
another, or no desire so vehement and restless as to prompt him to
acquire it by means inconsistent with order and justice, undoubtedly in
that country guilt could scarcely be known but by report. If every man
could with perfect facility obtain the necessities of life, and,
obtaining them, feel no uneasy craving after its superfluities,
temptation would lose its power. Private interest would visibly accord
with public good; and civil society become what poetry has feigned of
the golden age. Let us inquire into the principles to which these evils
are indebted for their existence.” [23]
According to him these crimes are the consequence:
First, Of poverty, which has reached enormous dimensions (in England
one person out of every seven has at some time received public aid).
The situation has become such that for the poor man the state of
society is a state of war. He considers society not as a body whose
object is to maintain personal rights and to procure to each individual
the means of providing for his own support, but as a body that protects
the advantageous position of one class of persons, while holding others
in a state of poverty and dependence.
Second, Of the ostentation of the rich, who make the poor man feel all
the more what he is deprived of.
Third, Of the tyranny of the rich, made permanent by legislation, by
the administration of the laws, and by the distribution of wealth.
In his Eighth Book (“Of Property”), Godwin elaborates the ideas given
above. Speaking of the moral improvement that would result from the
abolition of private property, he says: “And here it is obvious that
the great occasions for crime would be cut off forever. All men love
justice. All men are conscious that man is a being of one common
nature, and feel the propriety of the treatment they receive from one
another being measured by one common standard. Every man is desirous of
assisting another; whether we should choose to ascribe this to an
instinct implanted in his nature which renders this a source of
personal gratification, or to his perception of the reasonableness of
such assistance. So necessary a part is this of the constitution of
mind, that it may be doubted whether any man perpetrates any action,
however criminal, without having first invented some sophistry, some
palliation, by which he proves to himself that it is best to be done.
Hence it appears, that offense, the invasion by one man upon the
security of another, is a thought alien to the human mind, and which
nothing could have reconciled us to but the sharp sting of necessity.
To consider merely the present order of society, it is evident that the
first offense must have been his who began a monopoly, and took
advantage of the weakness of his neighbors to secure certain exclusive
privileges to himself. The man on the other hand who determined to put
an end to this monopoly, and who peremptorily demanded what was
superfluous to the possessor and would be of extreme benefit to
himself, appeared to his own mind to be merely avenging the offended
laws of justice. Were it not for the plausibleness of this apology, it
is to be presumed that there would be no such thing as crime in the
world.
“The fruitful source of crimes consists in this circumstance, one man’s
possessing in abundance that of which another man is destitute. We must
change the nature of mind before we can prevent it from being
powerfully influenced by this circumstance, when brought strongly home
to its perceptions by the nature of its situation. Man must cease to
have senses, the pleasures of appetite and vanity must cease to
gratify, before he can look on tamely at the monopoly of these
pleasures. He must cease to have a sense of justice before he can
clearly and fully approve this mixed scene of superfluity and want. It
is true that the proper method of curing this inequality is by reason
and not by violence. But the immediate tendency of the established
administration is to persuade that reason is impotent. The injustice of
which they complain is upheld by force, and they are too easily
induced, by force to attempt its correction. All they endeavor is the
partial correction of an injustice, which education tells them is
necessary, but more powerful reason affirms to be tyrannical.
“Force grew out of monopoly. It might accidentally have occurred among
savages whose appetites exceeded their supply, or whose passions were
inflamed by the presence of the object of their desire; but it would
gradually have died away, as reason and civilization advanced.
Accumulated property has fixed its empire; and henceforth all is an
open contention of the strength and cunning of the one party against
the strength and cunning of the other. In this case the violent and
premature struggles of the necessitous are undoubtedly an evil. They
tend to defeat the very cause in the success of which they are most
deeply interested; they tend to procrastinate the triumph of truth. But
the true crime in every instance is in the selfish and partial
propensities of men, thinking only of themselves, and despising the
emolument of others; and of these the rich have their share.
“The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of
fraud, these are the ultimate growth of the established administration
of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual and moral
improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their
inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the
midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature,
these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of
selfishness would vanish. No man would be obliged to guard his little
store, or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each
would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good.
No man would be an enemy to his neighbor, for they would have no
subject of contention; and of consequence philanthropy would resume the
empire which reason assigns her; mind would be delivered from her
perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the
field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the
inquiries of all.” [24]
XI.
R. OWEN. [25]
The author in several works has given us his ideas upon the relation
between crime and the social environment, and especially economic
conditions. It is in “The Book of the New Moral World”, which appeared
in 1844, that his views are best expressed. [26]
They may be summed up as follows: It is not the man himself, it is his
circumstances that form his character; an unfavorable environment
produces a bad man, a favorable one a good man. The organization of the
society of today is such that it awakens in a man all evil qualities.
The greater part of mankind live in conditions of the greatest poverty,
and become physically, intellectually, and morally inferior. The
working classes are housed in unsanitary dwellings, work too hard and
too long, and are insufficiently clothed and nourished.
Improper production and distribution of wealth are the causes of the
prevalence of disorder and anarchy. The means of production, the raw
materials and the productive forces, are sufficient to provide amply
for the needs of all. But competition by devouring wealth prevents
this, and brings it about that while some have a superfluity, the
majority have not even the necessaries of life (a fact which is one
great cause of criminality). The process of distribution adds
enormously to the waste because of the great number of intermediaries.
Education and instruction are neglected to the last degree. The
children of the lower classes are almost entirely deprived of
instruction, not to say education; their parents, never having been
taught themselves, are incapable of imparting instruction, nor have
they the leisure for it. However, the children of all classes are made
egotistical and anti-social; they have impressed upon them the maxim
“Each one for himself”, in place of being taught that the love of one’s
neighbor is the principle upon which society ought to be based.
Owen finds the cause of crime, then, in the organization of society
upon the basis of private property. The following is a characteristic
passage from Volume VI, “General Constitution of Government and
Universal Code of Law”:
“Private property has been, and is at this day, the cause of endless
crime and misery to man, and he should hail the period when the
progress of science, and the knowledge of the means to form a superior
character for all the individuals of the human race, render its
continuance not only unnecessary, but most injurious to all; injurious
to an incalculable extent to the lower, middle, and upper classes. The
possession of private property tends to make the possessor ignorantly
selfish; and selfish, very generally, in proportion to the extent of
the property held by its claimant....
“Private property also deteriorates the character of its possessor in
various ways; it is calculated to produce in him pride, vanity,
injustice, and oppression, with a total disregard of the natural and
inalienable rights of his fellow men. It limits his ideas within the
little narrow circle of self, prevents the mind from expanding to
receive the extended views beneficial for the human race, and
understand great general interests that could be made most essentially
to improve the character and condition of all....
“Private property alienates mind from mind, is a perpetual cause of
repulsive action throughout society, a never-failing source of
deception and fraud between man and man, and a strong stimulus to
prostitution among women. It has caused war throughout all the past
ages of the world’s known history, and has been a stimulant to
innumerable private murders.
“It is now the sole cause of poverty and its endless crimes and
miseries over the world, and in principle it is as unjust as it is
unwise in practice.
“In a rational-made society it will never exist. Whatever may have been
its necessity or utility, before the introduction of the supremacy of
machinery and chemistry, it is now most unnecessary and an unmixed
evil; for every one, from the highest to the lowest, may be ensured
through life much more of all that is really beneficial for humanity,
and the permanent happiness of the individual, through public
scientific arrangements, than it is possible to obtain through the
scramble and contest for procuring and maintaining private property.
“Private property also continually interferes with or obstructs public
measures which would greatly benefit all, and frequently to merely
please the whim or caprice of an ill-trained individual....
“With a well arranged scientific system of public property, equal
education and condition, there will be no mercenary or unequal
marriages; no spoiled children; and none of the evils which proceed
from these errors in the present system, if crudities which pervade all
the departments of life, and are thoroughly inconsistent, can be called
a system of society.
“In fact, as soon as individuals shall be educated and placed—and it is
for the best and permanent interest of society that all should be
educated and placed—the saving of time, labour, and capital, between
public and private property, will be beyond any estimate the mind of
man can form in favour of public property....
“Therefore the twelfth law [27] will be, that—
“‘Under the Rational System of society—after the children shall have
been trained to acquire new habits and new feelings, derived from a
knowledge of the laws of human nature—there shall be no useless private
property.’
“The old system of the world has been created and governed on the
assumed principle of man’s responsibility to man, and by man’s rewards
and punishments.
“And this principle has been assumed upon the original supposition,
that man was born with power to form himself into any character he
liked; to believe or disbelieve whatever he pleased; and that he could
love, hate, or be indifferent as to all persons and things, according
to an independent will which enabled him to do as he liked in all these
respects.
“The present system is, therefore, essentially a system supported and
governed by laws of punishment and reward of man’s creating, in
opposition to nature’s laws of punishing and rewarding. The former
system is artificial, and always produces crime and misery, continually
increasing, and therefore requiring new laws to correct the evils
necessarily forced upon society by the old laws; thus laws are
multiplied without limit by man to counteract nature’s laws, and ever
without success. While nature’s beautiful and benevolent laws, if
consistently acted upon in a system made throughout in accordance with
them, would produce knowledge, goodness, and happiness, continually
increasing, to the human race.
“By man’s laws being forced upon the population of all countries, in
continual opposition to nature’s laws; with law added to law, in the
vain attempt to remedy endless previous laws, the world had been made
and kept criminal, with crimes multiplying as human laws increased.
“The laws of man are made to support injustice, and give additional
power to the oppressor and to the man devoid of truth and honesty over
the innocent and just. And such must be the result, as long as human
laws, lawyers, and law paraphernalia shall be sanctioned by society....
“Nature’s laws carry with them the only just rewards and punishments
that man should experience; and they are, in every case, efficient for
nature’s purposes, and to ensure the happiness of man in all countries
and climes; and, differing from man’s puny, short-sighted laws, they
are always adequate to the end intended to be accomplished. And this
end is evidently to increase human knowledge and happiness. It is
through these laws of nature, that man has attained the knowledge which
he has acquired. He has been continually urged onward to make
discoveries, and to invent, through pain experienced, or pleasure
enjoyed or anticipated.
“But man has been trained to have his character formed, and to be
governed by laws of his own making; his habits, manners, ideas, and
associations of ideas have emanated, directly or indirectly, from his
artificial and injurious source; and, in consequence, the mind,
language, and practice of all individuals have become a chaos of
confusion. And this chaos in the character and conduct of individuals
has made a yet greater chaos in all the proceedings of society: and, in
consequence, man is now opposing man, and nation opposing nation, all
over the earth. Yet all nature declares, that it shall be by union of
man with man, and nation with nation, that the human race can ever
attain a high degree of permanent prosperity and happiness, or become
rational.
“Nevertheless, while this irrational individual and general character
shall remain, those men and women who have been made to receive this
character, and to be so injured, must continue for a time to be
governed by these most injurious laws. The laws of nature being alone
applicable to a society, whose laws are in accordance with the laws of
nature.
“When this rational society shall be formed, and men, individually and
generally, shall be trained to act in accordance with it, then shall
human punishments and rewards cease, and cease for ever.
“The thirteenth law will therefore be, that—
“‘As soon as the members of these scientific associations shall have
been educated, from infancy, in a knowledge of the laws of their
nature, trained to act in obedience to them, and surrounded by
circumstances all in unison with them, there shall be no individual
reward or punishment.’
“The Rational System of society is one and indivisible in its
principles and practices; each part is essential to its formation. It
is one unvarying consistent system for forming the character of all
individuals, and for governing their affairs; and it is essentially a
system to prevent evil, and render individual punishment and reward as
unnecessary, as they are unjust and injurious to all....
“Individual punishments and rewards, ignorance, the inferior feelings
and passions, with all crimes and miseries, will go together when the
irrational system shall be abolished. When the cause of evil shall be
removed, then will the evil cease, and not before.” [28]
XII.
E. CABET.
In the second part of his “Voyage en Icarie” the author treats of the
relation between crime and economic conditions. In his opinion money
and inequality of fortune and of property are the causes of all crimes.
The following quotation explains his views. (The work speaks of present
day society as in the past, and supposes the existence of a state with
common property.)
“Wealth and superfluity being, by their nature, as I have already said,
injustice and usurpation, the poor often thought only of robbing the
rich; and theft, under all its forms (swindling, pocket-picking,
bankruptcy, breach of trust, fraud, cheating, etc.), was the almost
universal occupation of the poor as well as of the rich. And the poor
robbed not only the rich, they robbed even the poor themselves, so that
all, rich and poor, were both robbers and robbed.
“It would be impossible to enumerate all the kinds of theft and classes
of thieves. It was in vain that the rich had terrible laws made against
theft; it was in vain that the prisons and galleys were kept filled
with poor thieves, and that their blood was often poured out upon the
scaffold. Buoyed up by the hope of not being discovered, the poor
robbed in the fields, or in houses, or upon the highroads, or even in
the streets at night. The skilful pick-pocket stole even in open day.
The audacious swindler robbed by means of trickery and deceit,
sometimes by selling things of no value, sometimes by taking advantage
of credulity or even of beneficence.
“Shall I speak of the counterfeiters of every description? Shall I also
speak of the usurers, the great thieves, the wolves of the bourse and
the bank, the contractors and monopolists? Shall I speak of those who
enriched themselves by means of public calamities, who desired or
provoked invasions or wars in order to make their fortunes, and famines
in order to amass money in the midst of corpses? Shall I speak of the
thieves who risked the public health by adulterating the food and drink
that they sold, and of those other great robbers, the heads of the
army, who pillaged foreign peoples while exposing their own country to
terrible reprisals? Finally shall I speak of the innumerable means of
amassing money at the expense of others, and of the innumerable
individuals in almost all classes who daily practiced them?
“Not all these acts were classed as thefts by the law. The most
inexcusable, the most harmful, those which were only practiced by the
rich, even enjoyed legal impunity. But all of them were, nevertheless,
in reality according to the rules of a sound morality, thefts. Each
class presented, without doubt, many exceptions. There were some rich
men as honest as possible, and many workers and poor men were persons
of probity; but it may be said that by force of circumstances, and as
an irresistible consequence of the inequality of fortune, all men, rich
and poor, were generally induced to commit actions which were in
reality only a kind of theft.
“And often theft led to all kinds of cruelty, to murder, and even to
the most barbarous tortures in order to make owners reveal where they
had hidden their gold. How many poisonings and parricides did the
thirst for gold or inheritance excite! Thieves kidnapped children in
order to prostitute them. They even stole and murdered young people in
order to sell the flesh of their corpses!
“In a word, neither confidence nor security was possible. Each
individual saw enemies in almost all the others; and society seemed, as
it were, but a haunt of cut-throats in the midst of a forest! And all
these horrors, which you will find more or less everywhere, were with
us, and are still elsewhere—I cannot repeat it too often—the inevitable
result of the unrestricted right of property.” [29]
XIII.
F. ENGELS.
Among the disastrous consequences which industrial capitalism draws in
its train the author ranks the tremendous increase of criminality. In
his “Condition of the Working Class in England” he says: “The failings
of the workers in general may be traced to an unbridled thirst for
pleasure, to want of providence, and of flexibility in fitting into the
social order, to the general inability to sacrifice the pleasure of the
moment to a remoter advantage. But is that to be wondered at? When a
class can purchase only a few and only the most sensual pleasures by
its wearying toil, must it not give itself over blindly and madly to
those pleasures? A class about whose education no one troubles himself,
which is a playball to a thousand chances, knows no security in
life—what incentives has such a class to providence, to
‘respectability’, to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for a remoter
enjoyment, most uncertain precisely by reason of the perpetually
varying, shifting conditions under which the proletariat lives? A class
which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying
its advantages, one to which the social system appears in purely
hostile aspects—who can demand that such a class respect this social
order? Verily that is asking much! But the working-man cannot escape
the present arrangement of society so long as it exists, and when the
individual worker resists it, the greatest injury falls upon himself.
“Thus the social order makes family life almost impossible for the
worker. In a comfortless, filthy house, hardly good enough for mere
nightly shelter, ill-furnished, often neither rain-tight nor warm, a
foul atmosphere filling rooms overcrowded with human beings, no
domestic comfort is possible. The husband works the whole day through,
perhaps the wife also and the elder children, all in different places;
they meet night and morning only, all under perpetual temptation to
drink; what family life is possible under such conditions? Yet the
working-man cannot escape from the family, must live in the family, and
the consequence is a perpetual succession of family troubles, domestic
quarrels, most demoralizing for parents and children alike. Neglect of
all domestic duties, neglect of the children, especially, is only too
common among the English working-people, and only too vigorously
fostered by the existing institutions of society. And children growing
up in this savage way, amidst these demoralizing influences, are
expected to turn out goody-goody and moral in the end! Verily the
requirements are naïve, which the self-satisfied bourgeois makes upon
the working-man!
“The contempt for the existing order is most conspicuous in its extreme
form—that of offenses against the law. If the influences demoralizing
to the working-man act more powerfully, more concentratedly than usual,
he becomes an offender as certainly as water abandons the fluid for the
vaporous state at 80 degrees, Réaumur. Under the brutal and brutalizing
treatment of the bourgeoisie, the working-man becomes precisely as much
without volition as water, and is subject to the laws of nature with
precisely the same necessity; at a certain point all freedom ceases.
Hence with the extension of the proletariat, crime has increased in
England, and the British nation has become the most criminal in the
world. From the annual criminal tables of the Home Secretary, it is
evident that the increase of crime in England has proceeded with
incomprehensible rapidity. The number of arrests for criminal offenses
reached in years: 1805, 4,605; 1810, 5,146; 1815, 7,898; 1820, 13,710;
1825, 14,437; 1830, 18,107; 1835, 20,731; 1840, 27,187; 1841, 27,760;
1842, 31,309 in England and Wales alone. That is to say, they increased
seven-fold in thirty-seven years. Of these arrests, in 1842, 4,497 were
made in Lancashire alone, or more than 14 per cent. of the whole; and
4,094 in Middlesex, including London, or more than 13 per cent. So that
two districts which include great cities with proletarian populations,
produced one fourth of the total amount of crime, though their
population is far from forming one fourth of the whole. Moreover, the
criminal tables prove directly that nearly all crime arises within the
proletariat; for in 1842, taking the average, out of 100 criminals,
32.35 could neither read nor write; 58.32 read and wrote imperfectly;
6.77 could read and write well; 0.22 had enjoyed a higher education,
while the degree of education of 2.34 could not be ascertained. In
Scotland, crime has increased yet more rapidly. There were but 89
arrests for criminal offenses in 1819, and as early as 1837 the number
had risen to 3,176, and in 1842 to 4,189. In Lanarkshire, where Sheriff
Alison himself made out the criminal report, the population has doubled
in thirty years, and crime in five and a half, or six times more
rapidly than the population. The offenses, as in all civilized
countries, are, in the great majority of cases, against property. The
proportion of offenses to the population, which in the Netherlands is
as 1 : 7,140, and in France as 1 : 1,804, was in England, when Gaskell
wrote, as 1 : 799. The proportion of offenses against persons to the
population in the Netherlands, 1 : 28,904; in France, 1 : 17,537; in
England, 1 : 23,395; that of crimes in general to the population in the
agricultural districts, as 1 : 1,043; in the manufacturing districts as
1 : 840. (‘Manufacturing Population of England’, chap. 10.) In the
whole of England today the proportion is 1 : 660; though it is scarcely
ten years since Gaskell’s book appeared!” [30]
CHAPTER II.
THE STATISTICIANS.
I.
A. M. GUERRY.
In his “Essai sur la statistique morale de la France”, the author has
made a study of the influence of age, sex, season, education, etc.,
upon criminality. But there is scarcely to be found an exposition of
the influence of economic conditions upon the subject which we are
considering. The following passages, however, are not devoid of
interest.
“Wealth, (as determined by the amount of taxes on personal and real
property) more often than density of population, coincides with crimes
against property, of which it thus appears to be an indirect cause. We
shall observe, however, that while the maximum of wealth falls in the
departments of the North, where the greatest number of crimes against
property are found; and the minimum in the center where these crimes
are most rare; yet in the South the average is almost as high as in the
North. Now if in the North is wealth which indirectly produces the
crimes against property, why is it that the same is not true of the
South? It would be unsafe to conclude from the fact that the poorest
departments are those where the fewest crimes against property are
committed, that poverty is not the principal cause of these crimes. In
order to justify this conclusion, which in other regards we are far
from rejecting, more direct proofs would be necessary. As a matter of
fact, it is possible that the departments where there is the least
wealth are not those where there are the greatest number of the very
poor; and that the departments where the largest fortunes are to be
found are just those where the poverty of a part of the population is
greatest.
“The question of the effect of wealth or poverty upon morality presents
more difficulty than one would suspect at first glance. To study it it
would be necessary to determine the ratio of the indigent and pauper
class in each department. Some documents upon the subject have been
published, it is true, but they have no authentic character, and do not
appear to merit enough confidence for us to give the analysis of them
here.” [31]
Further along Guerry shows that the departments where commerce and
manufacturing are most highly developed furnish also the greatest
number of crimes against property. But the author has not investigated
the connection between these two symptoms. Although not rejecting,
then, entirely the hypothesis that poverty is not the principal cause
of crimes against property, Guerry recognizes nevertheless that a
causal connection between poverty and crime is possible, that is to say
he perceives that the department where the greatest poverty prevails is
not necessarily that which is the poorest, nor that the richest is the
one that has the fewest of the very poor.
II.
AD. QUETELET.
An exposition of the whole system of this author would lead us too far.
But the following quotations from his “Physique sociale” will suffice
to show the breadth of his views and the vastness of his conception of
society.
“Thus, to make our manner of procedure plain by an example, anyone who
examines too closely a small portion of a very great circumference
traced upon a plane, will see in this portion only a certain number of
physical points, assembled in a more or less accidental way.... From a
greater distance his eye will take in a greater number of points, which
will already appear regularly distributed in an arc of a certain
extent; soon, if the observer continues to recede, he loses sight of
the individual points ... grasps the law that has presided over their
general arrangement, and recognizes the nature of the curve traced....
“It is in this way that we shall study the laws that concern the human
race; for when we examine them from too near at hand it becomes
impossible to grasp them; we are struck only with individual
peculiarities, which are infinite.” [32]
“In all that relates to crimes, the same figures are reproduced with
such constancy that it is impossible to misconstrue them, even in the
case of those crimes which, it would seem, should be most likely to
escape human prevision, such as homicides, since these are in general
committed as a consequence of quarrels arising without motive, and
under apparently fortuitous circumstances. Experience, however, proves
that not only is the annual number of homicides nearly constant, but
that even the weapons employed are used in the same proportions. What
can be said then of crimes that are the result of reflection?
“This constancy with which the same crimes reappear annually in the
same order, and lead to the same penalties in the same proportions, is
one of the most curious of the facts that we learn from court
statistics.... A budget which we pay with frightful regularity is that
of the jails, the penitentiaries, and the gallows.... We can enumerate
in advance how many individuals will stain their hands with the blood
of their fellows, how many will be forgers, how many poisoners; almost
as we can predict the births and deaths....
“Society contains within itself the germs of all the crimes that are
about to be committed. It is society, in a way, which prepares them,
and the criminal is only the instrument that executes them.
“Every social state supposes, then, a certain number and certain order
of crimes as a necessary consequence of its organization. This remark,
which might appear discouraging at first sight, becomes consoling, on
the contrary, when we consider it more closely, since it shows the
possibility of the improvement of men, by the modification of their
institutions and habits and whatever, in general, influences their
manner of being. At bottom this is only the extension of the well known
law ... that so far as the same causes are present we must expect the
repetition of the same effects. What has produced the belief that this
did not apply to moral phenomena is the too great influence commonly
ascribed to man in matters relating to his actions.” [33]
In the second volume of the “Physique sociale”, Quetelet studies the
influence of climate, age, and sex upon the tendency to crime. Although
he merely touches upon our subject and treats it only indirectly, the
following passages are worth the trouble of quoting:
“Poverty also is very generally regarded as leading to evil; however
the department of the Creuse, one of the poorest in France, is that
which shows in every respect, the highest morality. In the same way in
the Netherlands, the most moral province is Luxemburg, where there is
most poverty reigning. We must, however, be clear about the word
poverty, which is here employed with a significance to which exception
may be taken. A province is not really poor for having less extreme
wealth than another, if the inhabitants, as in Luxemburg, are sober and
industrious; if, by their labor, they succeed in providing in a
dependable way for their needs, and in satisfying tastes that are so
much the more modest, as the inequality of fortune is less felt, and
causes less temptation; it may be said with more justice that this
province enjoys a modest competence. Poverty makes itself felt in the
provinces where great wealth is piled up, as in Flanders, Holland, the
department of the Seine, etc., and especially in manufacturing
countries, where the slightest political disturbance, the slightest
obstruction in the channels of trade, will suddenly reduce thousands
from a state of well-being to one of distress. It is these sudden
changes from one state to another that give birth to crime, especially
if those who suffer from them are surrounded by temptations, and are
irritated by the continual sight of luxury and an inequality of fortune
that makes them desperate.” [34]
In speaking of the three races that make up the population of France,
Quetelet says:
“The most remarkable anomaly that the Celtic race seems to present is
found in the departments that belong to the valley of the Seine,
especially below Paris. Several causes contribute to bring this about.
We shall note first that these departments are those which, by reason
of their extent, contain most persons and things, and consequently
offer most opportunities to commit crimes; it is there that there is
most movement and that most vagrants flow in from all districts....
Finally, it is here also that we find most industrial establishments
and these establishments support a congested population whose means of
support are more precarious than in other vocations.... The commercial
and industrial provinces of the Netherlands are likewise those in which
most offenses are committed.” [35]
III.
EDW. DUCPETIAUX.
One of the parts of his “Paupérisme dans les Flandres” treats of the
criminality in the two provinces of that name. We quote the following
from it:
“Criminality is the inseparable companion of poverty. As the number of
indigent persons increases, we see the number of crimes also increase.
Hunger is a bad counselor. In the midst of crushing destitution, a man
gradually loses the notion of justice and injustice, of good and bad;
beset by needs that he cannot satisfy, he disregards the laws, and ends
by recoiling from no attempt that appears capable of bettering his
condition. Visiting a prison is enough to convince one of the influence
of this cause upon the number and the nature of the offenses, and
before even questioning the statistics that attest the progress of
criminality in Flanders, we could be assured that this progress had
coincided with that of pauperism. It is not then a demonstration (which
we judge quite unnecessary) that we are about to offer here, it is only
a series of facts that may serve to make the reader appreciate the
greatness of the evil and the urgent necessity of attacking its source.
“The first of these facts is the high figure for convicts belonging to
East and West Flanders, when compared with the total number of convicts
in the central prisons.... In the ten years between 1838 and 1847,
23,075 convicts were received in the central prisons of the kingdom;
10,308 belonged to the two Flanders and 12,767 to the other provinces;
the proportion, to 1000 convicts, was 447 for the first two provinces,
and 553 for the seven others. Now this proportion is considerably in
excess of that of the respective populations of the two divisions,
since, to the thousand inhabitants, there are only 331 in Flanders and
669 in the rest of the kingdom. In other words, during the decennial
period in question, one prisoner was received to 139 inhabitants in
Flanders, and to 227 in the seven other provinces.
“The second fact is the increase in the number of persons arraigned and
convicted in the Flemish provinces during the last few of these years,
and particularly since the food shortage of 1845. In a space of seven
years, the number of those arraigned in the two Flanders increased
about in the ratio of 7 to 17; that of those condemned to imprisonment
grew, during the same period from 35 to 123, or nearly quadrupled.
“These data are confirmed by an abstract of the numbers received into
the jails and prisons of the two provinces, as well as by the average
population of these establishments, during the period from 1839 to
1848:
======+===============================================+=======+==========
| Persons Received into the Jails and Prisons of| | Average
+-----------------------------------------------+ |Population
Years.| |Totals.| of the
| West Flanders. | | Prisons.
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------+----------
| Bruges. | Courtrai. | Ypres. | Furnes. | |
+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ |
1839 | 1,578 | 592 | 572 | 169 | 2,911 | 233
1840 | 1,502 | 643 | 821 | 196 | 3,162 | 238
1841 | 1,377 | 795 | 599 | 175 | 2,946 | 311
1842 | 1,489 | 863 | 836 | 271 | 3,459 | 346
1843 | 1,478 | 922 | 790 | 298 | 3,488 | 374
1844 | 1,502 | 941 | 696 | 270 | 3,409 | 379
1845 | 1,876 | 935 | 600 | 254 | 3,665 | 376
1846 | 2,378 | 1,108 | 935 | 601 | 5,022 | 574
1847 | 3,751 | 2,012 | 1,238 | 909 | 7,910 | 820
1848 | 2,859 | 1,960 | 1,070 | 690 | 6,579 | 694
+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ |
| East Flanders. | |
+-----------+------------+----------+---------- + |
| Ghent. | Audenarde. | Termonde. | |
+-----------+------------+----------------------+ |
1839 | 2,094 | 842 | 754 | 3,690 | 289
1840 | 2,311 | 919 | 852 | 4,082 | 357
1841 | 2,163 | 771 | 852 | 3,786 | 351
1842 | 2,171 | 844 | 905 | 3,920 | 333
1843 | 3,610 | 991 | 870 | 5,471 | 408
1844 | 2,548 | 760 | 718 | 4,026 | 345
1845 | 2,579 | 1,061 | 1,461 | 5,101 | 360
1846 | 5,499 | 2,732 | 2,092 | 0,323 | 619
1847 | 7,491 | 6,943 | 3,240 | 7,674 | 972
1848 | 6,309 | 4,462 | 2,829 | 3,600 | 698
======+===========+============+======================+=======+==========
“The increase in the numbers received into the jails and prisons of the
two provinces took place especially in the years 1845, 1846, and 1847;
in 1848 we note quite a pronounced decrease, which continues in 1849.
Of all the signs to prove the existence and progress of pauperism, this
is perhaps the most certain. During the disastrous years that had just
elapsed, the prisons became in a sense annexes of the hospitals and
almshouses; a great number of offenses were committed with the sole
object of finding asylum....
“As to the children, we shall understand the imminence of the danger
when we realize that in the short space of three years, from 1845 to
1847, 26,247 children and young persons of both sexes under 18, were
incarcerated in prison or were inmates of workhouses. Most of these
children belonged to the two provinces of Flanders, and a great number
were arrested outside the limits of their province. Here is the
increase in the number of those received into the prisons of Ghent and
Bruges, and the jails of Audenarde, Termonde, Courtrai, Ypres, and
Furnes:
==========+==========================+=========================
|Young Prisoners (under 18)|
| Received in | Total during the 3 Yrs.
Cities. +--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
| 1845. | 1846. | 1847. | Boys. | Girls. |General
| | | | | | Total.
----------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
| Prisons of E. Flanders.
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
Ghent | 350 | 1,345 | 1,898 | 2,671 | 922 | 3,593
Audenarde | 207 | 315 | 674 | 929 | 267 | 1,196
Termonde | 123 | 235 | 406 | 616 | 148 | 764
+--------+--------+--------+ -------+--------+-------
| Prisons of W. Flanders.
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
Bruges | 459 | 299 | 550 | 1,110 | 198 | 1,308
Courtrai | 116 | 170 | 331 | 560 | 57 | 617
Ypres | 70 | 184 | 250 | 414 | 90 | 504
Furnes | 43 | 139 | 57 | 151 | 88 | 239
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+-------
Totals | 1,368 | 2,687 | 4,166 | 6,451 | 1,770 | 8,221
==========+========+========+========+========+========+=======
“This deplorable fact of the increase of criminality among the young is
explained by the statistics of indigence. We see in fact that, among
the indigent persons aided in East Flanders, in 1847, there were:
==============================+===========+===========+========
| In the | In the |
| Cities. | Country. | Total.
------------------------------+-----------+-----------+--------
Indigent persons under 6 yrs. | 6,693 | 34,637 | 41,530
,, ,, ,, 12 ,, | 8,327 | 37,437 | 45,764
,, ,, ,, 18 ,, | 5,597 | 20,060 | 25,653
| | +--------
General total | 112,947
======================================================+========
“Supposing that West Flanders, which has more dependents in proportion
than East Flanders, has the same proportion of children, we arrive at a
total for the two provinces, of 225,894 indigent persons whose age is
not above 18. In this number there are 174,588 who have not passed
their twelfth year! And there are thousands of orphans!
“Notwithstanding the improvement that begins to make itself felt,
thanks to the resumption of work and the low price of provisions, many
of these young unfortunates continue to give themselves up to begging
and vagrancy. But lately driven from their homes by cold and hunger,
they form a wandering population, incessantly buffeted from almshouse
to almshouse, from prison to prison.
“In Brussels at this present moment (July, 1849) there are still to be
found in the annex of the prison, about 250 mendicants, among whom are
97 children below the age of 17. In the prisons of Ghent and Bruges
their number is equally great.” [36]
“It is an established fact, then, that the increase of criminality in
Flanders has gone hand in hand with the extension of poverty. The
latter brings about the abandonment of homes; ... from this come
mendicity, vagrancy, marauding, and theft. The incarceration of so
great a number of unfortunates brings the most disastrous consequences.
The germs of corruption, brutality, and crime are continually injected
into a large fraction of the population. The habit of working is lost,
energy is relaxed, idleness becomes incurable. When we think especially
of the mass of children who, during the last few years, have passed
through the prisons and almshouses, we cannot picture without pity,
mingled with fear, the future of this generation, initiated at an early
age into the existence of criminals, and condemned to the dangers and
evils inseparable from the abandonment and degradation to which they
are a prey.” [37]
IV.
L. M. MOREAU-CHRISTOPHE. [38]
In speaking of England, after having sketched how industrialism, as it
spread more and more, drew after it an increase of pauperism, the
author says of the connection between criminality and economic
conditions:
“Parallel with the ascending figure for pauperism, rises the growing
figure for criminality. The number of persons arraigned at the assizes
of England and Wales has increased as follows:
=============+==========+===============
Years. | Totals. |Annual Average.
-------------+----------+---------------
1814 to 1820 | 78,762 | 11,252
1821 to 1827 | 99,842 | 14,263
1828 to 1834 | 134,062 | 19,152
1834 to 1840 | 162,502 | 23,214
1841 to 1847 | 193,445 | 27,760
=============+==========+===============
“Thus in a space of thirty-four years the number of crimes has more
than doubled in England, while, in the same interval, the increase of
the population has hardly passed 40%.
“The parallelism between the growing pauperism and growing criminality
is even more striking when the comparison is applied to the delinquents
under the summary jurisdiction of the justices of the peace. Up to the
time of the establishment of the workhouses in 1834 the number of poor
persons assisted increased progressively from year to year. Well, the
number of persons arrested by the metropolitan police followed the same
progression. This number was 72,824 in 1831, and 77,543 in 1832. In
1833 the new poor law with its terrible workhouses was approaching;
consequently the number of arrests was no more than 69,959. In 1834 the
law was promulgated, and up to 1838 was executed with great rigor; as a
result the number of arrests fell to 64,269 in 1834, to 63,674 in 1835,
and to 63,584 in 1836. In 1837 the severity began to relax;
consequently the number of arrests increased to 64,416. In 1839 the
laxity continued, and the number of arrests increased to 70,717. Laxity
reached its height in 1842, and the number of arrests rose to 76,545;
this was an arrest to each 25 of the population.
“In Newcastle in 1837 the magistrates sentenced 1 person to 24 of the
whole population. In Leeds during a period of six years, from 1833 to
1838, there was one person arrested to 32 of the population. In
Manchester in 1841 ... the ratio of persons arrested, to the
population, was as 1 to 21.... In 1831, ten years earlier, the
proportion was still only 1 to 78. It almost quadrupled, then, in the
interval. In Liverpool in 1840 there was one arrest to 12 inhabitants.”
[39]
V.
G. MAYR.
The statistical data that form the basis of Dr. Mayr’s “Statistik der
gerichtlichen Polizei im Königreiche Bayern und in einigen anderen
Ländern” are different from those used in similar works. For, while
generally only the number of crimes whose authors have been convicted,
or that of delinquents punished, are considered, Dr. Mayr is of the
opinion that to obtain a true picture of the morality of a people, it
is necessary to take into account the number of crimes known to the
police. “If we wish really to form an exact picture of the moral
condition of a people, we must first of all ask ourselves the question,
how great is the number of the cases of crimes of different kinds that
are of common notoriety, before we ask how great is the number of the
individuals who are convicted of these crimes. The immorality of a
people is determined not by the number of individuals convicted, but by
the number of crimes committed; else that people would be most moral in
which no offender ever let himself be caught, even if more crimes were
committed there than elsewhere.” [40]
BAVARIA.
The results of Dr. Mayr’s researches in regard to crime in this country
are shown by him in a number of charts. [41]
Cis-Rhenal Territory. A comparison of the curves for crimes against
property and those for crimes against persons shows us that the first
descends as the other ascends, and vice versa. In seeking for the
causes we find that in general the motives for the latter class of
crime are, among others, coarseness, passion, and dissoluteness, while
that of the first kind of crime is the desire to secure objects for
direct use. The more difficult it is to gain a livelihood in a lawful
manner, the more this tendency will develop.
According to the author, the fluctuation in the price of grain is one
of the most important factors bearing upon criminality. And indeed, in
examining his nine statistical charts the connection between the high
or the low cost of grain, and the great or the small number of offenses
against property comes out clearly. The curve for offenses against
persons, on the other hand, falls when the price of grain rises, and
vice versa. The improvement of living conditions, both subjectively
(through having the means to purchase the necessaries) and objectively
(through a fall in prices) must consequently exercise a considerable
influence upon criminality. This is seen very well in the last years of
the period 1835–61, when the price of grain was low, and wages very
generally increased. Hence, from 1857 on, there was an increase in the
crimes against persons, and a decrease in the crimes against property.