tirely opposed
to fact, indeed the exact reverse is the case.

So far as the criminal is concerned, one may well ask whether he has not
set himself to the useless task of threshing straw.

The question concerning the proportionate rate of natural increase among
all classes of society is one which provides one of the fundamentals
upon which Dr Chapple has based his proposal. Instead of enquiring into
the actualities of this question he has assumed them, and from his
assumption proceeded to his result. His assumption that the better
classes use preventive means which the inferior classes do not use, is
open to challenge; that there might exist among the inferior classes
causes peculiar to these classes which militate against their increasing
naturally, he has failed to notice. There do exist such, and so potent
as to disprove entirely his statement that the problem is one for the
solution of which we must search deep down in biological truth. The true
solution will not be found in biological truth but in sociological
truth, and there fairly near the surface.

As Dr Chapple's evidence entirely fails, the conclusions of expert
criminologists must be accepted, viz., that criminals are
characteristically unproductive, and that, among male criminals, the
celibates are in a large majority. As, from these reasons, the vast
majority of criminals cannot be the descendants of a criminal ancestry,
obviously tubo-ligature will not meet the case.

So far indeed the criminal descendant from criminal stock has alone been
considered, whereas a large number of criminals have come from a drunken
or from a pauper ancestry. Statistics indicate that 33 per cent. of
criminals come from an intemperate ancestry and 2 per cent. from a
pauper one. But in both cases, environment has a great deal more to be
held responsible for than has heredity. It is the conditions of the home
life which make the drunkard's child a criminal, and the same applies
with equal force to the pauper's child. So that, if drastic measures are
to be taken with these classes, surely such measures will proceed
gradually from the mean to the extreme, and severe measures will not be
employed until milder ones have failed. Where the question is one of
environment it is the man's character and habits which have to be dealt
with and not his nature. Environment is always capable of modification,
and, when improved, the result is invariably a beneficial one for those
concerned.