rve and
calculation, as e.g. assassinations, murders, robberies, swindlings,
etc., will not touch alcohol until their crime has been completed and
they have satisfied themselves that they covered up all trace of it.
They then often indulge in a debauch.

In the lower courts, offenders will frequently plead as an extenuation
that they were intoxicated at the time when they committed their
offence. This is often done in order to escape the full penalty, and
such pleas are not to be relied upon in estimating the real influence of
alcohol. In the higher courts, for the same reason, criminals often
feign insanity, and in not a few of such cases they become their own
dupes by actually losing the possession of their senses. Drunkenness and
crime go together, although the increase in the consumption of alcohol
does not necessarily mean that crime has increased. Neither does the
reverse hold good. When crime appears first it is not long before all
forms of animal indulgence follow. Sometimes drunkeness appears first,
and when the home has been reduced to beggary, crime results.

Under the immediate influence of drink, the crimes most commonly
committed are those against morality and the person. In countries where
the saloon is an institution, it is invariably the home of criminals and
the scene of many murders and deeds of blood. In France, e.g. out of
10,000 murders committed, 2,374 occurred in saloons. The indirect
influence of alcohol is perhaps more terrible than its direct influence.
There is this sad feature about it also that the greatest sufferers are
the victims, not of their own abuse, but of that of others. Many a
criminal tells the story, which is easily corroborated, of the days of
his childhood when his father came home drunk and the children for very
fear had to hide themselves or run out into the streets, often to sleep
wherever they could, and perhaps steal to satisfy the pangs of hunger.
Such children are quickly absorbed, the girls into the ranks of
prostitution, the boys into those of crime. Many too, by reason of their
parents' intemperance, are weaklings and unable to take their stand in
the ranks of honest labourers. Unless they are rescued by philanthropic
effort they very soon take to crime, and physically and psychically
present all the features of the "instinctive criminal."

Of 12,000 criminals at Elmira, in nearly 36 per cent, was a drunken
ancestry to be clearly traced.

To state exactly the inf