motely caused or affected by the use of intoxicating liquors. But we are looking for the chief, and not the incidental causes of crime, and, therefore, it is safer to say that only an average of two out of three of those offences can justly be traced to excessive drinking.

It is a singular fact that professional burglars are not for the most part habitually intemperate. Their peculiar crime requires a degree of self-possession and steadiness of nerve quite inconsistent with the use of liquors; and so it is found that they are generally either total abstainers, or are temporarily so at all periods when they have "work" in contemplation or in hand. With this exception most felonies may truly be said to be largely instigated by intemperance, because intoxicating drinks lead to the commission of crime by firing the passions, quenching the conscience and impairing the salutary fear of punishment. It is true that larcenies are in great degree instigated by avarice, yet they are frequently caused by the desire to secure means for the purchase of drink.

The enormous expenses brought upon the people by the trial and punishment of crime are therefore mainly the legitimate consequences of the sale and use of liquors. But the cost of courts and prisons are small in proportion to the other expenses and losses entailed by the same cause. Intemperance fills not only the jails and penitentiaries, but the poor-houses and hospitals, and the wives and children of criminals are thrown a burthen upon public or private charity. The loss of useful labor to the community entailed by crime and its punishment is also an immense item in this computation, and with the expenses already mentioned in the aggregate annually reaches many millions of dollars.

But while the relations of intemperance and crime may be shown in the modes above stated, there is still another mode in which they may be proved with a clearness equally striking, and that is by the infrequency of crime and its consequences in communities and families where intemperance for some reason does not or cannot exist. A very clear illustration of this may be found, even in the midst of intemperate communities, in the very general absence of crime in families of total abstainers. It is not intended to say that morality and virtue are alone found in such families, for they often exist in families quite independently of the question of their habits in that respect. Nevertheless, it cannot be gainsaid that offences against the law are less likely to be committed by the strictly temperate members of any community. What is meant to be asserted is that the relations of intemperance to crime are clearly shown by the diminution of the latter wherever the former is wholly or partially suppressed. A remarkable instance of this may be seen in the success of Father Mathew in Ireland during the period when his marvelous power in obtaining voluntary pledges practically suspended the use of liquors in large portions

of that country. According to the statistics given by Lord Morpeth, then Secretary for Ireland, the cases of murder, attempts at murder, offences against the person, aggravated assaults and cutting and maiming fell off in two years from 12,096 to 1,097.

Similar but less strikingly manifest instances have occurred in our own country, and have sometimes resulted in the simultaneous and almost complete closing of the liquor saloons and the criminal courts. The cases of towns and villages in which, by the arrangement of their founders, the sale of intoxicating drinks has been prohibited also furnish strong evidence.

Vineland, in New Jersey, a place of ten thousand inhabitants, is without a grog shop, requires but a moderate police force, and is reported in some years to have been without a single crime. The town of Greeley, in Colorado, with a population of three thousand, is without a liquor store, and has in some years had no use for a police force or a criminal magistrate. Bavaria, in Illinois, a town of about the same population, and with absolute prohibition, is reported to be without a drunkard, without a pauper and without a crime. In each of these towns the sale of liquors was prohibited, not by force of law, but by the provision of their respective founders, sustained by popular sentiment. A later instance is the recently established town of Pullman, a suburb of the city of Chicago. The entire town is the property of the Pullman Palace Car Company, where the extensive manufacturing works of that company and various other important manufacturing establishments are located. Its present population is about eight thousand five hundred. It is a place of wonderful thrift and beauty, combining with the necessities of life all its comforts and elegancies and many of its uxuries. Its inhabitants are mostly workmen, engaged in its numerous manufactories, living with their families in singular comfort amid the most pleasant surroundings. It has churches, schools, libraries, reading rooms, places of amusement, markets, stores and warehouses, but no liquor saloons or grogshops, these latter being excluded by the will of its owners.

Within its borders

crime is the most infrequent occurrence; few arrests have ever been made, and its expenses for a police force and criminal courts are reduced to a minimum.

Other instances of similar character might be adduced, but surely these are enough to show that the relations of intemperance and crime are such that the extent of the one is the measure of the other. By this it is not meant that the one cannot exist without the other, for it is known that either can do that. But the idea sought to be inculcated is, that when crime becomes prevalent to a given degree intemperance in a like ratio may always be underlying it, and that as inte...perance grows or diminishes crime falls off or increases in portions almost mathematically demonstrable.

pro

The relations of intemperance and crime are also plainly manifest in the poisonous educational influences of the former. At immense cost the people maintain public schools for the education of their children. By these it is hoped not merely to afford to every child opportunity for an elementary education, but also to inculcate just ideas of morality and virtue. Religious denominations of every creed and faith rear temples of worship in which to guide communities toward higher and purer lives. No one can question the vast and salutary influences of these institutions, nor doubt that the people as a whole are made better and happier by their existence. But who can measure the extent to which their influence is impaired and their benefits destroyed by the prevalence of intemperance? Against every school house and every church intemperance rears thrice as many rum shops and drinking saloons to pour forth antagonistic effects, always. alert and active for harm. The school, the church, the grog shop are each and all the educators of youth-the first two undoubtedly for good, the last undoubtedly for evil. One needs only to visit the sessions of our criminal courts to see how truly and inevitably the education of the drinking saloon leads to vice and crime. It is safe to say that a large majority of the convictions in the courts of the city are of young persons, averaging under twenty-one years of age. They are the pupils of the saloons. They graduate directly from the drinking school to the prison. It is a well known fact that many thousands. of the youth-mere boys-of our city are organized into bands, calling themselves by distinctive names, roving from saloon to saloon, committing petty offences against person or property. These are the offspring of the liquor shops, taking daily and nightly lessons at their bars, and progressing under their tuition step by step towards crime and its consequences. For this sort of education the people of the city and country are paying more heavily than for all their schools. and churches, for it is this training that chiefly desolates homes, perpetrates crimes and populates prisons, almshouses and hospitals. Our common schools throughout the whole country are estimated to cost us eighty millions of dollars annually; our intemperance, in its. crimes, evils and miseries, and for their restraint, punishment and relief, more than a thousand millions.

The lessons these facts teach us are that the prosperity and happiness of communities are in no sense dependent upon the use of intoxicating drinks; that such use is a pernicious and destructive agent, more potent than any other to lead to vice and crime and their consequences-pauperism, suffering and shame; and that the chief hope of our country for the diminution of crime lies in the promotion of temperance, the prevention of drunkenness and the ultimate suppression of the causes that lead to that vice.

It is not the design of this paper to consider how that may best be

done, nor the relative value of the various modes advocated by philanthropists, enthusiasts or legislators. The world constantly progresses, and in its progress let us hope there will soon be evolved such a measure of wisdom as shall lift the subject of temperance wholly out of the morass of partisan politics into the serener region of humanity and love.

V. OUR CRIMINALS AND CHRISTIANITY.*

By W. M. F. ROUND, NEW YORK,

Corresponding Secretary of the Prison Association of New York.

ONE evening, while attending the meeting of the American Social Science Association in Saratoga, I found myself talking with a venerable member of that body in the parlor of the hotel while the session of the Association was going on in a neighboring hall. I expressed some surprise that he should be absent from the meeting. He replied: "I stayed at home to read a book on social science that furnishes me with a solution of all the problems they discuss there." I asked the name of the book and its author. He answered that it was written by various authors; that the first chapter was written by a man named Moses, and the last chapter by a man named John; and the name of the book was the Bible. And the old man was right in his estimate of the book: it is at once a guide to the solution of our social problems and a standard by which we may measure our success in dealing with the problems of society. No worthy and permanent social reform has ever taken place except in the line of its teachings-and its teachings culminated and crystallized in Him who has given a name to the fairest and most luminous era of civilization that has ever shone upon the earth. All organized philanthropies have centred in Him, and there has been no true philanthropic impulse becoming a part of a national life that was not essentially and professedly Christian. It is our boast as a nation that we are a Christian nation. In His name our name as a people has blossomed. Whenever we have departed from the spirit of His teachings we have met shame and degradation; wherever we have brought ourselves into harmony with His recreation of law, we have met with prosperity and success. So it behooves us to bring to all our institutional developments, of whatever name or nature, the test of the Gospel. Let me ask you to apply with me this touchstone of Gospel teaching to the Penal system of our land.

*In the following article the writer does not undertake to express the views of either the Prison Association of New York or the National Prison Association of the United States, with both of which Societies he is officially connected. The aim of the paper has been simply to call attention to certain radical defects in our Penal System, to provoke a consideration of them, and a discussion of means to effect their removal.

Let us begin by getting solid ground under our feet. Let us first take a glance at the material with which the penal system has to deal, and consider the criminal class. Second, let us briefly study our present method of dealing with the criminal class. Third, let us lay down a few propositions as to certain inevitable conditions that must be fulfilled in our relations to the criminal class. Fourth, let us bring each of these unfolded divisions side by side with the teachings of Christ. Fifth, should we find that any part of our penal system is not in harmony with Christian principles, let us sweep the horizon of thought and power to find means of effecting such harmony.

I. The Criminal Class consists of those persons who are not in harmony with the legal order of things as touching the relations of persons and property. It consists of the active enemies of social order who break the written laws. In its broadest definition, it consists of those who live by crime. This definition makes the criminal class inclusive of all whose livelihood depends on the commission of crime as the dependent families of active criminals. In the United States, according to the census of 1880, there were in our penal institutions, in round numbers, 60,000 persons (59,255). By the best authorities it is reckoned that not more than one-fifth of the active criminals are in prison at one time. This would bring our active criminal population up to 300,000. It is reckoned that the criminals in prison only represent one-twelfth of those whose livelihood is dependent upon criminal practices. Thus we have 720,000, or nearly three-quarters of a million persons directly interested in the perpetration of crime and the perpetuation of the criminal profession. In the State of New York we had last year 15,690 persons in our penal institutions, including the prisons, jails, penitentiaries, and other institutions to which persons are sentenced by the courts of law. This, it will be seen, is more than one-quarter of the criminal population of the country, and is an increase of 33 per cent. over the estimated criminal population of the State in 1880. In the same length of time the population of the State has increased but about 20 per cent. With this alarming increase of the criminal class, it is time to stop and ask if all is righ with our penal system? With all the complicated and expensive machinery of law, police and punishment, we see our criminal population increasing; since the administration of our present penal system is in most respects better than it has ever been before, is it not fair to suppose that there is something radically wrong with the system itself? For one, I think there is. I think it is a failure. And I think it is a failure because it is not in harmony with the Christian idea; it is not dominated by the principles of the Gospel.

Let us look into this matter; and let us begin by laying down a few propositions to which I think most intelligent readers will give

assent.