Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/471

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THE CHARACTER OF POLITICAL EXILES
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frequently appears among the Communards and the Anarchists. Taking 50 photographs of the Communards, I have found the criminal type in 12 per cent. and the insane type in 10 per cent. Out of 41 Parisian anarchists that I have studied with Ber- tillon at the office of the police in Paris, the proportion of the criminal type was 31 per cent. In the rebellion of the 1st of May last I was able to study one hundred Turin anarchists. I found the criminal type among these in the proportion of 34 per cent., while in 280 ordinary criminals of the prison at Turin the type was 43 per cent. ... I have been able to study the photographs of 43 Chicago Anarchists, and I have found among them almost the same proportion of the criminal type — that is, 40 per cent.[1]

From the above-quoted statements of Professor Lombroso it appears that the so-called nihilists, even in the cool judgment of exact science, represent, physically and psychologically, rather the early Christian martyrs than the French communists or the Chicago anarchists.

Most of the Russian terrorists were nothing more, at first, than moderate liberals, or, at worst, peaceful socialistic propagandists; and they were gradually transformed into revolutionists, and then into terrorists, by injustice, cruelty, illegality, and contemptuous disregard, by the Government, of all their rights and feelings. I have not a word to say in defense of their crimes. I do not believe in such methods of warfare as assassination, the wrecking of railway trains on which one's enemies are riding, the robbing of Government sub-treasuries, and the blowing up of palaces; but I can fully understand, nevertheless, how an essentially good and noble-natured man may become a terrorist when, as in Russia, he is subjected to absolutely intolerable outrages and indignities and has no peaceful or legal means of redress. It is true, as the Russian Government contends, that after 1878 the terrorists acted in defiance of all the generally accepted principles of civilized combat; but it must not be forgotten that in life and in war-

1 "Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology," by Cesare Lombroso. — The Monist, No. 3, Vol. I, p. 336. Chicago, April, 1891.

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