The three quotations founded upon the labors of the statistician, which are given in this article, are veritably three established conclusions of fact which demonstrate one thing truly; namely, that the human intellect has still to find out a judico-legal panacea for crime. The complete machinery of the law has been in operation under various forms for ages, and in vindication of its noisy claim to be the great counter-agency of crime, it can neither show that crime no longer persists, nor that its proportion in any given case is or has been gradually lessening among civilized communities. The moment statistics are applied to the inquiry, it becomes clear that man is still far re moved from a true specific against crime. Hence jurisprudence should " pipe very low," and cultivate a studious humility. It has never been over-modest, but ever wielded in its costly, cumbrous, clumsy, tardy, and stupid way the most powerful weapons of correction known to the in genuity of man. Its victims exceed by far the numbers slaughtered in all the wars that have been waged since the gates of Eden closed to the human race. Much of its subtlety has always been expended in drawing finical distinctions, in ignoring the essence for the form, or confusing the essence with the form, and finally in devis ing strange and most arbitrary punitive measures which, in the comparatively recent time of the great Bacon, were still hellish and all diabolical. Here and there medi cine, operating in a more difficult field and against agencies as occult, can boast of the discovery of a sure specific in certain diseases; though medicine is still empiric to an almost barbarous degree. But all intelligent latter-day revelations prove the law to have been the worse bungler in every age; and the question which of the two, law or medicine, has made the less victims, is one not at all unlikely to be de cided in favor of the latter. Rarely, indeed, is the lawyer found to be either a general reader or a broad thinker. Progressive
science as applied to moral phenomena is a terra incognita to him. Nor will he turn from his narrow kind for light on any subject, but rather, when poked on the head with the results of investigation secured out side of his musty calf-and-sheep-skin-covered scope, he, tortoise-like, draws this head be neath the thickest possible kind of a shell with a lightning celerity altogether unusual among his slow kind and craft. There he keeps it hid until the danger of obtaining a new idea is entirely passed. Then he cunningly chuckles over having eluded an enemy and the risk of some expenditure of brain tissue, without the hope of a fee in reward. All the alleged intellect and acumen of Coke and Littleton could not (nor did it undertake to) influence the jurisprudence of their day and country, which provided that poisoning should be deemed treason, and that any person con victed of the crime should be boiled to death. The highest ideal claim the law can make, is that the punishment shall equal the crime. Its practical working in but too many cases is hopelessly ridiculous to this very hour. A short time ago, one city in New York State could boast of a bankwrecking president who converted half a million dollars of trust funds to his own use, thereby ruining hundreds of families. He was sentenced upon conviction to a term of just one year in a county penitentiary. About the same time a man was convicted in the same city for having been a specta tor at a cock-fight. He received the same sentence. The average murderer never in jures society to the extent this bank president did. The spectator at the cock-fight certainly did no damage at all to anybody. The worst malefactor in this respect among the three was surely the bank-wrecker; yet he escapes with punishment that is altogether trifling compared with the ex tent to which he has made society suffer. Finally, what force is there in the uni versal and sound, if commonplace, conces sion of mankind that two wrongs will not
