| Show HEREDI hereditary DEPRAVITY AT a recent session of a body of scientific gentlemen in boston who were en engaged ae g d in the consideration of crime its causes and the treatment of criminals a member present gave expression to the th theory eory that a certain class of criminals cannot help being such any more than children can help being afflicted with diseases handed down from their parents the speaker illustrated lust rated his theory by citing numerous examples of the class of which he was speaking and describing their cran a d developments kimg ve lop ments and aad physical characteristics he claimed that among the class of which he was speaking a tendency to crime was hereditary a sort of disease in fact against which the state should establish lisha a quarantine by confining in suitable places all individuals manifesting it evidence is being accumulated and reduced to tangible form tor for the purpose of showing that there is some truth in the theory ut of hereditary depravity T A few years ago a book was bubli published saed in an eastern city giving the genealogy ot of a family named jukes f for or seven or eight generations with the personal history of some scores of its members and statistics showing the number of murderers paupers haupers pau pers women etc which the family had produced the facts given eiven had been collected and veri verified flea with great care and the result was astonishing it proved beyond reasonable doubt that in ia that family at least last a tendency to crime was handed down from parent to chil dand that it permeated many if natall not all of the branches of the family tree as far as traced it is the boast of modern law writers that their science is ia last fast approaching as highland accurate a standard of j justice us as the e enlightenment of the aze aee Is able to conceive to be in line with this boast it is now proposed to embody in le legislation ti lation such allowances as may be e just tor for prenatal pre natal influences tending to confer a predisposition to commit crime such considerations to be permitted to influence a court in fixing not merely the extent but the kind of punishment thus it if a man who was born under circumstances calculated to make him virtuous shall commit murder he shall be hung bung but if f the same crime shall be committed by a person born under influences of an opposite na ture that fact may be permitted to change cha the punishment to one of im pris in a reformatory reformat orv A case in point is now agitating boston philosophers and philanthropists A man named nowlin is under sentence of death there for murder his friends have investigated the history of his family and ana find that he springs from a criminally inclined race this circumstance is made the ground for an application for a commutation of sentence and the justice of the plea is being soberly discussed b by Y public bublic men and ana the press tte the general verdict seems to be that human justice is not able to draw such fine distinctions as this theory of hereditary redi tary depravity would involve they are only within the range of infinite understanding and the application of infinite justice |
