Proceedings of the Roijal Society of Victoria. 25o 



in the balance of the motives tliat actuated a nian to 

 ensure his actions talking a right direction. There 

 were three great objections to the view that criminals 

 should be eliminated by simply putting them to death : 

 — First, there was the practical one, that the feelin<4 

 of the race was against it. The second objection was, that 

 the process would have to be repeated time after time. ]i' 

 the least desirable people were singled out at the present 

 moment and got rid of, although the remainder of the 

 population would be improved, but in twenty or thirty years 

 thei'e wcnild be just as much difference between the then 

 respectable classes and the lower classes as there was now. 

 and these would have to be exterminated. In a couple of 

 centuries, people of the character of the judges, who sat 

 upon the bench at the present moment, would be chloro- 

 formed as being objectionable people. Then again, was 

 everybody who broke the laws to be chloroibrmed ? At 

 present penalties were awarded on a graded scale, and there- 

 were felonies, misdemeanors, (fcc. The weeding out process 

 would require an arbitraiy scale. Would they let off first 

 offenders, or would they draw the line at the second offence ? 

 However it was arranged, such violent and arbitrary lines 

 must appear objectionable to the public conscience. 

 The third objection was that nature had arranged the 

 matter in her own way in a far more efficacious style. 

 Although the genus criminal seemed to occur in a sporadic- 

 way, it really obeyed certain laws. To make his meaning- 

 plain, he would draw their attention to the extensive area 

 from which we inherit our natures. Everybody had two 

 parents, and four grandparents, and eight great grandparents, 

 and so on. In the fourth generation, there were thirty-two 

 ancestors, and in the sixth, sixty-four. In the course of a 

 century and a half, these sixty-four ancestors had each 

 contributed a sixty-fourth part to any one individual's 

 characteristics. Generally, there was a certain accidental 

 blending of all these sixty-four characters, so as to produce 

 a particular result. Take for instance the case of a nmsician. 

 Out of the sixty-four, there might perhaps have been six or 

 eight wIjo were rather above the average in music. It 

 generally happened there were as many below the average 

 as woidd balance this, and then the result was an ordinary 

 person who was neither much above nor below the average in 

 musical capacit3\ But where it happened that a certain 

 number of the sixty-four were rather above the average, and 



