300 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



In this case it was not hunger, or want, or example 

 or trying temptation that caused the boy to steal. 

 It was what the Americans would call pure " cussed- 

 ness." In more classical, if less expressive language, 

 thieving with him was an irresistible instinct which he 

 was impelled to gratify on every possible opportunity. 

 In the glimpse we have of the family we find, as we 

 would expect, a bad heredity immorality, and what 

 else we know not, on both sides. 



What the career before this unfortunate child may 

 be we cannot tell. It is possible he may become a 

 " record breaker " in the way of criminal convictions, 

 and beat the record of the woman who was sent to 

 prison at Liverpool recently, for the two hundred- 

 and- eighteenth time. But of one thing we may be 

 certain, and that is, that upon him imprisonment will 

 have neither deterrent nor reformatory effect, while it 

 will but poorly protect society against his anti-social 

 instincts. His life will be one long game of hide- 

 and-seek between himself and justice. Society will 

 suffer much, and he will suffer more. What is needed 

 in such cases is not punitive imprisonment, which 

 does not improve the sufferer, and which degrades 

 those whose disagreeable duty it is to carry it out, 

 but lifelong seclusion in some comfortable asylum, 

 where he may spend as happy a life as his defective 

 organisation will permit, and which will ensure his 

 leaving no heirs behind. 



