636 POLITICAL INSTITUTION* 



letting enterprise bring its normal advantages. Those who 

 are successfully original in idea and act, prospering and 

 multiplying in a greater degree than others, produce, in course 

 of time, a general type of nature ready to undertake new 

 things. The speculative tendencies of English and American 

 capitalists, and the extent to which large undertakings, both 

 at home and abroad, are carried out by them, sufficiently 

 indicate this trait of character. Though, along with consider 

 able qualifications of militancy by industrialism on the con 

 tinent, there has occurred there, too, an extension of private 

 enterprise; yet the fact that while many towns in France and 

 Germany have been supplied with gas and water by English 

 companies, there is in England but little of kindred achieve 

 ment by foreign companies, shows that among the more 

 industrially-modified English, individual initiative is more 

 decided. 



There is evidence that the decline of international hostili 

 ties, associated as it is with the decline of hostilities between 

 families and between individuals, is followed by a weakening 

 of revengeful sentiments. This is implied by the fact that in 

 our own country the more serious of these private wars early 

 ceased, leaving only the less serious in the form of duels, 

 which also have at length ceased : their cessation coinciding 

 with the recent great development of industrial life a fact 

 with which may be joined the fact that in the more militant 

 societies, France and Germany, they have not ceased. So 

 much among ourselves has the authority of the lex talionis 

 waned, that a man whose actions are known to be prompted 

 by the wish for vengeance on one who has injured him, is 

 reprobated rather than applauded. 



With decrease of the aggressiveness shown in acts of 

 violence and consequent acts of retaliation, has gone decrease 

 of the aggressiveness shown in criminal acts at large. That 

 this change has been a concomitant of the change from a 

 more militant to a more industrial state, cannot be doubted 

 by one who studies the history of crime in England. Says 



