Heredity and Conduct 105 



a German or a Russian rogue. Should he 

 not, on his introduction, be asked to show 

 some credentials of his usefulness to our body 

 social ? Should he not be repatriated when- 

 ever he has been convicted of crime in this 

 country and has served his sentence ? 



Next we have our own criminal classes- 

 Why should the habitual criminal be allowed 

 back into the community to propagate his 

 kind in the intervals between his prison 

 periods ? We ought to expatriate all con- 

 firmed criminals (our Empire is wide enough 

 to provide a corner for them) ; for the one 

 thing which does seem to upset the predic- 

 tions we can base on the laws of inheritance 

 is the influence of a complete change of 

 environment on the constitutional characters. 

 Let us send our criminals to a subtropical 

 climate. 



Lastly, we come to the congenital pauper 

 and the insane. Here I think again society 

 would be justified in refusing to allow them 

 to pass in and out of workhouses and asylums. 

 The cure of the insane is idle in the sense 

 that their offspring will no longer be of 

 tainted stock. 



All these points are only illustrations of 

 what a strong public opinion might achieve. 

 Once recognise that physical and psychical 

 characters are inherited, and current social 

 feeling on the subject of the unhealthy, the 

 mentally defective and criminal stocks must 



