i88i.] 
The Ethics of Invention. 
725 
and offered for sale. A Peace of the days to come will find 
no more difficulty in purchasing such an appliance than he 
now has in buying ammunition or revolvers. Thus equipped 
he can sail through the air to the bank, the warehouse, or 
the mansion he means to plunder. What will it matter that 
all outer doors, all accessible windows are secured ? Some 
upper window, some skylight, some weak point in the roof, 
or entrance leading to an inner court, heretofore inaccessible, 
will generally be found where the enterprising burglar may 
gain admission with little need for the tools of his trade. 
There will be a further advantage : at present the robber, 
going along the streets at night with his jemmy, his 
skeleton-keys, &c., is at once an objedt of suspicion, and is 
liable to be arrested on the mere fadt of being found in pos- 
session of such implements. Again, suppose him in the 
present day, after a successful foray, going back to his den 
with a bundle of silver plate or other valuables on his 
shoulder. He is liable to be watched, followed, and seized. 
But his successor, thanks to “ progress ” and lovers of aerial 
navigation, will encounter no such difficulties. He will 
come and go unseen, his tools and his booty snugly reposing 
in his flying chariot as he sails along right over the head of 
the unsuspedling policeman. No one will have seen any 
suspicious-looking stranger in the neighbourhood. The deed 
being done, he may wing his way to San Francisco or Cape 
Town, to New York or Sidney, and there dispose of his 
plunder. It must surely be plain that the chances of detec- 
tion after the deed would be reduced in as great a proportion 
as the facility of entering premises would be increased. Or 
take the case of murder : the intending assassin may arrive 
unknown at the place where his intended vidtim is staying, 
and may be gone before his presence has been even imagined, 
there being little more reason to suspedt any one of the 
fourteen hundred million inhabitants of this planet more 
than any other. I would now ask — Are our appliances for 
the frustration of crime, and for its detedtion when adlually 
committed, so superabundant, so more than equal to their 
task, that we can afford to give it such an immense addi- 
tional advantage ? That flying machines if once made could 
be confined to safe hands would be too much to hope. That 
the criminal class would feel any hesitation or reludtance to 
avail themselves of the new resources thus bountifully placed 
in their hands is unthinkable, especially if we consider how 
readily they have taken to the revolver, to chloroform, &c. 
Indeed our criminals seem far more alive to the value and 
possible utility of a novelty than do our manufadturers and 
merchants. 
