So that the least that may be said for the criminal
descendants of drunken ancestors is that a better way exists and should,
by all moral laws, be first adopted.

Further difficulties, of a physical, rather than moral nature, also
exist.

And here again Dr Chapple has assumed another fundamental position. Is
it too much to require of him that he should prove that, where criminals
have sprung from a defective ancestry, this defect should be invariably
transmitted? That, in short, a criminally defective ancestry is an
invariable cause producing a criminal descent. (Note.--By criminally
defective ancestry we mean the ancestry from which criminals spring. It
may not itself be criminal. It may be drunken or pauper.) Such an
important question cannot be assumed; positive proof is demanded, and
this is nowhere forthcoming in Dr Chapple's book.

If it were allowed that criminals were the most prolific of all classes
of society, this question of heredity would still have to be cleared up
before such a proposal as tubo-ligature were seriously discussed, for
surely so drastic a remedy would never be employed except under the most
positive conditions, that is to say, that this operation would never be
employed until it had been ascertained, with scientific precision, that
the birth of degenerates, and degenerates only, was being prevented.

Dr Chapple failing to illuminate us upon this point we inquire, does a
criminally defective ancestry invariably convey to its offspring a taint
disposing it towards crime? Or can it ever be ascertained that a certain
given ancestry will certainly produce criminals?

In the treatment of the subject of heredity it has been made clear that
on account of the vicious habits of the criminal he is apt to transmit
to his offspring a physical defect which will make it difficult for him
to adapt himself to the conditions of the society in which he is placed.
This difficulty becomes almost, though not quite, insurmountable when
the environment is one in which the practice of vice and dishonesty is
easier than that of virtue and thrift.

The transmission of a taint which is a cause of criminality cannot be
denied, but the close investigation of the criminal and of his family
has revealed the fact that among the comparatively few criminals who are
parents they do not all transmit a taint or defect to their offspring,
nor among those from whom a taint has been transmitted has it
necessarily been transmi