as the cause of their being
criminal. Dugdale's observations led him to conclude that heredity is a
latent cause which requires environment for its development. These 75
per cent., however, will be referred to again. There being 25 per cent.
honest and industrious, brings us face to face with a question affecting
the morality of Dr Chapple's proposal.

Since then all the children of criminal ancestry are not themselves
criminal or likely to become criminals through an hereditary taint, can
a proposal be accepted which would not only prevent the birth of the
hereditary criminal, but would also prevent the birth of several persons
who would have become good and useful citizens.

Thus far only the criminal descended from a criminal ancestry has been
considered, whereas, as was stated previously, there are a considerable
number of criminals termed "hereditary" criminals who are descended from
a drunken ancestry. The proportion of these is about 33 per cent. of
the whole. The impossibility of the success of Dr Chapple's remedy is
very apparent from the insurmountable difficulties that would be
experienced in determining with exactitude when a person was so
degenerate in his own system as to make it positive that his prospective
offspring would be born a criminal defective. Uncertainty, in this
matter, reigns supreme.

There must remain then but very little support for Dr Chapple's proposal
when we discover firstly:--that the criminal is very rarely a parent,
and secondly:--that in every case a taint is not transmitted from parent
to child. Its sphere of effectiveness is restricted by the very
circumstances of the case, and even within that restricted sphere its
operation would be most clumsy for it would prevent the birth of all a
criminal's children, good and bad alike. Thus it would become both a
moral and economic failure.

Dr Chapple has taken it for granted that a criminal's rate of increase
is at least equal to the average if not indeed, for certain reasons,
considerably greater, and that he in all cases transmits an hereditary
taint to his offspring. Then he seeks for a remedy whereby the
transmission of this taint may be avoided and he can find none other
than one which prevents the very possibility of the prospective child
being born. Before coming to such a drastic conclusion enquiry might
have been made to discover whether there might not exist a remedy which
would be a remedy in the truest sense. That is a re