It may be asked by some, why should the government retire $565,000,000 of non-interest bearing currency indebtedness and issue instead thereof interest-bearing bonds? My answer is that the interest on these bonds being but the small sum of less than $15,000,000 per annum, the United States could well afford to pay this, rather than keep the business interests of the country stirred up by the issue of more bonds and the uncertainty of financial affairs, as has been done during the last few years. Besides, with this plan established, there would be a perpetual basis for the entire banking and currency interests of the country, and the government could well afford for that sum to let that much of its indebtedness remain unpaid for all time, no matter what its ability to pay might be, in order to keep the currency of the country on a safe and permanent basis.

While this article has not attempted to solve the silver feature of the question in detail, yet, if the government would pass a law making silver or silver certificates legal tender for a limited amount, say $25, and providing that no national bank notes should be of a smaller denomination than $10, but that silver and silver certificates should occupy the field below $25, it would give a position to silver that should, I think, satisfy its friends, without being a threat to lower the value of our currency.

E. J. SANFORD.

BEAUTIFUL EVIL.

DON QUIXOTE was led to his career of burlesque knight-errantry by reading the extravagant romances of his time. Nowadays we often hear of youthful Quixotes who are led into no less absurd, but far less innocent, careers of adventure by a similar cause. The hero of La Mancha was turned into a ridiculous but harmless crank; his modern ectypes, unless they are sickened at the outset by some lucky disaster, for which their fiction rubbish has prescribed no remedy, become more or less desperate criminals. But, as is always true of fiction rubbish, they find no realization of its charm in actual experience. Instead of the picturesque perpetration of crime in heroic defiance of the law and its officers, which they fondly anticipated, they find themselves engaged in sneaking villany, and then in sneaking attempts to escape its penalties. Instead of the luxurious ease varied with romantic adventure so thrillingly described in the stories, they find themselves leading lives of ceaseless terror and self-contempt, hunted from hole to hole like the human vermin they have become.

If the revulsion from romanticism to realism which has taken place in the higher class of fiction could descend also to the lower, it would go far toward the correction of an influence baleful in the extreme to thousands of young lives. But, unhappily, such a reform is impossible in the very nature of things, for in proportion as fiction becomes true to life it takes rank with the higher order, and thus passes beyond the class of readers by whom it is most needed.

For this evil influence of low sensational literature the newspaper must share the responsibility with the cheap novel. A splendid villain is always a more interesting character than a disgusting brute, so whatever nature or fortune may have done to favor a criminal is usually grossly exaggerated. If he happens to possess comeliness of person, grace of manner, or intelligence above the common in his class, the public is usually regaled with rhapsodical descriptions of his beauty, refinement, and intellect, and even

visitors to his cell are apt to be so hypnotized by their reading and their own fancy that they fail to discover the exaggeration.

The typical rascal is never the hero that romance, whether in the dime novel or the newspaper, pictures him. His intelligence is, as a rule, of a very low order, confined to keenness and cunning, which act in the narrow circle of first preying upon his victims and then trying to outwit justice. Compare it with the intelligence which works for good. His courage is generally greatly overestimated. He rarely fights except when he has the overwhelming advantage, or when he is driven into a corner. His magnanimity and amiability-qualities especially credited to him by writers and readers of the low romantic school-are myths. They are no part of his business, save as they serve to cloak his villany. Pure selfishness, or at best physical temperament, is at the bottom of his good humor, apparent generosity, and even his family affection, for when the crucial test comes he will sacrifice anybody and everybody to self. The proverbial "honor among thieves" holds good only up to a certain point. The moment it becomes clear that no advantage, direct or indirect, remains to the individuals of the gang, the vaunted honor is thrown to the winds, the gang disbands, each clutches what he can from the wreck of their common fortunes, and henceforth preys upon his former pals with no more compunction than he feels in preying upon the rest of the world.

Better acquaintance with them would soon disarm the fascinating villains who play such havoc with susceptible hearts. George Eliot's "Tito" was the handsomest and cleverest of the whole precious fraternity. But she allows no one to be charmed either with his "loathsome beauty" or his fiendish cleverness. She makes you so intimate with him, and so soon, that you have no chance to be charmed before you are horrified and disgusted. One isn't inclined to pet a venomous reptile very long, however brilliant its scales or graceful its curves.

Beautiful evil! heroic villany! They have no existence save in the imagination of the poet and the romancer. In real life they are impossibilities. Such beings as Milton's magnificent "Satan" and Goethe's graceful" Mephistopheles" could no more exist than a hippogriff or a minotaur. Their nearest possible realizations would be simply detestable, horrible.

EDWARD C. JACKSON.

AMERICAN SCHOOL HISTORIES ON THE REVOLUTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW:

SIR.-It seems to me, with all deference, that Dr. Goldwin Smith in your September number does not give sufficient attention to the statement in Higginson's History: "Probably they would not have objected if they had been represented in the British government, so they could at least have had a voice in deciding what their taxes should be; but this was not allowed them." Such representation was never asked for, and therefore it is surely a perversion of the facts of history to say it was not allowed. On the other hand, the colonies spurned in advance any contemplated offer of such representation. The circular letter dated February 11, 1768, addressed to the other legislatures by that of Massachusetts, cited in Murdoch's Nova Scotia, Vol. II., p. 483, after urging the illegality of taxation without representation, proceeds: "This House further are of opinion that their constituents cannot by any possibility be represented in the parliament, and that it will

be forever impracticable that they should be equally represented there, and consequently not at all." Further on the statement is made: "This House think that a taxation of their constituents even without their consent, grievous as it is, would be preferable to any representation that could be admitted for them there." Nor do any of the school books cited by the Professor seem to point out that accredited agents of the colonies in London admitted that parliament could constitutionally impose on the colonies an external tax, by duties on imports, but not an internal tax, like that sought to be raised by the Stamp Act; that the latter was abandoned, and the admitted authority was not exercised in an oppressive

manner.

The Professor says: "The acrimony and the space allotted [in the school books] to the vindication of the Revolutionary War dimin. ished with the increase in the distance of the date of publication from that event." As time bears us still further from the period of the struggle perhaps some wiser and more impartial generation may decide that more moderation on the part of the popular leaders, and an honest and strenuous endeavor by them to suppress mob violence, and the wanton wholesale destruction of the property of innocent people, would have rendered the "great schism" as impracticable and unnecessary as a separation between the North and South was in 1861.

It does not appear what prominence is given in American school histories to the "Acts for the Pacification of America," passed by the British Parliament February 17, 1778. I have heard well-informed Americans say they never heard of them.

A. W. SAVARY.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCCCXCIII.

DECEMBER, 1897.

WHY HOMICIDE HAS INCREASED IN THE UNITED STATES.-1.

BY PROFESSOR CESARE LOMBROSO.

ONE of the surest and most confident conclusions I have drawn from a study of crime is that, in those countries which are supposed to be the most cultivated and civilized, crimes, if they do not decrease in number, are certainly decreasing in ferocity; whilst, on the other hand, crimes destitute of the element of violence, such as swindling, fraudulent bankruptcy, and kindred offences, are constantly increasing. In other words, the assassin and the murderer become transformed into the thief, and the transformation involves a maximum risk to property and a minimum risk to human life. Belgium may be cited in illustration of this fact. Statistics show that in that country homicides decreased from 1 in 83,000 inhabitants in 1882 to 1 in 93,220 in 1892. England, during the same period, shows a similar ratio of decrease, namely, from 1 in 68,000 inhabitants to 1 in 92,000; but whilst sanguinary crimes in the latter country thus decreased 8 per cent., bankruptcies increased from 28 to 36 per cent., and robberies 30 per cent., the increase in population meantime being 13 per cent. Thus it is that when we read of any singularly atrocious crime in Europe we almost unconsciously attriVOL. CLXV.-NO. 493.

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Copyright, 1897, by THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY, All rights reserved.

bute it to some community which still remains in barbarism, though in close contact with civilization, such, for instance, as Corsica as opposed to France, or the island of Sardinia as opposed to Italy. The statistics of homicide are a sure guide as to a people's state of culture, and it may be safely asserted that the latter increases with increased wealth, greater density of population and diminished illiteracy.* The following table shows the relative proportions of homicides in the countries named:

The United States stand alone in offering an extraordinary exception to what may be called the rule, for, according to statistics (not always reliable, however) published there, homicides are of startling frequency in that country. This fact is of greater significance when we consider that, whilst in all other civilized countries homicides are yearly decreasing in number, in America the contrary is the case, such crimes being continually on the increase.

If we compare the results of the last census with those of the census of 1880, we find that in the latter year there were 4,600 arrests for the crime of homicide, whilst according to the figures published June 1, 1890, the number of similar arrests had increased to 7,500. From this it would appear that homicides had increased 60 per cent. within ten years, while the population had increased but 25 per cent. And what is of graver moment is the fact that this growth of the crime referred to is progressive, that is, it is, as above stated, steadily increasing year by year.

While it is true that the proportion of twelve homicides to every 100,000 inhabitants in the United States is in startling contrast to the statistics of England, Scotland, and Germany, it is not so when compared with those of countries not so highly civilized as the latter, such, for instance, as Italy, Spain, Austria, and Hungary, over which the United States have a notable advantage.

* Vide Lombroso, Criminality, Vol. III., pages 59, 66, 209, 160-171. See Faulkner's Crime and the Census.