Since Science has thoroughly gained the upper hand over Religious and other prejudices, the position of women, we are happy to say, has been steadily sinking, and the dream of a Higher Education has been replaced by the abolition of even Elementary Schools for girls, and now by the final Act of last Session, which renders it penal for any woman to read a hook or newspaper, or to write a letter. We anticipate the very happiest results from this thoroughly sound and manly legislation.

The last sanitary event to which we need at present advert is the new law by which, on the certificate of any single Medical Graduate that a person is Insane, the police will be called on immediately to arrest and consign him to such mad-house as the Medical graduate shall appoint. The magistrate by whose order the arrest is made is left no option as to obeying the Medical graduate’s certificate, and we are glad also to see that, by another clause in the Act, the only remaining difficulty connected with these Asylums has been removed. None but a Medical graduate, responsible only to the great Medical Trades Union Council, is henceforth eligible to the office of Inspector of any Lunatic Asylum throughout the kingdom, nor can any Justice of the Peace grant an order for admittance or search, except to such a graduate. These wise and reasonable regulations will afford much satisfaction to the Medical gentlemen who have undertaken the arduous but not unprofitable profession of managers and proprietors of Lunatic Asylums.

Our prognostics of last New Year’s Day have been amply justified by the Summary of Crime for the past twelvemonth, which has just been published, according to the excellent recent appointment of the Registrar General of Offences. Crimes of the lesser class, such as murders, poisonings, electroding and exploding, have indeed increased considerably in number, and perhaps also in the degree of recklessness and violence exhibited by the offenders; but on the other hand, as we prophesied, those crimes which involve so much larger evils to the community—the detestable Homœopathic and Hydropathic heresies, Infidelity respecting the sacred doctrine of Evolution, neglect of Schooling, and neglect of Equination, Vaccination, Canination, and Porcination, have dwindled under the severe measures of punishment which we urged for so long on a too lax legislature, but which have at last been thoroughly enforced. We may really hope to see a few years hence the Reign of Science so complete that no man, woman, or child in the land will presume to whisper a doubt on any subject on which the Sanitary Office has pronounced, or attempt to evade the seasons appointed by authority for receiving the Rites above mentioned. The Act passed at the end of the last century, whereby certificates of Vaccination were substituted for all legal purposes for Baptismal certificates, was the first step towards the happy order of things under which we now have the privilege to dwell.

Lest our readers should feel a not wholly unnatural anxiety, founded on the admitted increase of the lesser crimes to which we have adverted, we wish to remind them that such an occurrence was inevitable on the final collapse of Religion, and that we must be content to wait till Science shall have had time to substitute some more effectual checks on human passions than it has yet been in our power to apply. It is too obvious to need remark that since men have learned that Death is the end of their existence, they must be expected to seize more hastily and resolutely every pleasure which life may offer, nay, that it would be absurd and unscientific to expect them to do otherwise. Let us do justice to the old effete superstition, and admit that the delusive notion that an invisible Being watched human actions, loved good men, and would punish bad ones in another world, if not in the present, was calculated to exercise considerable influence of a beneficial sort on ordinary minds. Certain types of character (not now, of course, to be found in the world) seem to have flourished under the fictitious charm of these antique ideas—characters exhibiting a certain courage and unselfishness, of which it is scarcely possible to read without some little regret that they are not conformable with sounder philosophic views of the nature and destiny of man. People had, we must remember, in former days, four distinct motives for doing good instead of evil. First, they believed in an omnipotent Lord and Master whom they called “God.” 2nd, they believed in a sacred internal Guide whom they called Conscience; and 3rd, they believed in a peculiar principle of action which they called Honour. After all these came the Criminal Law, ready to punish those who neglected what were deemed to be loftier motives. Now we, in this glorious Age of Science, must remember that of all these four incentives to virtue only one remains. We know there is no God, or, at least, that, if there be, he is Unknown and Unknowable; and we are persuaded that Conscience is merely the inherited prejudice of our barbarous ancestors in favour of the class of actions which were found conducive to the welfare of the tribe. As to the Law of Honour, men had already begun to forget what it signified a hundred years ago, when the Age of Science was just dawning, for we find at that epoch a writer of considerable pretensions, in a periodical called the Fortnightly Review, actually asserting that its standard “is submission not to Law but to Opinion ... deference to the opinion of a particular class.” Up to that period we think it was universally understood by “honourable” persons to signify, quite on the contrary, Reverence for an inward standard of rectitude, truth, and generosity; for a man’s own private sense of Honour and self-respect, which he would not forfeit to gain the applause of a world. In our time, of course, it is needless to say that all these fine ideal sentiments have gone utterly out of vogue, and, having left them behind us, we have only the Criminal Law on which to rely for the protection of life and property. It is needless to repeat that the delusive exhortations of some amiable but short-sighted philosophers of the last century to “labour for the good of Humanity in future generations” (a motive which they supposed would prove a substitute for the old Historic Religions) have been once and for all answered by the grand discovery of the Astronomers that our planet cannot long remain the habitation of man (even if it escape any sidereal explosion) since the Solar heat is undergoing such rapid exhaustion. When the day comes—as come it must—when the fruits of the earth perish one by one, when the dead and silent woods petrify, and all the races of animals become extinct—when the icy seas flow no longer, and the pallid Sun shines dimly over the frozen world, locked like the Moon in eternal frost and lifelessness—what, in that day predicted so surely by Science, will avail all the works, and hopes, and martyrdoms of man? All the stores of knowledge which we shall have accumulated will be for ever lost. Our discoveries, whereby we have become the lords of creation and wielded the great forces of Nature, will be useless and forgotten. The virtues which have been perfected, the genius which has glorified, the love which has blessed the human race, will all perish along with it. Our libraries of books, our galleries of pictures, our fleets, our railroads, our vast and busy cities, will be desolate and useless for evermore. No intelligent eye will ever behold them; and no mind in the universe will know or remember that there ever existed such a being as Man. This is what Science teaches us unerringly to expect,—and in view of it, who shall talk to us of “labouring for the sake of Humanity”? The enthusiasm which could work disinterestedly for a Progress destined inevitably to end in an eternal Glacial Period must be recognised as a dream, wherein no man in a Scientific Age can long indulge.

There is, then, but one Method on which we can rely to repress human passions and hold together the somewhat brittle chain of Society. That method is the Scientific Treatment of Crime, under such conditions as careful investigation and experiments may prove to be best suited to effect its cure. We can hold out no supersensual motives to the Minds of the multitude, but we can treat their Bodies in the very best manner possible to render them virtuous and industrious citizens. It is true that as yet the results of our efforts in this direction have not been very satisfactory. The salutary processes employed in the Penal Hospitals under the most eminent physicians have not been altogether crowned with success; and crime of the violent kind increases year by year almost in geometrical proportion. Nevertheless, it would ill become any of us who have the privilege to live in this enlightened age to entertain a shadow of a doubt that our Scientific method is the right one, and that by-and-by (while we respectfully wait the results of their experiments) our great Medical men will discover the proper remedies for murder, rape, and robbery. For our own part, it is superfluous to assure our readers, we retain unwavering, unbounded faith in the resources of Science to provide a perfect substitute for Religion, for Conscience, and for Honour.

J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.