If he is a "born criminal" he is a victim of atavism, and ought not to be blamed, but pitied. For it is not a fault, but a misfortune, to be born an atavist.
Had a tiger killed the child, we should have to admit that such is the tiger's nature; as it is the nature of a lark to sing.
But, if the prisoner is an atavist it is his nature to be furious and cruel.
We cannot, however, be sure that a man is a "born criminal" because he commits a murder. So great is the power of environment for evil, as well as for good, that perhaps the most innocent and humane man in this court might, by the influence of an evil environment, have been made capable of an act as horrible.
If the prosecution adopt the course I expect them to adopt, and claim that the unfortunate prisoner "knew better": if they succeed in proving that the prisoner was well-educated, carefully brought up, and never in all his life was once exposed to any evil influence, then I shall claim that such evidence proves the prisoner to be atavist, and entitles him to a verdict of unsound mind.
Because no man whose whole environment had been good, would be capable of murdering a child for a few coppers, unless he were an atavist or insane.
On the other hand, if it should appear, in the course of evidence, that the prisoner was born of criminal and ignorant parents, was brought up in an atmosphere of violence and crime, was sent out, untaught, or evilly taught, and undisciplined, to scramble for a living; if it should be proved that he fell into bad company, that he turned thief, that he was sent to prison and branded as a felon: if it should be proved that he has been hunted by the police, flogged with the "cat" by warders, bullied by counsel, denounced by magistrates and judges; if it should be proved that he has been treated at every turn of his wretched career as a wild beast or a pariah; if it should be proved that he has been allowed to degenerate into an ignorant, a savage, a bestial and a drunken loafer; then, I shall plead that this miserable man has been reduced to his present morose, cruel, and immoral state by evil environment; and I shall ask for a verdict in his favour. (Cries of Monster! Hang him! Lynch him!)
It is said the prisoner is an inhuman monster. He has been made a monster by a monstrous heredity; or he has been made a monster by a monstrous environment.
No man of sound heredity ever becomes a monster save by the action of an evil environment.
Say the prisoner is an atavist; a man bred back to the beasts. Then he is entitled to be judged by the standard we apply to beasts.