you," says an official report, quoted by Sir John Strachey, "that he
is a Badhak, or a Kanjar, or a Sonoria, he tells you what few
Europeans ever thoroughly realise, that he, an offender against the
law, has been so from the beginning and will be so to the end; that
reform is impossible, for it is his trade, his caste--I may almost say
his religion--to commit crime." It is not poverty which makes many of
these predatory races criminals. Speaking of the Mina tribe inhabiting
one of the frontier districts of the Punjab, Sir John Strachey says:
"Their sole occupation is, and always has been, plunder in the native
States and in distant parts of British India; they give no trouble at
home, and, judging from criminal statistics, it would be supposed that
they were an honest community. They live amid abundance, in
substantial houses with numerous cattle, fine clothes and jewels, and
fleet camels to carry off their plunder." Special laws have been made
for dealing with these tribes; a register of their numbers is kept;
they can be compelled to live within certain local limits, but in
spite of these coercive measures crime is not suppressed, and "a long
time must elapse before we see the end of the criminal tribes of
India."

Coming back to European peoples, it is worthy of note that both
Hungary and Finland are inhabited by the same race. These two
countries are separated by about fifteen degrees of latitude, but in
the matter of murder the people of Finland are much more nearly allied
to the Hungarians than to their immediate neighbours, the Swedes and
Norwegians. The Finns commit about twice as many murders in proportion
to the population as the Teutons of Scandinavia, but only about half
as many as the Hungarians; and it is not improbable to suppose that
while the effect of race makes them more murderous than the
Scandinavians, the effect of climate makes them less murderous than