particular form of wrong-doing punishable by law. Of the larger
army of bad men they represent a minority, who have been
found out in a peculiarly unsatisfactory kind of misconduct.
There are many men, some lying, unscrupulous, dishonest, others
cruel, selfish, vicious, who go through life without ever doing
anything that brings them within the scope of the criminal code,
for whose offences the laws of society provide no punishment.
And so it is with some of those heroes of history who have been
made the theme of fine writing by gifted historians.

Mr. Basil Thomson, the present head of the Criminal Investigation
Department, has said recently that a great deal of crime is due
to a spirit of "perverse adventure" on the part of the criminal.
The same might be said with equal justice of the exploits of
Alexander the Great and half the monarchs and conquerors of the
world, whom we are taught in our childhood's days to look up to
as shining examples of all that a great man should be. Because
crimes are played on a great stage instead of a small, that is no
reason why our moral judgment should be suspended or silenced.
Class Machiavelli and Frederick the Great as a couple of rascals
fit to rank with Jonathan Wild, and we are getting nearer a
perception of what constitutes the real criminal. "If," said
Frederick the Great to his minister, Radziwill, "there is
anything to be gained by it, we will be honest; if deception is
necessary, let us be cheats." These are the very sentiments of
Jonathan Wild.

Crime, broadly speaking, is the attempt by fraud or violence to
possess oneself of something belonging to another, and as such
the cases of it in history are as clear as those dealt with in