Crimes are either deliberate or the result of accident or
impulse. The last class may rise to a high degree of
enormity, such as manslaughter, but these crimes are rarely
possible of restraint. The perpetrator does not stop to
consider, even if he be sober enough to think at all, whether
his act be moral, whether it will entail any civil liability,
or what will be its consequences, if it be a crime. So far as
such acts are concerned those who commit them are hardly
criminals in the ordinary sense, and no influence in the world
is able to prevent them.

The question is how far these different kinds of restraint
operate upon the community as a whole in the prevention of
deliberate crime. Clearly the fear of pecuniary loss through
actions brought to judgment in the civil courts is practically
nil. Most persons who set out to commit crime have no bank
account, the absence of one being generally what leads them
into a criminal career.

The writer has no intention of attempting to discuss or
estimate the efficacy of religion or ethics as restraining
influences. A certain limited proportion of the community
would not commit crime under any circumstances. It is enough
for them that the act is forbidden by the State even if it be
not really wrong from their own personal point of view. Side
by side with these very good people are a very large number
who wear just as fashionable clothing, have the same friends,
attend the same churches, but who would commit almost any
crime so long as they were sure of not being caught. If we
had no criminal law we should soon discover who were the