CATHOLICS AND CRIME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 49, 8 December 1904, Page 3

CATHOLICS AND CRIME.

ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON OF STATISTICS.

dndcr the above heading Mr. Benjamin Hoare, the \cteran Melbourne journalist, contributed a very interesting ami mlorirrative paper to the Catholic Cotigress.Some years ago (says Mr. Hoare), when the Victorian Statist. use,d to present his crime tables in a manner which distinguished the religions of pensions arresrteld for crime, it used to be made a subject of reproach against Irish CaWolics in this State that they had a ba,d preeminence i)n the crime tables.

The law statistics are not treated now in tfcd same way.. Tho Victorian /Year Book for 1903 idoes njot'give any rec,ord of the religions of the offenders, or alleged offenders. But a table in it, slypplying the birth-places of arrested .persons, seems to bear oiut a statement maJde nearly twenty years ago by Mr. Hiayter that ' of nlaces 1 outside Victoria, tihe country which slupplied the largest number of arrested persons is Ireland.'

It used to be further said, by way of disparaging Catholics, that, ' in proportion to their numbers in the community, the Roman Catholics supplied nearly two and a half times as many arrested persoms as tihe Protestajnts.'

Buildung, dn this, Sir Archibald Michie, a former legal luminary of "Victoria, asserted in a pamphlet that ' the causa or causes <of the remarkable excess of Catholic crime,, and its yie-viUably consequent check to the oommfiMiity, is as important a social question as the reader can address himself to. Is it to o much to .say that there is at least evidence that the cause, latent as it may be to ma,ny, lies in some ot the principles of Komajmst dogmia '! '

The Inadequacy of the Data

Ohly very rarely nowadays do we hear these things hinted at. it may be that'tne Statists luiAe conic to see the record's/ ot mere aries-ts are worthless as a moial (>r even criminal index, seeing Uiat nol more than i.) o t■l6 persons are arrested for every 100 crimes committed, and only slightly more than half of those arrested me convicted. It is not the arrested man, but the conwcted one, who is the criminal, and there are not mo:e thap. about eight or nine convictions for eacji registered crime.

We must be careful to note the distinction between ' arrests ' and ' convictions.' The Victorian Statist, in the period alluded to, told us : ' The oflences with which the Irish were charged, however, could not have been of .vo serious a nature as tihose in respect to which the Englnh and Welsh were arrested, as the number oi the latter committed for trial were more than twice as numerous, in proportion to the numbers in the population.'

For example, in one year, out of 13,616 Catholics arrested, 13,211 ot them were charged with drunkenness, assault, and unseemly conduct, which the Statist siet dowin as ' minor onences, hardly amountiing to crimes.' That means that 97 per cent, of Catholic ' crime ' was n;o crime at all, but merely boisterous brawling. Moreover, it has to be noted that sometimes 20 men may be arrested for a single crime, when only opie man may be guilty and convicted These tables of arrests therefore, are utterly fallacious. '

The Charge Repeated

However, not long since, siome ot these aspersions were repeated m one quarter, where the speakci was at more pains to be otlensne than careful to be accurate.

As Catholics, we have no right to blink any hard and s<ohd fact, if it be a fact , nor sholilfd we seek/ to evade statistics by a shuffle. I have heard men trying to explain the o\or-proportion of ins^ii arrests by siaymg that prisoners fiequontly gne false names amd birthplaces. Some may do so, but, for anything we may know, sucih, exceptional cases are just as likely to tell for Catholics as against them. We haul much better loqk tjie tacts in the face, and ascertain exactly what is their value The poet tells us that ' thiiigs are not what they seem ' E\cryone Mho 'has studied statistics knows tlMt figures aic especially liable to fallacy, unless they are adequately and fully slated.

A man, judging from a mere surface presentment of such crime tables, may tall into an cior similar to that of the untutored savage, who supposes that he sees the Sun riY,e in the cast, wheieas, in fact, science knows that the sun does not rise at all

We will try and get to close quarters in this. The inferences drawn from suth tacts, as used to be stated in Victoria m/ore frequently than now, arc— 1. Irishmen are mostly Catholics.

2. Irishmen and Catholics arc proportionately greater offenders against the law than at>e Englishmen and Protestants.

3. Therefore, the much-boasted Catholic education fails in it& mioral objects

My present obicct is to show that two or three propositions thus presented arc not sustainable nn fact, and that,, it they were so, they would be faulty as a syllogism.

The first proposition may be accepted at cmce Irishmen are unquestionably mostly Catholics. But are they m,ore lawless than Anglo-Saxons ? We will see. First we will look at home. In the year 1903, 22,175 Victorian persons weie arrested, and of the^e 3(/fiO were born in Ireland— that is, a little more than one-seventh of the whole Only 482 of the Victorian total were for serious crimes ; 19,201 were for drunkenness aad petty ottences against order. Now, it may be admitted that the 3060 Irish-born offenders were disproportionately large as compared with English-born and Victor-ian-bom. But all thfs disprojportiofc, whatever it was is, toiund amongst the 19,201 petty offenders against sobriety and order.

Open aivl Secret Inebriety. There is a great deal of significance in this. Pat was always of a jovial turn, and generally fond of his liquor. But the Gael and the Saxom are equally amenable to the same geflie'ral impeachment. I have figures by me which show that the Englishman's drink bill runs to toiver £1 per head, against atyout £2 15s for the Irishman's!. The chronicles of the court may sometimes

show mjore Irish inebriates, btit not more aggregate Iri^h drinking to excess. These colurt records are but very small factors lti the sum.

The idiumkeimess which comes before the courts is certainly not live per cent, of tUie total drunkenness in society. Are we to fudge of tlhis drunkenness by the 3 per cent, ajiild leave the 95 per cent. wiHiolit question ? We ca/n no miore form a true opinion on tins data than ran the fisjherrman j,uidge of the lish m the sea by Hho.se which he 'has i<n his net. A little reflection will show this. Drinking is a universal custom. But different ppoplt* take their liquor m different ways. The less well-to-do— of which numbers are the mass of Irish Catiifolics— go to the bar for their iiquor They drink in t)he open, unuer the eye ot the police, atnd when they exceed they stagger out of the taproom into the arms of the night watichman. It is not so with the richer bibbers, who frequent the private resorts of the city, and who, mi their cups, are sent home safely in cabs,, pr kept |n privacy to sleep oft their debauches. I have known men who were drunk regiularly once or twice a week, but who never got into the hands ot a policeman. The Anglo-Saxon can carouse and go home quietly to bed. The Celt's excess expends itself in noise, i n the breaking ot a head or a window. In the first case, the courts never hear of a complaint ; in the second, the same man miay figure as tihree or four separate offenders. This is a tact which used to be vouched for by the Statist himself, and which so completely destroys the v|alue ot the inures that they have been 'discoaUuued in the old loim.

What we have said, therefore, completely upsets the Hiierance drawn trom mere ' arrests,' that Irish Catholics are in any degree more lawless, even in minor matiters, till an others. It the arrests are only 15 or 10 per cent of the recorded offences, and the convictions only about half as many as the arrests, an argument built on ai rests is about as Unstable as wiouid be the calculations of a meteorologist who sh-owM estimate the rainSall ot the whole State by the gauge of a single night taken m a special locality. The /Influence of > Komalnist Rqgma.' We can now proceed to inquire as to whether Catholic education has i>n any setose failed in its moral eftect. This brings us to Sir Archibald Michie's assertion that the caiuse ot OathoUc crime is to be foimd m the 'principles of Kom,a,mst Dogma.' Is it triue or grotesquely false that Catholic misdoing is traceable to Catholic teaching "' If it be true, we shiall everywhere fjnd the greater en me where the peqple are most devotedly Catholic. ihat must be admitted. Do we find it so? Just the ieverse. In New Zealand the Catholics n\iraber about 1,5 per cent. ot the people, a|ud in Victoria about 21 , but there are more offerees against property in New, Zealand than in Victoria. Of course, it may be replied that other disturbing causes may account for that. And that is true. The figures prove nothing eit-her way, except that they cannot be taken as the result ot ' Romanist dogma.' Indeed, if that doctrine were true, Catholic Ireland— the land par excellence of Catholic faith and practice, the brightest jewel of religious fidelity in the Pope's tiara— ought to he a pandemonium of cume. Clearly, if ' Romanist dogma ' tends to crime, we sjhall nnd Ireland a hissing iniquity among nations. But what do we fi.nd ? All Statists agree that recorded Irish crime is less than that in either KngJalrid, Wales, Scotland, or .any of the Australian colonies, taken per thousand of , the respective populations. A reterenre to the ' Statesman's Year Book ' will set that matter at rest.

A computation 1 made some time ago for a perilo'd o-\or ten > ears from the Victorian Statist gave the average number of coinvictions, per ] 0,000 of the Australian population, at 8.10 ; for England, Scotland and Wales, at 4.98 , for Ireland, at 4.10. H it be replied that tho-e are many criminals in irelaJnd who are never convicted, I reply: 'Precisely. Bui that is true, too, of all countries, avwd is the very rea.son| why neither "arrests" nor " oonvieticms' " are any true test of the m,oral condition of tihe people ' It is a reason why these charges should not Wave "been hailt by men like Sir Archibald Michie upon such defective data. Ido not put forward my figures as a proof of Ireland's greater morality, but as a very convincing pro,of that any deductions from jyuch tables as tihose citeid as tio Irish oftences in the courts are quite valueless aa a test of the moral condition of Irish CVtholits

Vice versus Orime

Here I may push the argument just a short stage further. lo get at the mioral condition of a pebiple by meams of mere statistics is really impossible, because the inquiry would lead from what is me-e legal crime into the region of moral philosophy, and tp .distinctions between vice and crime. We should have to trace the cause and current o r society's more hidden sins and immoralities, as they operate before they ultimate in crime, and come under the ken of the policeman Racial

differences would have to be examined, each witfli its separate and peouliar vices— some dee 1 !), corrupting, cunning, and concealed filming

1 Tihe ulcerous place While rank corruption, mining all within, Infests unseen.'

Other vices explode openly into breaches of the human statute. We cannot weigh and measure these things by statistics. And yet they count most truly in the formation ot human conduct and character. We may lay diown one proposition as irrefragable— tdiat all <-m against God, seen or unseen -of men, is an offence against Mxuely, lowering the moral tone, and preparing for overt acts against law. The secret trickster, tihe dark-ness-lioving adulterer, rarely come within the reach of legal punishment. Yet they are poisoners of the social atmosphere. Compared with the moral lepers, themeie wine-bibber is a trifling offender. Yet the taproom drunkard comes under the note 'of Mr. Panton, the Police Magistrate, while the others -are chronicled only in the great book of Gods recording angel. As an illustration, you all remember the ' Pall Mall Gazette's ' exposure of London as ' The Modern BabylQn.' A thrill of horror pervaded Christendom at the almost nameless secret iniquities of the city against purity. I have before me, as I write, a consensus ,of testimony from Protestant ministers of Midland England, that l at no> previous date in Englisii history 'has the marriage bond, the very basis of society, been so oponly violated and dishonored as it is to-day.' Be it remarked that none of these things come into the crime tables. The Purity of Ireland. Ejut there are some evidences of immorality which do. For instance, here is a table ta&en from a number of the old ' Victorian Year Hook ' :— Illegitimate Births to Every 100 Children Born. Scotland for 15 years 8.05 England and Wales for 15 years 5.00 Tasmania for 5 years 4.30 New S'outih Wales for 15 years 4.27 Victoria for 15 years 4.14 (Queensland for 14 .years 3.67 New Zealand for 14 years 2.38 Ireland for 11 yeajs 2.04 Here is another form, quoted by the Rev. Arthur Young from Dr. Leflingweirs tables. It puts the case in another shape. It takes the unmarried women betweem the ages of 15 and 45, lajid gives the number of illegitimates to each 1000 of them for all the ten years IS7B-87. This is the result :— Irish Illegitimacy 4.4 .per 1000 English and Welsh Illegitimacy 14.0 per 1000 Scottish Illegitimacy 21.5 |?er 1000 How do Sir Archibald Michie's ideas about the influence of ' Romanist dogma ' look in the light of these figjuiresi 9 But there is a still more drastic test. The same writer takes two IrisSh counties, Catholic Connaught and Protestant Ulster,_ and compares- them tftius.— Ten Years, Total To 1000 1879-88. Illegitimates, Births. Connafught 322 5.6 lister 3081 51.1 There we see the Protestant province ten times as immoral in this point as the Catholic one. Is this a sign of the influence of ' Romanist 'dogma ? ' British and Irish Crime Compared. Father Y.oung, in his booik, ' Catholic and Protestant Countries Compared,' cites scores of Protestant authorities to >pr>ove that Protestant crime and immorality lare much blacker than anything to.be urged against Ireland. I have no more space to give to his statistics beyojnjd this qne line, taken from the ' Encyclopaedia Brit/ajmica,' showing the ' more serious offences ' in Ireland, las compared with equivalent numbers of the population in England and Scotland, thus :— ■Ireland. England. Scotland. 3842 4797 6487 An English journal is quoted to show that ' death sentences are eight times greater in England than in Ireland to equal numbers of population.' So you see— what, of course, you always saw—that Irishmen, and Catholics have no occasion tio be afraid of facts. As for sneers and jeers against ' Romanist dogma '—well, they may make the ' unskilful laugh,' and ' split the ears of the groundlings ' ; tout they only make ' the judicious grieve. j Certainly, Irish Catholics will never hang tiheir heads in shame at any true stotistical crime comparison. Like others, Irish Catholics have,, djoubtless, plenty of room for moral and spiritual advancement. And they need not disdain to .accept a lessioin from even the unjust taunts of their enemies.

But the heayenly purity of their faith, and the h!oly, and 6'almtary restraints of their confessional, make their lives, in the bulk— in sipite of slips from their wjarm and impulsive temiperamejit— tihe saving salt of tihis bright, new land. It is quite true that t|he racial peculiarities, the poverty, and the generally undistinguished social status of their exceptional offenders bring their failing more frequently and prominently I'ntio the public eye. But 'as- to the moral and spiritual status of Irish Catholics—their imtractioins ot ttose codes of whicfr God takes note where the Statist fails— l would gladly take their chances as against those of the very sleekest and b^t in any other sections of the community