Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/247

 Amendment Act, and it would be easy for a shocked observer of prison statistics to observe, in a period of years during which the administration of that useful act was being perfected, dreadful increases in the crimes which it represses; whereas the fact probably is that crime of this sort has diminished, largely through the action of the very causes which would make it appear to have been increasing. Therefore, if anyone still argues that education as a means of diminishing crime has proved a failure, it is not upon judicial statistics that he must base his contentions. Probably that argument is obsolete: but if it were not, and if it were allowed all the validity of which it is capable, it would still furnish no ground whatever from which to throw doubt upon the expectation that in a hundred years' time crime will have diminished very greatly, as a result of the improved education of the new era. For indeed, as education is at present conducted, it would be rather a remarkable thing that it should have any effect upon criminality at all. What influence increased intelligence may have in restraining one part of the population from the desire to commit crime might easily be neutralised by the effect, on another portion, of the increased craft and subtlety imparted by education. Knowledge can facilitate crime as well as deter from it. A man who has not learned to write, it has been