Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/873

 NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 853

and that every wide-awake corporation (Glasgow, the London county council, etc.) is most anxious to get hold of such a gold mine. The trunk-line service is a monopoly that would have been eagerly seized upon in a dozen places subject to any possible conditions as to a speedy service. I do not believe that the telegraph service will lose anything at all by the taking over of the telephones, for a written message has its own very great advantages in all business transactions. It is probable that the capital of the National Telephone Company has been watered 400 per cent. If the government purchased on the lines indicated, borrowing the money at 2>< per cent, interest, it would make an annual profit of ;f 178,612. It will make a further great profit on this transaction because it has very valuable rights in regard to wayleaves which the National Telephone Company has not. Personally, however, I would prefer to deal with a public company which can be talked to at its half-yearly meetings, and sued in the courts, rather than with a government department which is amenable neither to public opinion nor to the law of the land. At present rates money laid out in the future will pay 20 per cent. A message could be sent from any call office for 3d.— A. H. Hathe, Fortnightly Review, December, 1S9S.

Determinism and Responsibility: A Criticism of M. Hamon. — After having criticised M. Hamon I will now briefly set forth my own ideas. I agree with him that the present system of criminal jurisprudence is altogether bad. The impossibility of finding a legal or scientific criterion for responsibility, individual variations of the notion of responsibility, etc., expose the judge to grave errors. According to my opinion the judge and jury ought to acquit or condemn, and apply the penalties according to the law, without hearing physicians on the mental condition of the prisoner. The hearing of medical specialists in court is harmful; it troubles the minds of judge and jury, and makes them acquit here and condemn there accord- ing to the ideas of the medical specialist, or the way he expresses them. The impres- sion of the moment, and not justice, brings the verdict. Often the prisoner is judged irresponsible and returned to society; he will be so much the more dangerous because the legal decision regarding his mental condition renders him free to recommence his lawlessness.

Only when the work of the magistrate is finished ought that of the medical specialist to begin. The condemned man can then be examined at leisure without his being excited, without the influence of a bad and mobile public opinion, and without the disturbing influence of pseudo-science. Then the physicians should decide whether he should be sent to prison or the hospital. Separate the rSU of the magistrate and the physician, that is my thesis. — Dr. Laupts, VHumaniti nouvelte, December, 1898.