Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/281

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work of which this is the authorised German translation is written by a jurist in the Ministry of Justice at St. Petersburg. [sic] It has rather a practical than a merely scientific object, namely, to urge upon the compilers of the contemplated new Criminal Code for the Russian Empire, and on other departments of the Government, the importance of the study of superstition in connection with criminal jurisprudence, and of enforcing that study upon all who are concerned with the regulation of the popular life, especially lawyers and priests. But it is by no means without interest for anthropological students, whose interests are less directly practical. And, though its arguments are immediately addressed to the circumstances of life in Russia, it contains much that may well be taken to heart by the administrators of an empire comprehending men in all grades of culture and in every quarter of the globe. The notorious Clonmel case will occur to the reader's mind at once; and a student of folklore knows that this is only the most famous of a long series of cases in which human beings have been misused, and even done to death, under the influence of superstition, in these islands and in our own day.

But unless the term "superstition" be greatly enlarged beyond its ordinary meaning, much more than superstition must be included in the subjects of study of criminal lawyers and other administrators. The entire circle of folklore contains useful lessons for them. The reports of Sir William MacGregor on British New Guinea are full of cases in which murder is not merely excusable, or even justifiable, but is imperiously demanded, by the customs and the public opinion of the tribes where it is committed. If a civilised government is to be maintained, the crime cannot go unpunished; but to reward it with the same penalty as we inflict on the burglar who shoots a policeman, or the scoundrel who is found guilty of poisoning, is to be guilty of gross injustice. And yet it is not every Colonial Governor who would