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Page 14
Before proceeding to analysis the contents of this table, it will be
as well to explain the method on which it has been constructed, and
the sources from which it is derived. The population of Victoria, over
ten years of age, has been calculated according to the Victorian
census for 1881, as contained in Part II. of the Victorian Statistical
Register. In order to make the Victorian table harmonise in all
particulars with Dr. Bosco's table for England, Scotland, and Ireland,
the excess of births over deaths has been calculated up to the end of
1884. The United Kingdom, it will be seen, has been selected as the
measure of comparison with the colony of Victoria. This selection has
been made on the ground that the colony of Victoria is not composed of
the inhabitants of any one of the three kingdoms, but contains a
mixture of them all. It will also be observed that the homicidal crime
of each of the three kingdoms differs from the other, but this is a
consideration which we shall not further comment upon at present.
After these preliminary explanations we are now in a position to
examine the contents of our statistical table in its bearing upon
crimes of blood. It will now be possible to see what light the criminal
statistics of Victoria, as compared with the criminal statistics of the
United Kingdom, throw upon these crimes; and the disturbing factor of
race being eliminated, what is the influence of climate pure and simple
upon them. According to the isotherms for the year the Victorians live
in an atmosphere between eight and ten degrees hotter than our own.
Side by side with this additional heat, there is, as compared with
the United Kingdom, an additional amount of crime. In the colony of
Victoria, in proportion to every 100,000 inhabitants over ten years of
age, there are nearly one-third more murders annually than in the
United Kingdom. On what ground is this considerable increase of
homicide to be accounted for, except on the ground of climate? The
higher percentage is not caused by difference of race; it is not
caused by worse economic conditions--these conditions are much
superior to our own--the meaning of the figures is not obscured by any
material differences of legal procedure or legal nomenclature. It
cannot be urged that the Victorian population are the dregs of the
home population; the very opposite is the fact. The bad characters who
emigrate are the only disturbing element; but, after all, these men
are not so numerous, and the evil effects of their presence is
counterbalanced by the superiority of the average colonist to the
average citizen who remains at home. It may be said that there is
greater difficulty in detecting crime in a new colony than in an old
and settled country. As applied to some colonies it is possible this
objection may be sound, but, as applied to Victoria, it will not hold
good. In Victoria the police are much more effective than they are at
home, and a criminal has much less chance of going unpunished there
than he has in England. In Victoria in the year 1887, out of a total
of 40,693 cases reported to the police, 34,473 were brought up for
trial. In England, on the other hand, out of a total of 42,391
indictable offences reported to the police in 1886-7, only 19,045
persons were apprehended. The Victorian figures include offences of
all kinds, petty as well as indictable, whereas the English figures
deal with indictable offences only. But admitting this, and admitting
that it is more difficult to arrest indictable offenders, this
difficulty is not so great as to explain away the vast difference in
the numbers apprehended in Victoria as compared with the numbers
apprehended in England. Only one conclusion can be drawn from these
figures, and it is that the Victorian constabulary are more efficient
than our own, and that it is a more dangerous thing for a person to
break the law in the young colony of Victoria than in the old
community at home.
It seems to me that the points of comparison between the United
Kingdom and Victoria, in so far as they have any bearing upon crime,
have now been exhausted; on almost every one of these points Victoria
stands in a more favourable position than ourselves. The colony has,
on the whole, a better kind of citizen; it has superior social and
economic conditions; it has a far more effective system of police. On
what possible ground, then, is it, except the ground of climate, that
the Victorians are more addicted to homicide than the people of the
United Kingdom? I admit it would be rash to assert that climate is the
cause if our own and the Victorian statistics were the only documents
to which we could appeal; it would be rash to draw such a sweeping
conclusion from so isolated a basis. But when we know that the
Victorian statistics are only one set of documents among many, and
that all these sets of documents point to the operation of the same
law, the case assumes an entirely different complexion. The results of
the Victorian statistics harmonise with the conclusions already
reached from a comparison of the criminal statistics of Europe and
America. These conclusions in turn are powerfully reinforced by the
experience of Australia. In fact, the whole body of evidence, from
whatever quarter it is collected, points with remarkable unanimity to
the conviction that, as far as European peoples and their offshoots
are concerned, climate alone is no inconsiderable factor in
determining the course of human conduct.
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