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espect England was an exception among the European states. Has it not been said that through
perseverance it had managed to reduce youthful criminality by 70 percent in a few years? Well, we
must revise our estimate. The last official report on British criminal statistics in 1894 recounts this
compliment addressed to our neighbors across the Channel and regrets that it is not warranted. The
evidence unfortunately is unimpeachable, and when by chance the English to speak ill of themselves,
we may believe them. A table attached to the report shows that the annual number of minors under 16
condemned to either imprisonment or detention in a reformatory or industrial school or to being
whipped increased from 11,064 (annual average) in 1864–68 to 13,710 in 1894. In particular, the
category of young Englishmen whipped, lamentably enough, shows an increase from 585 to 3,194! 6
The ever more frequent lapse of youth into vice and delinquency and even into crime is thus not
exclusively a French malady at this time; it is also an English malady, a German malady, an Italian
malady, a European malady. . . . It is therefore not possible to cite as the principal cause of this
phenomenon a purely French law, an innovation, in education or elsewhere, restricted to France
alone. From the start it is advisable to note the secondary and subordinate character of legislative and
political considerations to which this sad subject may give rise. Most important, the fundamental
explanation must be sought in the social transformations of our time. To be more precise, we should
note a point of fact: the progress either of criminality or of suicide was at first more rapid among
adults than among minors, or rather it showed up among adults before being disclosed in minors; but
as soon as it struck the latter, it progressed so rapidly that they were soon in the lead. This simple
observation suffices to show us that whatever the germs causing this contagion, they did not come to
the children directly but after they had acted on their older contemporaries, and, above all, on their
parents. In other words, whatever the causes of the transformations of which I am speaking, they acted
first on the fathers before working on the sons; if their efficacy appears greater on the latter, it is very
easy to understand: a new wind shakes young branches much more forcefully than the old limbs
through which it blows.
No one will doubt the truth of this observation if he thinks about making another, namely that the
causes to which the progression of suicide and criminality may be attributed are partly the same as
those that enable us to explain the diminution in births, the population decline. And what are these
causes—intellectual, sentimental, economic, pathological? First of all, there is an increase of general
irreligion through the propagation of doctrines which have destroyed the traditional principles of
morality and the family before replacing them. This purely negative and critical de-Christianization
results in both demoralization and depopulation, as will be seen by a statistical comparison from this
triple point of view among French departments. In the second place, there is an increasing desire for
social advancement, stimulated by the spread of new needs, which were luxuries not long ago and are
now basic necessities. This is a very important factor whose strength was demonstrated by Mr.
Arsène Dumont regarding the birth rate: the number of children is in inverse proportion to the needs
which arise or tend to arise in each family. This factor is no less strong in criminality, explaining as it
does, along with the internal exodus from rural areas to the cities and the detachment from land and
home, the frequency of a demoralizing change of social class. In the third place, not the increase in
misery but the insufficiency, felt more and more strongly, of progress toward wealth in response to the
more rapid increase of covetousness, the multiple desires of which I have just spoken. Only thus can
we understand the parallel progress of criminality, depopulation, and wealth as attested to by our
comparative statistics. And, finally, there is the contagious scourge of alcoholism, the source of
degeneration and disequilibrium, of sterility and perversity, of vital impotence and social harm. . . .
But is it really certain that these considerations are relevant here, that they have something to do