=Alcohol.=--The influence of alcohol in the commission of crime is both direct and indirect. We see its direct influence in those crimes which are committed whilst the culprit is either in a state of intoxication or else just recovering from such a state. To detect and trace its indirect influence a much closer study is required. The inconsequent, lazy and thriftless life of the criminal demands some sort of stimulant, and this is found readily at hand in alcohol. Alcohol is not the cause of the crimes of these people but it is closely associated with such cause. The man who stabs another in a saloon is not then guilty of his first crime. Under the influence of intoxication he has lost his power of self-control and he commits a deed for which he may in a sober moment have still a degree of moral abhorrence or be perhaps too much of a coward to perform. Many criminals, whose crime requires a certain amount of nerve and calculation, as e.g. assassinations, murders, robberies, swindlings, etc., will not touch alcohol until their crime has been completed and they have satisfied themselves that they covered up all trace of it. They then often indulge in a debauch. In the lower courts, offenders will frequently plead as an extenuation that they were intoxicated at the time when they committed their offence. This is often done in order to escape the full penalty, and such pleas are not to be relied upon in estimating the real influence of alcohol. In the higher courts, for the same reason, criminals often feign insanity, and in not a few of such cases they become their own dupes by actually losing the possession of their senses. Drunkenness and crime go together, although the increase in the consumption of alcohol does not necessarily mean that crime has increased. Neither does the reverse hold good. When crime appears first it is not long before all forms of animal indulgence follow. Sometimes drunkeness appears first, and when the home has been reduced to beggary, crime results.