On the other hand, official returns of criminal statistics, and a majority of the members of the Central Commission, when pursuing an inquiry suggested by myself into Italian crime since 1873 <p 67>--for previously to this date there are no criminal statistics in Italy except for 1853 and 1869-70--came to the conclusion that there was a tendency towards a diminution of crime. But their decision was formed from an entirely partial standpoint, which they had taken up in the exigency of polemical discussion. They compared, in fact, the years just concluded, 1881-5, with 1880, and thus it naturally followed that after a maximum they had a relative decrease. And it was only this ingenious comparison which gave an appearance of actual proof to their optimistic assertions; for when a fever is at forty degrees, the fall of even half a degree is very important. They paid special attention to the so-called high criminality, which is tried by the Assize courts, and is actually decreasing, though by the purely artificial effect of more and more effective measures of correction. But I have always maintained, and I have the support of M. Oettingen, that we cannot separate crimes and offences tried by the Assizes from those tried by the Tribunals, for there is only a difference of degree between them, as is clear in regard to theft, assaults and wounding, forgery and the like. It is a curious fact that similar illusions have existed in all countries through the same causes and prejudices which have been mentioned above. In France, for instance, we often find that the keepers of the seals, reporting on volumes of the excellent and valuable series of criminal statistics since the year 1826, occasionally remark on these oscillatory diminutions, and make a point of treating them as <p 68>signs of a constant and general tendency, which succeeding years have always contradicted. In France also, the same controversy has been kept up since 1840, with the same polemical artifices as were employed more recently in Italy, on the question whether crime has increased or decreased. Dufau, B<e'>ranger, Berrzat de St. Prix, and Legoyt affirmed that it had diminished since 1826, against the true opinion of de Metz, Dupin, Chassan, Mesuard, and Fayet, the last of whom quotes the others in one of his essays on criminal statistics, now undeservedly forgotten, though they abound in striking and profound observation. But, as for France in those days, so for Italy to-day, the statistics of succeeding years quickly proved that what official optimism and national self-complacency spoke of as pessimism on our part was but a conscientious inference from lamentable facts, established in every country by the influence of civilisation on crime, which I have described in preceding pages.