With regard to habitual criminals, the question of criminality must be discussed from the standpoint, not of those who theorise, but of those who know from actual {277} observation most about the criminal classes. In an article in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for December, 1901, Sir Robert Anderson discusses how to put an end to professional crime. Sir Robert has been Chairman of the Criminal Investigation Committee of the English Parliament for many years. His opinion, then, is worth weighing well and is very strikingly different from those of the criminologists who would find a very large proportion of criminals among mankind. He says: "I am not turning phrases about this matter, or dealing in rhetorical fireworks. I am speaking seriously and deliberately, and I appeal to all who have any confidence in my judgment and knowledge of the subject, to accept my assurance that if not 70,000 but 70 known criminals were put out of the way, the whole organisation of crime against property in England would be dislocated, and we should, not ten years hence but immediately, enjoy an amount of immunity from crimes of this kind that it might to-day seem Utopian to expect. The criminal statistics cult blinds its votaries. It is the crime committed by professional criminals that keeps the community in a state of siege. The professional criminals are few and I may add they are well known to the police. The theory that these men commit crimes under the overpowering pressure of habit, or of impulse, is altogether mistaken. They pursue a career of crime because, as Sir Alfred Wills expresses it, they calculate and accept its risks. And just in proportion as you increase the risks you will diminish the number of those who will face them. True it is that the army of crime includes a certain number of wretched creatures who have not sufficient moral stamina to resist the criminal impulse. I believe there are fewer of this class in England than abroad, but I know that these are not the sort of criminals whose crimes perplex the police. The high-class criminal is a different type of person altogether." Sir Robert gives an extract from one of the morning papers of the day on which he wrote these lines, in order to show how different is the status of every ordinary habitual criminal from that which the enthusiastic criminologist supposes it to be: {278} "Hewson Patchett, 48, was sentenced yesterday for obtaining seven pounds and a gold watch by false pretenses. He urged it was his first offence, but a London detective informed the court that there were about two hundred cases against him for housebreaking." Sir Robert adds: "If Patchett is a cool-headed, deliberate criminal, the whole proceeding is a farce. And if he be one of those miserable, weak creatures who can not abstain from crime, the sentence is barbarous."