Every year, in the Metropolitan district alone, 66,100 persons are arrested, of whom 444 are arrested for trying to commit suicide--life having become too unbearable a burden. This immense population is partially, no doubt, bred to prison, the same as other people are bred to the army and to the bar. The hereditary criminal is by no means confined to India, although it is only in that country that they have the engaging simplicity to describe themselves frankly in the census returns. But it is recruited constantly from the outside. In many cases this is due to sheer starvation. Fathers of the Church have laid down the law that a man who is in peril of death from hunger is entitled to take bread wherever he can find it to keep body and soul together. That proposition is not embodied in our jurisprudence. Absolute despair drives many a man into the ranks of the criminal class, who would never have fallen into the category of criminal convicts if adequate provision had been made for the rescue of those drifting to doom. When once he has fallen, circumstances seem to combine to keep him there. As wounded and sickly stags are gored to death by their fellows, so the unfortunate who bears the prison brand is hunted from pillar to post, until he despairs of ever regaining his position, and oscillates between one prison and another for the rest of his days. I gave in a preceding page an account of how a man, after trying in vain to get work, fell before the temptation to steal in order to escape starvation. Here is the sequel of that man's story. After he had stolen he ran away, and thus describes his experiences: -- "To fly was easy. To get away from the scene required very little ingenuity, but the getting away from one suffering brought another. A straight look from a stranger; a quick step behind me, sent a chill through every nerve. The cravings of hunger had been satisfied, but it was the cravings of conscience that were clamorous now. It was easy to get away from the earthly consequences of sin, but from the fact-- never. And yet it was the compulsion of circumstances that made me a criminal. It was neither from inward viciousness or choice, and how bitterly did I cast reproach on society for allowing such an alternative to offer itself--'to Steal or Starve,' but there was another alternative that here offered itself--either give myself up, or go on with the life of crime. I chose the former. I had travelled over 100 miles to get away from the scene of my theft, and I now find myself outside the station house at a place where I had put in my boyhood days.