The fact that to-day it is not so, and that lawyers and doctors are helpless to make it so, is a glaring proof of the necessity which exists for society, in its own interests and in those of its weaker members, to take intelligent cognisance of these matters, and to pave the way for reasonable action. In the first chapter of this book I noted, without calling any special attention to it, the curiously divergent way in which somewhat similar cases were treated. One girl was treated kindly and sent to a clergyman’s house: she “recovered.” Little Marie Schneider was sent to prison for eight years, the years during which she will develop into a woman. What will she be fit for when she comes out at the age of twenty? She may come out a human tigress, or merely the crushed and helpless product of prison routine. In either case what intelligent principle guided the society that condemned her to spend those eight years in prison? The lad who killed his little sister was sent to penal servitude for ten years. What will he be good for when he comes out? “In any case,” as Dr. Savage remarks, “the boy is pretty certain to end his days either as a lunatic or a confirmed criminal, and I fancy the best course has been taken to make him the latter. So society will suffer the more, and the boy himself will be none the better.” These problems are unknown to the law, but they are beginning to stir among the community. A girl of twelve not long since murdered a child of four, as she herself subsequently confessed, in much the same manner as Marie Schneider murdered Margarete Dietrich. The jury acquitted her. They acted in defiance of the evidence and of the law. It is clear that what they said to themselves was this: The law will send this girl to prison for some ten or fifteen years. We do not believe in the advantage of that, and we prefer to deliver her from the law altogether. They were, as the judge said, a very merciful jury. But it is not by shuffling evasions of law that civilisation progresses. We need just and reasonable laws, not merciful juries. It is not to the advantage of society that young murderesses should wander at large, though it may very possibly be better than throwing them into the prison as at present constituted. The “merciful” jury, as in the south of Italy, becomes the hysterical and too often venial jury. We cannot be too grateful for the courage and honesty with which, as a rule, English juries and judges fulfil their functions; it is to this adherence to law that many intelligent foreign observers attribute the fact that criminality in England is in some respects less serious than one might be led to expect. If, however, this attitude is to be maintained, and we are to avoid the dangers of lying and cowardly verdicts, we must see to it that our law keeps pace with our knowledge and with our methods of social progress.