Insular Great Britain alone appears to be relatively unsubmerged by the rising tide of criminality; but even here there is a real increase, in proportion to the population, in the more serious kinds of crime. Crimes of passion are rarer among the Anglo-Saxon race in England, Scotland, and America than anywhere else; but crimes of interest are proportionately more common than elsewhere. The decrease is in minor offences, and is due in large measure, no doubt, to reasons connected with the police. The anomaly of the comparative freedom of Great Britain from crime has been explained by foreign observers in several ways--by the former frequency of hanging and of transportation in England, thus eliminating a large number of criminals,[116] and by the firmness with which sentences are executed. It is probable that the great stream of emigration from Great Britain, carrying away much of the finest, but also much of the most turbulent elements (the two are often connected), has had a very marked influence in this respect. Criminality, like insanity, waits upon civilisation. Among primitive races insanity is rare; criminality, in the true sense, is also rare. Conservatism and the rigid cult of custom form as distinct a barrier against crime as they do against progressive civilisation. As the methods of enlarging and multiplying the uses of our lives increase, so do the abuses of these methods. In an epoch of stress, and of much change and readjustment in the social surroundings and relations of individuals, ill-balanced natures become more frequent, and the anti-social and unlawful instincts are more often called out than in a stagnant society. The criminality of the Irish in England is far greater than that of the Irish at home, and it is a significant fact that while the Americans are more criminal than the English, the criminality of the English-born in the United States is more than double that of the native American whites. Like insanity,[117] criminality flourishes among migrants, and our civilisation is bringing us all more or less into the position of migrants. But the problem of criminality is not thereby rendered hopeless. Rather it is shown to be largely a social fact, and social facts are precisely the order of facts most under our control. The problem of criminality is not an isolated one that can be dealt with by fixing our attention on that and that alone. It is a problem that on closer view is found to merge itself very largely into all those problems of our social life that are now pressing for solution, and in settling them we shall to a great extent settle it. The rising flood of criminality is not an argument for pessimism or despair. It is merely an additional spur to that great task of social organisation to which during the coming century we are called.