And, first, as to sin and crime. If the State were the perfect expression of the Divine Will, if it were indeed Civitas Dei, a City of God, then doubtless crime would be sin and sin would be crime. An offence against God would be an offence against the State, and crime would be in all cases a sin against God. Thus, in past ages, heresy, that is, opinion which the Church held to be sinful, has been treated as criminal and therefore as punishable by the State. That was the principle, avowed or disavowed, behind the procedure of the Inquisition. When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, he treated the Huguenots as criminals, for he made them subject to civic disabilities and to legal penalties. In earlier days, the Donatist view of the State's duty in the suppression of erroneous belief was even more intolerant. And, in fact, it is only in modern times that the principle of liberty of conscience for individual citizens has been accepted by governments as a principle of statecraft.

Not only liberty of conscience, but liberty of action has been conceded by the State in regard to habits of life which the ecclesiastical authority has declared to be sinful. For instance, in the 17th century, the Government, both in England under the Commonwealth and in America, was not slow to punish Sabbath breaking; it was treated not only as a sin but as a crime, an offence against the good order of the State. Nowadays the State does not interfere. We still have laws on the Statute Book which subject a blasphemer to legal penalties, and I do not suggest their repeal. But when the blasphemer is punished, it is not for the sinfulness of his words, but because they tend to promote disorder in a Christian community; and, even from this point of view, there is a growing reluctance to put the law in operation against him, it being felt that Christian belief can be defended more effectively by reason than by authority.

In short, the tendency of modern legislation has been to distinguish-more sharply than in former generations -sin from crime, and to remove sins as such from the category of acts that are punishable by law, provided that they do not directly menace the peaceful order of society. Law-makers are wisely alive to the danger of enlarging the area of crime. A recent Act of Parliament legalised marriage with a deceased wife's sister.

But it did not compel the clergy of the Established Church to solemnise such marriages, it being recognised that the prohibitions of the Church may in such matters be at variance with the prohibitions of the law. The several branches of the Christian Church in these countries are not, indeed, agreed as to whether such marriages are sinful or not; but no minister of any Church can any longer treat them as criminal, nor are the clergy of the State Church allowed to treat them as vicious. Persons convicted of 'open and notorious evil living,' i.e. of vice, may be repelled from communion in the Church of England; but it has been legally decided that a man who has married his deceased wife's sister cannot on that account be repelled, whatever be the opinion of his clergyman as to the morality of his action. A sin is not necessarily a crime.

Again, that vice is not necessarily criminal is recognised by everybody. A man may be punished for being 'drunk and disorderly'; but it is because he has been disorderly, not because he has drunk to excess, that he is subject to fine or imprisonment. If a man is in the habit of getting drunk at home, the habit may fairly be described as vicious; but he does not become a criminal until his vice disturbs his neighbours.

The law has to be altered, no doubt, from time to time, if a particular vice becomes so widespread as to become a public menace. Thus stringent laws have been placed on the Statute Book to prevent the increase of the cocaine habit. It is not enough to punish the unauthorised sale of a dangerous drug like this; it is necessary to punish the personal use of it without medical authority. Here is a case where vice is treated as crime; but it is because the vice is so pernicious to the community at large, and the habit so infectious, that the State is obliged, for purposes of self-protection, to take cognisance of it.

In the United States, as all the world knows, a great experiment in legislation has recently been made, which forbids to any individual citizen the use of alcoholic drink as a beverage, the reason being that its abuse has brought untold mischief upon society. This novel enactment is of extraordinary interest, as it provides an illustration of that enlargement of the area of crime, which, as I have already said, modern jurists view with suspicion.

Such a policy, as in the case of cocaine, may be wise on occasion and in the public interest. It remains to be seen whether the ill consequences of tempting people to break the law which forbids alcohol in any form may not greatly exceed the advantages of Prohibition. It is too soon yet to pass judgment upon the wisdom or unwisdom of this remarkable legislation. All that is relevant here to mark is that if American jurists were undertaking the punishment of vice as such, rather than the punishment of crime, which comes within the proper province of law, they would be departing from the recognised principles of their own science, and would be preparing the way for a return to those older methods of legislation which took little account of individual freedom.

To take another illustration, and this time from the Statute Book of Great Britain. Vice' in popular speech connotes, or at any rate includes, illicit relations between the sexes. But these are not criminal per se, nor does the State take notice of them except in special cases, such as the following. If one of the persons concerned is married (the case directly contemplated in the Seventh Commandment), a wrong has been done to the innocent wife or husband, of which the law may take cognisance. Or, if violence has been used, the crime of rape has been committed, which the law punishes with great severity. Or-and this is the special case that is germane to my subject-the law now provides that if the woman is a girl under sixteen years of age, the man is guilty of crime. As to the age of consent' opinions differ, as the recent debates in Parliament showed. Many people, whose opinion is entitled to carry weight, have urged, and urged with success, that it should be a criminal offence for a man to have relations with a girl of fifteen years and eleven months, whether she be willing or not. And they can point to many instances of a young girl's life being spoilt by the vicious selfishness of the man who took advantage of her. They propose, therefore, to treat his vice as a crime. It is pretty certain that a good deal of public sympathy has been enlisted on the side of this legislative change, because of the abhorrence which is felt for the man's vice and selfishness in such a case. But it is not at all certain that sufficient attention has been Vol. 239.-No. 474.

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paid to the danger-now that the age of consent has been raised from fourteen to sixteen-of bringing a passionate young man, tempted it may be by a bad girl not greatly his junior, within the grasp of the criminal law. If he were reported to the police, he would be liable to arrest; and the danger of blackmail, to avoid public exposure, would be very real. However, I am not concerned now so much with the rights or wrongs of this particular matter, on which Parliament has pronounced so recently, as with the general principle that vice is not necessarily crime, which good people do not always remember, and that the treatment of all vice as crime would be an intolerable invasion of human liberty.

Another habit which is on the border-line between vice and crime, and as to which our legislative practice is somewhat inconsistent, is the habit of gambling. I am not now discussing the ethics of gambling, which opens up difficult moral problems; but the point to be noticed is that the State regards public gambling as illegal, and in certain circumstances a gambler or a man who encourages his neighbours to risk their money in lotteries is treated as · a criminal. The practice of the State as to this illustrates well the principle which I am trying to elucidate, viz. that vice does not become crime until it reaches such proportions as to be a direct menace to the community. The State does not interferc if a man gambles away his patrimony at cards; but it interferes promptly-in Great Britain at least-if he becomes responsible for a public lottery.* Lotteries are recognised by the State in several European countries, and are regarded as a legitimate means of gathering money for State purposes. But they are now forbidden in England, because of the danger of encouraging the gambling habit. In Ireland, for many years, the law as to lotteries has been openly transgressed without penalty. The authorities of the Roman Catholic Church frequently organise lotteries for charitable purposes; but, as in so many other cases, it has been a feature of British rule that the law is not put in motion. Laxity of this kind has been bad for the education of the

* That the motive which led to the passing of the laws forbidding lotteries may have been the desire to protect a State monopoly, does not affect the argument.

Irish people, as it has encouraged them to think lightly of crime or of transgressions of the law of the State. But it has probably been sanctioned because of the belief of the British authorities that it would do more harm than good to interfere.

The question in all these cases is always the same: Is this action or habit directly injurious to the State? It is no answer to that to reply that it is a vicious action or habit. Society, that is, public opinion, must be trusted to condemn vice as such; but if you propose to invoke the law, you must be quite sure that the State will not lose more than it gains by interference, and by enlarging the area of crime.

If we examine this distinction between vice and crime from another angle, we shall see how important it is, and how little understood. A criminal is not always a man of vicious life, and he may conceivably believe himself to be acting in accordance not only with his own conscience, but with the will of God. One of the greatest of crimes-the greatest, from the point of view of the State-is high treason. If a man is persuaded in his own mind that he has a mission to subvert the monarchy, and to establish a new system of government, he may take up arms with that intention. He, and those likeminded, may try to set up a Republic by force. He is, undoubtedly, a criminal, and when convicted of treason is liable to the severest punishment. Of what avail would it be to urge that he is a man of good character and of blameless conduct in his home or in his business? It would be quite irrelevant. He is punished, not for being vicious (of which he has not been accused), but for being a criminal who is dangerous to the well-being of the State as constituted by law. If he had succeeded in his enterprise, and had overthrown the State, a new order of things would have been established, and what was crime under the old order would be counted as patriotism under the new. But our rebel was a criminal, for all that, until he succeeded in abolishing the laws which he had defied.

Take an example. The Orangemen of Ulster who took up arms in 1913, with the intention of resisting the impending decision of Parliament to give Home Rule to Ireland and thus to impose it upon Ulster, were, of