Let me first be sure of my premises.  Is there in this day and generation a spirit of lawlessness greater or different than that that has always characterized human society?  Such spirit of revolt against authority has always existed, even when the penalty of death was visited upon nearly all offences against life and property.  Blackstone tells us (Book IV, Chap.  I) that in the eighteenth century it was a capital offence to cut down a cherry tree in an orchard—­a drastic penalty which should increase our admiration for George Washington’s courage and veracity.

We are apt to see the past in a golden haze, which obscures our vision.  Thus, we think of William Penn’s “holy experiment” on the banks of the Delaware as the realization of Sir Thomas More’s dream of Utopia; and yet Pennsylvania was somewhat intemperately called in 1698 “the greatest refuge for pirates and rogues in America,” and Penn himself wrote, about that time, that he had heard of no place which was “more overrun with wickedness” than his City of Brotherly Love, where things were so “openly committed in defiance of law and virtue—­facts so foul that I am forbid by common modesty to relate them.”

Conceding that lawlessness is not a novel phenomenon, is not the present time characterized by an exceptional revolt against the authority of law?  The statistics of our criminal courts show in recent years an unprecedented growth in crimes.  Thus, in the federal courts, pending criminal indictments have increased from 9503 in the year 1912 to over 70,000 in the year 1921.  While this abnormal increase is, in part, due to sumptuary legislation—­for approximately 30,000 cases now pending arise under the prohibition statutes—­yet, eliminating these, there yet remains an increase in nine years of over 400 per cent, in the comparatively narrow sphere of the federal criminal jurisdiction.  I have been unable to get the data from the State Courts; but the growth of crimes can be measured by a few illustrative statistics.  Thus, the losses from burglaries which have been repaid by casualty companies have grown in amount from $886,000 in 1914 to over $10,000,000 in 1920; and, in a like period, embezzlements have increased five-fold.  It is notorious that the thefts from the mails and express companies and other carriers have grown to enormous proportions.  The hold-up of railroad trains is now of frequent occurrence, and is not confined to the unsettled sections of the country.  Not only in the United States, but even in Europe, such crimes of violence are of increasing frequency, and a recent dispatch from Berne, under date of August 7, 1921, stated that the famous International Expresses of Europe were now run under a military guard.

The streets of our cities, once reasonably secure from crimes of violence, have now become the field of operations for the foot-pad and highwayman.  The days of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard have returned, with this serious difference—­that the Turpins and Sheppards of our day are not dependent upon the horse, but have the powerful automobile to facilitate their crimes and make sure their escape.