Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Medico Legal Journal, 1885, Vol. 2: Published Under the Auspices of the Medico-Legal Society of New York
Weak as these habitual criminals sometimes are in under standing, it is instructive to observe how they consort together by an elective affinity and are united into a loosely gregarious society by bonds of a kind - for example, by the respect which the weaker has for the stronger criminal, by their mutual aid and defence against the common enemy on which they prey, by the secrecy which they have to pre serve, by the thieves' honor which they show in the division of spoils, and by the like tacit leagues a society that they would not keep up, since they would never conform willingly to any code, but for the constant pressure and always mena cing danger from Without. In these rude rudiments of morals they yield us an incidentally instructive example of a moral sense in the making, for they consider it entirely wrong to do to one another what they do not think it in the least wrong to do to society as a whole not otherwise than as, accord ing to the moral code of the Old Testament, Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not steal, having a Specially tribal application, did not mean, Thou shalt not kill a Canaanite and Thou shalt not spoil an Egyptian.
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