ABSTRACT
The general features of the branch of ethics the authors are now tackling have been set out. This chapter looks at the detail in order to study the main rules, that is, the main duties it lays down. The first and most imperative is the one forbidding any attempt on the life of a human being and prohibiting homicide, except in cases allowed by law. Homicide is mainly a crime of rural districts. It is amongst workers on the land that the authors find the highest incidence. In 1876, the elections for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies took place; the cases of homicide went up from 409 to 422; but in 1877, political disturbances becoming intensified–during the 'Sixteenth of May period'–a formidable increase took place. A commercial fraud, a serious swindle, can often work more distress at one stroke in the evil effects they cause than an isolated murder.
