the 'Patrons,' under whose superintendence they have been placed."

In England we have the Durham Refuge, established in 1848 by the Chaplain and Governor of Durham gaol. It has restored 359 prisoners to their friends, or placed them in situations where they can earntheir bread by honest industry:of these, only twelve were recommitted. The Great Smithstreet school, Westminster, of which Mr. Martin writes, is another excellent institution, and has reclaimed numbers from the evils of vicious association. A Refuge is necessary, indeed; for no sooner does the out-going criminal reach the prison gate than his old companions gather around him, and thus he is lost because there is no Mettray for England. As we shall in a future number refer to Mettray, we here place before the reader Mr. Field's concise account of that institution :

"By the 66th Article of the Penal Code it is decreed : -' that when the accused party shall be under sixteen years of age, if it be decided that he has acted sans discernement, he shall be acquitted, but, according to circumstances, shall be returned to his parents, or sent to a house of correction, to be there educated and detained for as many years as his sentence shall appoint; provided always, that the sentence shall not extend beyond the period when the boy shall be twenty years of age.' It is then from the class described in the above article, that the children placed under discipline at the Mettray Establishment are selected. They have been sentenced to the loss of liberty for a sufficient term to allow of some length of penal treatment, and if the offence has been committed in Paris or its environs, this is inflicted in the Cellular Prison of La Roquette; this imprisonment is succeeded by the course of religious and industrial instruction, which is provided at Mettray, and of which the pupils are stimulated to avail themselves, by numerous rewards, and the certain expectation of future advantage, whereas if they misconduct themselves they are sent back again to prison. By the various reports which have been published, and by private correspondence with a clergyman residing in the immediate neighbourhood, I have ascertained that since the establishment of the institution, about six hundred boys have been under its discipline. There had been up to the date of the last official report in my possession, five hundred and twenty-one boys received. Of these, 348 were still inmates of the Institution; 17 had died; 12 had been sent back to prison for misbehaviour; 144 had been placed in situations. Of these one hundred and forty-four, no less than one hundred and twenty-eight were conducting themselves to the entire satisfaction of the 'Patrons,' whose duty it is to watch them carefully during three years; seven had been again convicted, and the character of nine is doubtful. The foregoing brief description suggests some thoughts on this interesting subject, in addition to those noted in my former publication. Whilst the French code, which has been quoted, presumes children under sixteen years of age to have acted sans discernement; our own law supposes an infant, (defined, to be one under the age of fourteen years) to be incapax doli. If, however, evidence be adduced, proving that an offender thus young, hath knowledge to discern betwixt good and evil, he is responsible and subject to punishment. And truly, in such case, our penalties commonly inflicted, have been of a kind to perfect their capacity for this, and to destroy any perception of good. If they have been precocious in wickedness, our prisons have furnished them with accomplices, and they have soon become adepts in villany. Wellis it for us that although late, men are now everywhere learning this truth. Hence the improvements of Parkhurst, and the more perfect plans of Mettray."

Some such plan as this of Mettray must be adopted in these Kingdoms. Mr. Recorder Hill states that we might prevent juvenile crime by anticipating the offence; but even in Parkhurst, where our slovenly imitation of Mettray, and of the Rauhe Haus, in Hamburgh, is attempted, we compel the Chaplain to complain, in his last Report, that the class of officers employed is not calculated to aid in developing the full advantages of the system.

It is easy to raise objections to the various suggestions here offered; it is quite within the ability of the penny-wise politician to declare that the expense of all these proposed changes is enormous, but there is a terrible argument in the fact that crime is every day increasing, that CRIME IS BECOMING, as Mr. Frederick Hill states, HEREDITARY. We do not contend that the manufacturing districts are more criminal than the agricultural. Mr. Clay has truly said "IT IS NOT MANUFACTURING MANCHESTER, BUT MULTITUDINOUS MANCHESTER, WHICH ENGENDERS CRIME." But in this Multitudinous Manchester there are, as we have proved, all the demon vices which ignorance can foster. In our cities and hamlets there are all the seeds of crime, and we never seek to check its growth, but permit every evil influence to flourish in the dank soil of godless, undirected, nature. So it was in France when the first fierce roar of a maddened people arose to drown the voice of Religion, of Virtue, and of Humanity: so it may be in England, if the facts which Mayhew, and Garwood, and Beames, and Worsley, and Hill have disclosed be suffered to continue, -facts disgraceful to England, and most dangerous to the integrity of the Kingdoms. To have freed the slave is noble; to have emancipated all religions is noble; to have taught the world great principles of justice

is noble; to have civilized and colonized new worlds is noble ; to have defeated the conqueror of all European Nations is noble; to have produced poets and orators, historians and painters, and sculptors, whose names are words of love and reverence in all lands, is noble-all these are high and glorious things to be recorded in after times-our shames are our Juvenile Criminals, and our Prison Discipline.

That many of our most influential and world-known men are now able to understand these truths is evident; and the speeches addressed to the Birmingham Conferences, on Juvenile Delinquency, held in 1851, and on the 20th of December, 1853, must have explained the bearing of the subject, in all its relations, to those who feel the slightest interest in this most important movement. Ireland, we are aware, is not so active in this matter as she should be, although, by the evidence of Mr. John Ball, M.P., given before the Committee on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, it appears that this class is rapidly increasing in Dublin, Limerick, Belfast, Cork, and indeed in all our large towns. Over-crowding in lodging houses, and the total neglect of all decency, in these places must create and perpetuate this class of criminals in Ireland. It has, as we have proved, had the most marked effect in England, and the following table will show the condition in which, in one district of Dublin, the poor herd together: it should be premised that the greater number of these kennels are common lodging houses, taking nightly lodgers, not included in the enumeration of occupants:-

When, in the year 1818, Jeffrey reviewed Buxton's work on Prison Discipline, he lamented that subjects, such as that advocated in the book before him, were not more frequently urged upon the attention of the Legislature; and attributed the neglect to the fact that all such questions, being devoid of party interest, were considered unworthy of discussion. But now the subject of Prison Discipline, and of Reformatory Schools, has acquired a National importance, and upon the Committee of the Birmingham Conference we read the names of Lord Calthorpe, Sir John Pakington, M. P., Lord Lyttelton, the Earl of Denbigh, Lord Leigh, the Bishop of Worcester, Sir Robert Peel, M. P., and others of note. Many of those with whose works we head this paper attended, and although differences on collateral points occasionally arose, in discussing the subject of punishment, yet all united in the fullest concurrence with the sentiments of the Speaker of the House of Commons, who wrote " If we can arrive at the establishment of well conducted reformatories for juvenile delinquents we shall do more towards the suppression of crime than by the best system of prison discipline for adults that has ever yet been devised."

These are sentiments worthy of one holding the high position of him who wrote them, and such as should be addressed to a Committee issuing a circular similar to that sent forth by the managers of the Birmingham Conference, and from which we extract the following passage explaining the objects and hopes of the advocates of Juvenile Reformation:

"The propositions which the Conference of 1851 laid down as the basis of their discussion, and the resolutions which they passed, have, we believe, in the main, gained the general sanction of pub lic opinion. Legislation, however, has not taken place, and there is much need of continued impulse being given to it by a repeated public attestation of the increasing urgency and importance of the subject, while it will also be highly advantageous that the additional experience and more matured convictions which have been since acquired should be collected, compared, and recorded. Throughout England private experiments have been, indeed, meanwhile rapidly increasing in number; but such efforts, however praiseworthy in themselves, are and must be wholly inadequate to the great object in view, while unassisted by legislation. Scotland has also established local reformatories in six of her chief cities, and one of them, Glasgow, has obtained an act authorizing local taxation for the purpose. The increase of crime, and loss of honest industry thereby occasioned in this country, are lamented by all; yet, still, have we to regret that England remains almost the only civilized country in which the Legislature deals with the moral destitution and crimes of children by means of imprisonment alone, and hesitates to establish the remedial institutions which other nations have learnt to reckon among primary provisions for the welfare and safety of the community. The fact that transportation, as a chief means of secondary punishment, is now ceasing, aggravates the perplexity and mischief arising from this national neglect. Since the last conference a most useful and extensive inquiry into the condition of criminal and destitute children has been carried on by a select committee of the House of Commons, and

a

bill for securing the supply, maintenance, and efficient action of reformatory scho schools throughout England, was introduced into Parliament at the close of the last session, and only withdrawn, after its second reading, upon the assurance of the Government that they would take the matter in hand early next year. It is evident, however, that the Government will be materially assisted in fulfilling this promise if supported by sustained public interest and watchfulness."

These sentiments but express the truth of a statement made so long ago as the year 1557, in the First Ordinances of Bridewell, where it is asserted that there is as great a difference "between a poor man and a beggar, as between a true man and a thief;" because, it adds, a beggar "is one who never yeildeth himself to any good exercise, but continually travaileth in idleness, training such youth as cometh to his or their custody to the same wickedness of life." To see these old hints at government now furnishing guiding matter for our legislature is satisfactory; and if those gentlemen who attended at Birmingham on the 20th of last December be but as active and resolute in their own spheres of usefulness, as their speeches afford reason to hope they will, that cause which Mr. Field, Mr. Kay, Mr. Kingsmill, Miss Carpenter, and Mr. Thomson, have so long, so earnestly, and so successfully advocated, must become the chosen system of the country. If The Times newspaper will but continue its present able support of the friends of Reformatory Schools, the work may be looked upon as half accomplished. That journal, in the number for Thursday, December 22nd, 1853, contained a most powerful analysis of the chief topics urged at Birmingham, and in the following passage condensed the entire gist of the question:

"We know of no reason why a duty of such public interest should not be undertaken by the public, unless we are to yield to that miserable jealousy which would represent anything like public benevolence as a robbery from the common stock