We might advert to other recent changes more or less important, but the sketch we have given will suffice to show that while Parliament is addressing itself to reform the laws, it is not unmindful of its own imperfections. Of these the greatest are to be found in its judicial system. Its judicial functions are necessarily confided to a few of its members, who are rarely qualified, by knowledge or experience, for the performance of them. The ablest debater-the most sagacious politician-may be wholly unsuited for an election or railway committee; and even if qualified, such men are rarely enlisted in that service. The incompetency of these tribunals has long been acknowledged; and it is due to the public, to the credit of Parliament itself, and to the profession, that they should be made as efficient as the Superior Courts at Westminster.

W

ART. VII. THE NEW INVITATIONS TO

JUVENILE CRIME.

HEN the Birmingham Conference last hoisted its great flag, and blew a loud trumpet, in laudation of reformatories, alarm was engendered in the minds of all prudent friends to that great movement,-after the parade of vague generalities and studied avoidance of practical details which characterized the speeches and proceedings of that goodly gathering that the movement would fall into the hands of untoward enthusiasts and mere philanthropists, who would speedily discredit a good cause by the blunders of bad administration.

Such fears have been more than verified.

If men like Mr. Recorder Hill, Mr. Turner, Mr. Baker, or Mr. Bengough, or women so eminently gifted for the work as Miss Carpenter and Lady Noel Byron, were alone to be entrusted with it, there would be probably little danger in committing

the management of reformation to such hands; but to invite the public at large to step in and supersede the functions of penal law, is to commit the work to benevolence without discipline, and charity without experience. The great mass of mankind are too little interested in such labours to respond to the invitation held forth in the 17 & 18 Vict. c. 86. They who best understand the difficulties and requirements of the task, are generally the last to volunteer to embark on it, and thus it is that

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

The appeal to this kind of rash charity and miscellaneous benevolence is thus held forth in that remarkably foolish Act of Parliament :

"Whereas Reformatory Schools for the better training of Juvenile Offenders have been and may be established by voluntary contributions in various parts of Great Britain, and it is expedient that more extensive use should be made of such institutions: be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

"It shall and may be lawful for her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department, upon application made to him by the directors or managers of any such institution, to direct one of her Majesty's inspectors of prisons (!) to examine and report to him upon its condition and regulations, and any such institution as shall appear to the satisfaction of the said Secretary of State, and shall be certified under his hand and seal, to be useful and efficient for its purpose, shall be held to be a Reformatory School [How long have prison inspectors been trained to administer education ?] under the provisions of this Act: provided always, that it shall be lawful for any of her Majesty's inspectors of prisons to visit from time to time any Reformatory School which shall have been so certified as aforesaid; and if upon the report of any such inspector the said Secretary of State shall think proper to withdraw his said certificate, and shall notify such withdrawal under his hand to the directors or managers of the said institution, the same shall forthwith cease to be a Reformatory School within the meaning of this Act.""

The avowed intent and principle of most of the chief promoters of these reformatories is to discard punishment; and Mr. Sidney Turner, who sides with Solomon, and not with the modern Solons who are superseding his maxim, and holds to the adage about "sparing the rod and spoiling the child," is

just now in great disgrace with the philanthropic party. He has written two letters in which, harsh man! he actually advocates the correction of crime even in youthful offenders! He is more than half suspected even of smiling in his sleeve at the touching discipline of Mr. Recorder, who would kiss the dear delinquents into goodness; and of questioning the wisdom of the Saltley system of turning its inmates loose into Birmingham, that they may missionarize in the alleys and closes of that not immaculate city, and of bringing fresh lambs to the fold of good-natured shepherd Ellis.

"We have read these letters," says the Dublin Quarterly Review, "with amazement:"-" his unhappily timed letters.” But the reviewer consoles himself, after commenting on the cruelty of the Times for its advocacy of "rigours and corporal austerities,"

"That Mr. Turner does not, strictly considered, support these views, is true, as his second letter proves; but he has, unintentionally, given colour to an argument which we are sure he would not advocate, that pain should be made part of reformatory discipline, and that to the absence of it may be attributed, the assumed failure of the French minor reformatory schools."

Of course, Mr. Turner does support pain as an element in the reformatory treatment of wicked children: we should like to see the parent who would gravely tell us he thought otherwise. These philanthropists are really doing vast mischief to the good cause they are thus bringing into merited ridicule by their absurdity.

M. de Persigny's report is a complete corroboration of the views, and, we regret to say, of the apprehensions also which we have always entertained on this subject. It was published in the Moniteur last year, and gives the following terrible statement of the increase of crime under the pampering system. He exhibits it in the increase of juvenile crime. It is as follows in France:

:

This frightful increase is somewhat accounted for by M. de Persigny by the fact that the new reformatories invited convictions which would not otherwise have taken place. Nevertheless it is not concealed that such institutions have mainly increased crimes by the premium they have offered to criminals.

Let us ponder on this experience! It is the precise result we have prophesied from the follies of private benevolence, and the maudlin sentimentality put forth on the subject. THE ADVANTAGES EXCEED THE PENALTY. In other words, there is an invitation, instead of a deterring punishment, held up to crime. Correction is to give place to kindness. And so far from any fear being engendered of the penalties of sin, it is to be held up as the direct passport to indulgence and gain. Hear M. de Persigny's own statement:

"These institutions have filled up a vacancy in the old state of things, and have responded to a true social want. There was reason to think that a repression still stronger than the past, whilst elevating the number of those at whom it strikes, would diminish that of the criminals. It has not been so. We have witnessed amongst certain needy and depraved parents a melancholy tendency to leave, nay even to place, their children under the lash of these sentences of which the benefits exceed the penalty. Thus they disembarass themselves by entrusting the state with the care of their education, safe in taking them back at the end of some years in order to profit by their labour, and sometimes even with most shameful designs. These deplorable calculations are owing to the too exclusive preponderance given for some years to the idea of aid and charity in the government of the institutions for young criminals, and especially in private establishments. The repressive character of correctional education is not sufficiently strongly felt in these colonies, which certain classes begin to consider as colleges for the poor. It is with a view of strengthening the principles of discipline, that the project has been devised of submitting the rules to the deliberations of the council of State. At the same time, to baffle this afflicting complicity of the family in the acts which bring the children into the dock, I am convinced that henceforth the administration will not give up these young criminals till after the period necessary for their improvement, and when it shall have been ascertained that the parents have not, either by bad advice or bad example, rendered themselves unworthy to take them back again. This last measure has begun to bear its fruit, and already have the parents often presented themselves to claim their children while their sentence is being passed. I hope that the administration of a more energetic disciplinary regimen will

add to the good effect, and will bring back this class of offenders in its true limits."

The original system in France was attended by none of this increase. Under it the government instituted penal schools, and, as at Mettray, they comparatively succeeded. In August, 1850, the philanthropists were invited, bribed, in fact, to take the matter in hand and aid the government; and so effectually did they intervene, that at the end of 1852 the number of inmates in the private reformatories even exceeded those in the government penal schools.

An attempt has been made to explain away the increase of crime consequent on these private reformatories, first by a reference to the fact, that the French law does not render the parent responsible, so that he has no deterring interest to prevent him from sending, or allowing his child to go into the reformatories; whereas it is provided, and very properly, by the 6th section of the recent Act, that the parent shall be compellable to maintain and support the offender.

But this is obviously no safeguard against the evil. How few juvenile offenders have parents who are either thus compellable, or even accessible! Those who are thus responsible are not usually the class whose children would desire to enter reformatories. It is the vagrant herd, and the homeless and parentless vagabond, who has the most inducement to commit offences, in order to get the warm food and clothing of the reformatory and against their onslaughts on property and burden on the funds of industry the responsibility clause will supply no security whatever. They will rob, cheat, or strike without the slightest check from the power to mulct parents who cannot be found. It is a practical fact that the section in question is nearly a dead letter, and is likely to remain so. The second source of increased juvenile crime in France, say the defenders of the philanthropists, is—

"To be found in the vagrancy of a poor population, a vagrancy which if not checked becomes vicious; and when checked, by placing the children in a penal school, increases, as a matter of course, the returns of juvenile committals. In our mind (says the Irish Quarterly) the remedy for the first cause of increase is, as we view it, the remedy also for the second."