A somewhat Hibernian view certainly; the vagrancy of the child being the precise reason why the parent cannot be made responsible, and why, therefore, it is no remedy at all!

The fact is, that though the principle is excellent, parental responsibility is impracticable in three cases out of four. And yet without it, we are told that "no security" can be given by the friends of the reformatory movement that the objects of the schools may not be abused.

If such precautions are no answer to the facts in M. de Persigny's report, neither is M. de Metz's success at his reformatory of Mettray. It is in some respects, doubtless, a well-managed institution; but that it is, as we have often heard, a complete seminary of popery, we hardly expected such convincing evidence as this:

Mr. Hall, in his account, says :

"All the colonists at Mettray are Roman Catholics, but this is only to avoid the inconvenience of mixing children of different persuasions."

The remedy is very convenient, doubtless. M. de Metz says:

"Two of our colonists have even entered a religious society: we find it necessary to explain the causes which determined their vocation, in order to convince you of its sincerity. These two youths had been employed in the colony to officiate in the infirmary, this post having been assigned to them on account of the mildness of their disposition, and their eagerness to oblige their comrades. These good dispositions could not be otherwise than increased, being further encouraged by the example of our Sister of Charity, to whom the charge of the infirmary is confided. Our good almoner, M. the Abbé Guirard, whose devotedness we cannot sufficiently eulogize, takes advantage of the seasons of illness to give instructions more frequently. This benefit, temporary indeed to those who stay but for a short space in the hospital, was rendered permanent for the two individuals mentioned, and wrought on them so powerfully that they have been found worthy, as we have stated, to enter into a religious order: what an enormous distance between the point of departure and the object attained !

"This example, gentlemen, is a proof the more, of the influence of the spirit of our institution."

Quite so. But here is more proof :

"Religious instruction, so indispensable in every system of good moral education, occupies at Mettray the place which is its due, namely, the chief position. To give you thorough confidence on

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this head, it is only necessary to say, that we act entirely by the counsels of our worthy prelate, Monseigneur the Cardinal Archbishop of Tours, who unceasingly showers his favours on us.

"On the occasion of the festival of Christmas, a retreat was conducted by an ecclesiastic chosen by his eminence. The eloquence of this missionary carried conviction to all hearts: what a delightful and affecting sight to behold the entire colony arise at the Communion, to approach the sacred table."

Is it conceivable that all were fit!

The statistics of reformation at Mettray are not without interest. On the 1st January, 1854, 954 had been liberated since 1840.

774 have remained irreproachable. 58 are of indifferent conduct.

18 have escaped our surveillance.

103 have relapsed into bad conduct within these fourteen years, according to our bulletins of patronage, and the statistic tables of the Minister of Justice.

"This number of 103 relapsed appears enormous at the first glance, but on comparing it with the total amount of the liberated, and on reflecting that it has been produced within the lapse of fourteen years, it will be allowed that the proportion of the backsliders of Mettray is but small, seeing that it has not exceeded eleven per cent., and that the greater number of the freed colonists have been brought up in large towns, where education in vice is unhappily but too prolific."

The rhapsodies of Mons. de Metz at a visit from Lord Brougham are extremely amusing :

"It is in contemplation just now in England, to make a law concerning juvenile prisoners, and the great lawyers who are specially occupied to prepare its elements (among others Lord Brougham, who has so recently honoured us with a visit), have been anxious to obtain from us, numerous documents concerning the system followed out at Mettray."

This will be news to our "great lawyers;" their achievement being the Act of six or seven sections which figures as cap. 86 of last session.

"We can scarcely describe the impression made on us by the visit of the noble lord to the colony, which is fully sensible of the obligations under which it is laid by this benevolent proceeding, on the part of so illustrious a personage.

"Lord Brougham was anxious to enter into the most simple details, and even deigned to sit at the table with the officers of the

colony, and converse with them on the nature of their different employments. All felt the value of such a deference. We shall never forget the emotion which he exhibited on hearing our military band perform God save the Queen,' and on seeing the British flag floating at the mast of our vessel by the side of the French colours."

There is one point in which the regulations at Mettray deserve all honour, and as it is one which nearly every private reformatory in England has failed to adopt, it is essential to give it due prominence and publicity: we refer to the precautions taken as to the sleeping of the inmates. Each colonist has his hammock, and at night these are slung across the room, the head of one boy being to the feet of him at the opposite side of the apartment, with a passage between, and thus whispering is prevented; the room is wide enough to admit of two rows of hammocks slung in this way; the chef, or sous-chef sleeps in the same room, in a hammock a little more comfortable than the boys'.

Now the system of allowing criminal children to sleep pellmell together is alone a sufficiently prolific evil to prove the evil of private reformatories, not one of which, we believe, can afford either separate sleeping cells as at Parkhurst, or even the judicious precautions taken at Mettray! Is it not palpable that to allow of the sleeping of this class of children together is to perpetuate, if not to aggravate, the disastrous demoralization of their foregone lives of profligacy?

We are most anxious to see reformatories properly constituted and universally established, but to effect their purpose they must be always penal in their preliminary stage. We developed the proper principles in which such institutions should be founded in a series of articles some years ago, and they not only met with the assent and approval of those best acquainted with the subject at the time, but they have been corroborated by all subsequent experience. To divorce the correction of crime from the reformation of the criminal, is a most pernicious mistake, and we know that the good practical sense of England is strongly opposed to any such folly. It is almost equally foolish to expect that such a work can be effectually delegated to private philanthropists. Some few among them are happy exceptions to their general unfitness for any such task. It is, however, a fashion at present, and one of the rages or periodical paroxysms

of fashionable humanities, which will have its day. We wish we were as sure that its fervid activity will be as innoxious as it is certain to be transient. We are apprehensive of the reaction consequent on the failures of this kind of abortive empiricism. We hear of many of these institutions springing up, nothing deterred by the utter impossibility of finding fit men to undertake their management. This alone ought to give force and effect to the significant warning of Lord Brougham, in his short but pithy reply to Mr. Hill's recent letter, "I have my doubts!" The philanthropy of the movement is doubtless most engaging and laudable. No one questions its complete amiability or singlehearted integrity of purpose; but, oh! for a little prudence, and a wholesome modicum of diffidence!

We invite the special attention of the Home Secretary to the blunders of the Act; first, in allowing the individual to usurp the functions of the law in the treatment of those who offend against it; secondly, in the lax provision made for ascertaining the suitableness of the institution thus got up for the purposes of correctional and reformatory discipline; the former purpose that of correction-being ill answered by the infliction in all cases of at least fourteen days' imprisonment in the common gaol, from which it is often a main object of sound humanity and social policy to rescue the juvenile offender and prevent him from incurring its stigma. Such sins of omission and of commission were seldom exhibited in a statute of six or seven sections before.

The proper plan is, for the Government to organise efficient penal and reformatory schools, in which punishment may be a preliminary stage of the discipline, as at Parkhurst, though with some manifestly requisite additional moral agencies;—then a second stage of labour and instruction and reformatory influences combined. The State has no right to shirk this great necessity. It has three things to do :-first, to protect society by deterring juvenile crime with due punishment; secondly, to reform the criminal; thirdly, as far as possible to mulct the parent.

ART. VIII.-BILLS OF EXCHANGE AND PROMISSORY NOTES.-LORD BROUGHAM'S BILL.

A Bill, intituled "An Act to permit the Registration of Dishonoured Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes in England, and to allow Execution thereon." (Presented by the Lord Brougham and Vaux.) Ordered to be printed, 19th December, 1854.

Paper of observations (printed and laid on the table of the House), March, 1853.

HIS bill was introduced into Parliament by Lord Brougham during last session of Parliament. It passed through all its stages in the Lords without a dissentient voice, including the Select Committee on the Common Law Procedure Bill, to which it was referred. Having been introduced before Easter, it was finally passed, and sent down to the Commons on the 2nd June. But after being read a second time there and committed, it was withdrawn, owing to some accidental miscarriage arising from a difficulty on an unforeseen point of form. It has again been introduced by Lord Brougham, and must now be seriously discussed on its merits. We have read and considered the bill with the greatest attention and interest. It proposes a change, not in the law relating to, but in the procedure for recovery on, bills and notes-a change which, as our readers are aware, we have frequently advocated in this Magazine. And the change is simply and briefly to substitute for the present method of recovery, by means of an action at law, a summary form of process and execution (corresponding to the Scotch practice), leaving what are now matters of plea, by way of defence, to be urged at a subsequent stage, so as to stay or suspend the summary procedure. But although we may thus be said to have committed ourselves on the subject, and while we declare at the outset that the principle of the bill, without reference to its particular terms and details, has, and has always had, our distinct approval, we are so entirely unprejudiced, not only with respect to the two systems of law, English and Scotch, which