disregarded, it is subordinate to, and not suffered to interfere with, corrective instruction.”—1 Field, pp. 173-4.

Additional energy ought to be given to the system of Prisondiscipline, by sentencing juvenile delinquents to a moderate whipping. This indeed has become part of the English Juvenile Offenders Act; and it is the only point on which we differ from "a country magistrate," who has published a racy pamphlet, containing more good sense and vigorous writing than we have seen within the same compass for many a day.

"It is," says Lord Mackenzie, "the only thing we are sure they all understand, and are afraid of. Imprisonment, and even transportation, do not seem to be known to them by anticipation, or to impress their imagination with terror beforehand, however great may be the evil these punishments are actually to cause them. If whipping be moderate, so as to separate the pain from danger to health, or life, or permanent bodily injury, and private, so as to separate it from deep ignominy or the boast of profligate hardihood, I rather imagine it would be useful in the case of young criminals. Bodily pain being the great means by which nature deters man from what is fit to be avoided, I doubt whether we can abandon it entirely in criminal justice, without a sacrifice of expediency."--Appendix to First Report, p. 86.

How much better would it be to administer a punishment of this description to those boys who are found in almost every prison for stealing apples from a garden, or peas from a field as they pass by.* In truth, to put these children in jail is the greatest of all perversions of justice; and yet the magistrate has not in this country, as he has in England, the power to dismiss with a rebuke. (See 10 and 11 Vict., cap. 82.) Our space forbids us to dwell upon a subject of such anxious consideration as short imprisonments-which serve no purpose but to habituate the youthful thief to the prison which he shall afterwards have occasion so much to use. The suggestion made by the Lord Justice Clerk, is, however, amply supported by experience, when he recommends that these imprisonments should be of unvaried gloom, without communication with friends, without the distraction of labour, without the exhilaration of exercise. Until some such principle as this be adopted, we may resign all hope of success for reformatory experiments, and we shall learn when too late that the greatest mercy is that discipline which is the severest in its application.

To men of amiable dispositions, who are accustomed to look upon human nature in its revolting moods only in those pictures of imaginative fiction which extract from them such floods of tears, and agonies of admiration, this may seem a cruel system.

* See 13th Report of Inspectors of Scottish Prisons, Pp. 7, 13,

It is one, however, which cannot be set aside by the sound of obnoxious epithets, or charges of inhumanity. It is forced upon us by the most unbending of teachers. Experience has proclaimed the necessity for a change. It sets itself against the clamours of an ardent, but weak humanity, and pleads the cause of reason against the vagaries of sentiment-the illusions of imagination. The visionary dreams of romantic emotion cannot stand in the presence of the increasing Prison-rates. Common sense must triumph over a more common but foolish sensibility; and humanity has other objects for its sentiment than what Canning happily termed, "poor suffering guilt."

To check the appalling horrors consequent upon its increase, all systems of Prison-discipline will, however, themselves be unavailing. They can only reach detected crimes, which constitute but a small minority of the great aggregate. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that because there are few convictions there is little crime. The delivery of the white gloves to the judges at the assizes is no warrant for the conclusion that the district is a paradise. A slight inquiry into its morals pushed somewhat beyond the surface, resolves the hasty logic into air. The very virtuous district that this year may have gone the whole circle of newspaper notoriety will next year appear, under the influence of a more vigorous police, side by side with its guilty neighbours. Indeed, the chances of conviction bear a small proportion to the chances of escape. Years, marked in every stage by the commission of crimes, may have passed away without an unlucky condemnation. Convicts, when interrogated upon the subject of other crimes than those for which they were convicted, often answered that it was "impossible to state the number,"—"could not remember a tenth of them,"- 66 many hundreds,”-sometimes more, sometimes less ;-" if I was to recollect I could not tell them all between now and to-morrow."-Constabulary Report, p. 6. Nothing can more clearly prove this than the fact, that to render a pickpocket's earnings remunerative, he would require to steal six pocket handkerchiefs a-day; but all the uncounted thousands of the crimes committed by him during the average period which he has of his exciting life, are never heard of, except by a few private friends in the querulous complainings of the victim. The only item contributed by him to our criminal statistics is that when the trap catches him at last.

It is obvious, therefore, that whatever system be adopted with reference to detected criminals, you only thereby purify a drop in the ocean. To get at the bottom of the evil it is necessary to pass beyond the prison-walls and extend our labours to the world. We must have inspectors to examine the condition of those who are free; and may the time be hastened when they shall have it

in their power to print, as they have printed about criminals, that the poor are "happy and contented!" The great problem which has been placed before the minds of the generation in which we live, is as to the best means by which the State may discharge its duty, without infringing on the province of parents, by relieving them of the obligations imposed upon them by God and nature. In all schemes for the amelioration of the swarming masses from whom our criminal ranks are fed, there is danger of pushing measures of relief so far as to destroy that independence and self-respect which nourish manly endurance and exertion—the foundation of many social virtues. One unhappy circumstance peculiar to ourselves, adds an artificial to all the natural difficulties that beset the question. In no other country is there such a difference between the rich and poor. Though separated from each other by a single street, they are often as ignorant of the condition of each other as if the waves of the Atlantic rolled between them. A more generous sympathy, shown by words even, would go farther than the most liberal benefactions doled out through the conduit-pipe of a Mendicity Society. But no fibrous intertwinings of feelings ever join them together. The one gives because it is painful to hear of human sorrow, the other receives without gratitude and as a right. A squalid and wretched population is every year adding to our dangers and responsibilities—a population amid which is fostered those gigantic political and social maladies that afflict us, and which in the bosom of civilisation displays the habits and many of the instincts of savage life. Masses have been left to grow up like the forest trees, taking their chance of storm and sunshine. But this, though conducive to the stability of the oak, is not so for man. Unless carefully tended he sinks beneath the exposure, and in his fall drags down his more favoured neighbours. It is the noblest charity therefore-at the same time that it is the clearest prudence, for society to take the infant man in its arms, watch over his progress through life, and only leave him when laid in the dust. But this of course must be confined more to advice, protection, and superintendence, than to a positive adoption of every unit that can claim with us a kindred country. The greater part must be left to individual exertion and to the development of particular character. This will often prove pernicious to the parties so left to the guidance of their own ignorance; but we must submit with resignation to the inconveniences of individual management, unless we wish to make monasteries of entire social communities.

Each new theorist upon this "great argument" has his own particular scheme of remedy. Each, cum magno boatu et conatu, asserts for his own thunder, unqualified merit, and denies it to

that of other people. Many of the suggestions are sanctioned by successful experiment, while the rest have scarcely ingenuity to recommend them, and have been indignantly hurried to the plethoric tomb of impracticable institutions. Let us sum up our observations by a reference to the most important.

1. The first and most obvious is one upon which all are agreed. The prisons as now constituted, and especially those conducted upon the principles of the one at Perth, constitute a premium to the poor to make their children thieves. Their subsistence, however mean, is still a burden upon the stinted resources of the parents. To get rid of children in any way consistent with safety is one of the most important objects of a wretched father's solicitude. To compel the child to steal and be put in prison is to get an immediate relief to himself,—a bursary to his offspring. All the lower and more sordid feelings, therefore, of human nature are embarked against the efficacy of penal justice; and the simple remedy which is proposed is to compel the parent to pay for the child in prison. No impolicy and no injustice could be pleaded against such a law, which would only declare those legal liabilities which now exist. It would render, however, that practical, which is now too often theoretical, and stimulate parents to the performance of duties which if better performed would have prevented such an assessment. It would take away from them the dangers of the temptation with which they are now beset, and establish securely that great rule in morals-the only one of use in practice-to prevent situations in which our duties are in opposition to our interests.

2. Another practical measure is one likely to be speedily carried into effect. Who can doubt the influence of sanitary improvement upon the moral nature of man?

From the body's purity, the mind

Receives a secret sympathetic aid.

Is it possible that in the cellars of which we have given a description, humanity could be otherwise than physically deteriorated and morally debased? The Sanitary Act of England will be immediately followed by one with a similar object relative to the two wings of the Empire. The clearing away of dunghills, -the driving pigs from the habitations of men,-the supplying sufficient wholesome water, and all the other accessories of that process of sanitary improvement upon which we have entered, will create as great a revolution in the habits as it will change to the better the health of the poor. If, along with this, more buildings were erected,-if properly conducted lodging-houses were in every street, the most sanguine anticipations might be entertained, of a favourable change in the whole aspect of the

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society from which juvenile delinquents come. "Is it your opinion," Lord Brougham asked Mr. Sergeant Adams, "that whatever increases the self-respect of persons, such as cleanly habits, is wholesome as a moral discipline also ?" "I have not

the slightest doubt of it," said the learned Sergeant; and every one who has studied the effects of the inscrutable relation that subsists between the physical and mental economy of man, will give a cordial assent to the reply.

3. The third and most effectual preventive is, that which is the strongest barrier against idleness-the certain cause of criminal indulgence. To the want of education must be attributed much of the deplorable condition to which the poorer classes are reduced. The time is not far distant when it was an open question-whether education was a blessing to the poor? But now we have been taught by experience, that the only question isto what extent shall the education be carried? This question would be easily resolved, were it not for the unhappy difference of creeds that has distracted the religious world. All divisions of Christianity should learn from the past-unless they have lost their understanding that to do good they must lose their animosity, though they retain their distinctions. Though the physical wants of men be supplied-though relieved from the pressure of hunger—though by sanitary improvements their health is preserved, and by a generous benevolence a home is supplied, yet they will never attain moral and intellectual excellence simply as a consequence of that physical amelioration. The physical comfort once supplied, progress in civilisation terminates there, and the propelling energy wastes itself, as in Eastern countries, in a grovelling selfishness.

Add, however, education, and you place within the reach of childhood the experience of age, increase individual power, teach how to lessen the evils incident to humanity, and render tributary to the humblest, both the moral and the material world. In spite of all the statists that ever trembled at their own conclusions, we hold education rightly conducted to be the most important check upon criminal desires. That which refines and purifies, which creates prudence and sobriety, teaches the duties of good citizenship, inculcates obedience to the law, strengthens the intellect, stimulates the moral affections, and points out man's responsibilities, cannot be other than the most important agent of order. It is the introduction to civilisation, which is only another name for law and morals.

The influence of education in early life in training children to habits that would fit them for a virtuous existence, cannot be too strongly impressed upon those who wish to create a check to juvenile delinquency. At present, however, in many portions of

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