The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-20 00:00:00

362 the resistance of a few individuals may cause a degree of opposition and di ffi culty which it is not worth while to encounter—the proceeds are generally small, the expenses of law always considerable—prudence, peace, economy, all combine to forbid a struggle. Once more, let us remind our readers how large a proportion of ecclesiastical incomes are raised either from sources independent of church rate, or from that part of church rates which falls on churchmen. In round numbers, the revenue of the establishment equals 0,000,000/. Some put it higher, some lower ; wc_lake a mean. Church-rate revenues do not exceed 000,000/., or 10 per cent. on the whole ; and of these, the sum paid by dissenters cer tainly falls short of 100,0001., while it probably conies nearer to 50,000/. In one MSC, 1-60th of the total income ; in the other, 1-120th of that income. That is to say, the above amount ought to be collected. But in practice but a small fraction of it is collected ; the real pay ment falling far below the nominal debt. Is this a tax worth fighting for ? "No change or compromise" may be a fit motto for Rome ; but it is scarcely one which can or should be adopted by our Reformed and Protestant Church. JUVENILE OFFENDERS. THE practice of introducing bills into the House, and leaving them for consideration over the recess, seems to be gaining ground— a new but by no means blameworthy instance of homage paid to opinion out of doors. Mr. ADDERLEY, we think, has done well in follow ing this custom. Already one sweeping change in our system of secondary punishments has been carried through the Lower House, with a degree of haste, and an absence of criticism, which admits of no justificat ion on the part either of Government or the Legislature. But Mr. AD DERLEY'S measure, though of great consequence, is open to no such primajacie objection as that of Lord PALMERSTON. It comes to us Sane tioned by the report of a parliamentary com mittee tested by the example of other nations—and approved, as we believe, by the general feeling of the community. The ob jects of this measure are sufficiently described in the opening paragraphs of the report. In these the facts are dwelt upon "that a vast " amount of juvenile destitution, ignorance, "vagrancy, and crime exist for which no re " reedy has been provided "—that in France, ' Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and America, the same evil has been encountered by vigo rous remedies—that " a large proportion of " the present aggregate of crime might be pre• " vented " if the children thus abandoned to sin were early trained and provided fin• ; that " a great proportion of the criminal children " of this country require rat her systematic " education and industrial occupation than " mere punish merit ;" and lastly, that such cdtteation cannot be given in the ordinary :gaols. The first of these propositions admits of a simple statistical test. Between one third and one-half of the convicts in our prisons belong to the ff m class of juvenile oende. Very few of these are reclaimed in later life. The majority live and die as they began—professed crimi nals ; except where a sentence of transporta tion has transformed the English burglar into an Australian shepherd or gold-digger. The extent of the mischief was not, perhaps. until late fully known; but its existence is acknow ledged and proved by the multitude of private reformatory institutions, having for object the education of these young offenders, and their separation from vicious parents and associates. The detoets of •sneh institutions we may here after have occasion to mention ; as also the reformatory system which prevails among con tinental nations. But our present purpose. and the subject of this article. is the ineffi ciency of prison discipline. as such, for the re e•wmation of juvenile criminals. THE PRESS. Our first witness is the Rev. W. C. OSBORN, chaplain to the borough gaol of Bath He states that " the present prison treatment is "most inefficient"—it neither deters nor re forms—.the companions of those who have beeu imprisoned appear to feel no dread of the pu nishment—neither the number of children who come into gaol, nor the number of recom mittals, is lessened. "The gaol system is quite " unsuited to the nature of a child "—" he is " made too much of in a gaol "—he is locked up alone, " a very bad thing for children"—in a gaol there are not the means of reforming a criminal child. When they have been once imprisoned witness expects to find them num bered among the criminal class. And, while thus inoperative for good, the confinement " mars their prospects for We." Prisoners discharged at any age have difficulty in subse quently finding employment. Not dissimilar is the evidence of the Rev. Dr. Gum niE, a minister of the Free Church, and chief promoter of a ragged school in Edinburgh. " Three or four convictions to " prison," says this witness, " render reforms " tion iu a ragged school almost hopeless." Criminal habits have been acquired. There is difficulty in managing any child who has been once in prison. "No reformation of prison dis " eipline," he thinks," can be devised that would " make it beneficial to children." "To shut up " a child within four walls and leave it alone is " a process which it is impossible should tell " favourably upon a human being." So again speaks Mr. STRICKLAND, the Indus trial Superintendent of Parkhurst Prison. " Short and repeated imprisonments have not " a deterring effect ; they are rather a harden• " ing process." "The present prison system " is not adapted to the reformation of young " offenders." The chaplain of the Liverpool gaol likewise admits that as regards this class " the prison " system has failed." Mr. HAMILTON, also a gaol chaplain, states, " One of the great difficulties we experience in " restoring young criminals to their friends is, " that very bad persons', old companions in " crime, meet prisoners on their discharge at " the gate of the gaol." " The oftener they are in prison," says Mr. NAsu, another witness, " the more hardened " they become." A seventh adds the cause. " The only " effect of sending a boy to prison for a short " period is to disabuse his mind of the wrong " impression that he had with regard to a " prison." In other words, lie becomes familiarised with punishment ; the reality is less than the imagination ; the feeling of dis grace soon wears off; and "the process of " gradation in the sentence gradually fami " liarises the boy with imprisonment, and " enables him to bear it much better than he otherwise would." We might cite other testimonies; but we arc content to stop here. It is enough to add a single instance to those already adduced. In the Reading House of Correction it was found tha.t out of 209 prisoners recommitted (at Michaelmas, 1852) to separate confinement, eightynine were not more than seventeen years of age when first committed, and these eighty nine have been in prison altogether 403 times, an average of five times to each ! In considering this subject it ought not to be forgotten that the period of imprisonment in the case of young criminals is so short as, exclusive of other circumstances, to render anything like reformation impossible. On an average of all sentences, they are not found to exceed forty or fifty days ; and this term is greatly above the average where boys only arc concerned. A punishment of from seven to twenty-one days degrades without im proving—destroys the character and injures the prospects of the criminal, without enabling him either to break off habits of vice or sepa rate himself from vicious connections. Ac• cordingly we have statistical facts—the testi mony of experienced witnesses, and the evidence of reason and probability—all tend. ing to prove that as regards juvenibe offenders some reform of our present. system is abso lately indispensable. What that reform should be—on what principles based—and by what means to be carried out—we reserve for another day. SATURDAY, THE "NATIONAL" SYSTEM IN IRELAND. TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS." Sir,—The public have been apt to consider national education in Ireland as if it were a party ques tion, and have been bewildered in disputes on minor points, and in mutual recriminations, while the real causes of the original differences of opinion have been almost forgotten. The question itself is in a very small compass. Those opposed to the present system most willingly-admit that it is the duty of Government to provide education for all classes of its subjects who may be ready to accept it ; but they also assert that it is no less the duty of Government to see that the education so provided be beneficial, and not injurious. If our rulers be willing to grant this, will they, as Christian rulers of a Christian country, deny that " all education repudiating the test of scripture is not beneficial, but may be in jurious "? lam not sanguine enough to imagine that there will not be found even many to deny this; but let the nation judge, and, if their general consent will allow the syllogism to be based on this major, let the minor and the conclusion be filled up as their fancies may dictate.--I am, sir, your obedient servant, 1). Paris, August 13, 1853. P.S.—lt seems to me that while the original ad hesion of such men as Whateley, Blackburne, and Greene was illogical, their secession is the logical result of a system founded on a partial, and conse quently a delusive, admission of scriptural truth, as a compromise with what you term the Obscurantists. THE WEST INDIES. TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS." the letter which you did me the honour to insert in the l'nzss of the 13th there is an error of importance, caused either by my inadvertence or your printer's : it should have been " the loss to the planters and the island from the emancipation to 1850 has been computed at 50,000,0001.," instead of 50,000/. This loss to the island of Jamaica alone is, therefore, more than double the whole sum paid for the emancipation of all the slaves in our West India colonies; and if we take the yearly average of the sugar crop of Cuba, from 1841 to 1851, at 172,500 tons—the mean of 00,00) and 255,000, the crops re spectively of those two years—and allowing that it sold for only 251. per ton during that period, the gain or profit to Cuba would be in the ten years 43,125,0001. on sugar alone. It was stated by Mr. J. Liggins, before the committee on the slave trade (of which Mr. Hume was chairman), on the 26th of July last, that in Cuba rum and molasses pay the cost of production—that the sugar was clear profit—that profits on small estates were 25 and on large estates 45 per cent.—that the slaves worked from eighteen to twenty hours per day, Sundays not excepted. In Jamaica, prior to the emancipation, it was well known that rum and mo lasses also paid the cost of production, &c., and the sugar was all profit. The crop in Cuba for 1853-4 is expected to exceed 300,000 tons, and, allowing that this should sell at only 201. per ton, it would give a profit to the island for sugar in one year of 6,000,000/. ; and can any person who knows anything of sugar growing prove, that with an average price of 20/. per ton, the profits of all the British free-labour sugar-growers put together would amount to even one half of the profit of this one slave island alone ? And a question, I think, must naturally arise as to the extent to which these large foreign profits drain money from Great Britain—not only as profits, but also in capital for the development of these profits. One thing is quite clear—viz., that the class of men once so lavishly abused by your Liberal contempora ries, the rich absentee West India proprietors, is de stroyed, those who used, bad as they were represented to be by these immaculate Liberals, at least to spend their profits here for the benefit of these same Li berals : in fact, nearly the whole of the profits of those colonies in their prosperous days in one shape or another found their way to England. There is a fable about a goose and golden eggs that I think will apply in this case ; and how much profit in the ag gregate has fallen to the lot of these luckless colonies since 1847 is now the question. Has there been any ?—Your obedient servant, AN OLD PLANTER. St. John's-wood, Aug. 15, 1853. P.S.—lt would be a curious statistic, if it could be got at, to know the grocers' retail price of• the pound of' scale sugar for each of the last thirty-five years. If my memory fails me not, the retail price at several periods during that time has been down to about the present price, 4d. per lb. A MEETING of merchants, shipowners, captains, and others was held at Lloyd's, on Thursday, for the purpose of hearing the explanations of Lieutenant Maury, of the United States navy, and superintendent of the Observatory at Washington, respecting the system adopted by that Government for collecting and disseminating information relative to the direc tion and force of winds and ocean currents in all parts of the world, and making other meteorological observations.