The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-29 00:00:00

DECEMBER 29, 1855. indeed, if a people so blessed beyond their I neighbours in all that makes war easy, should have been constantly beaten by those to whom it is a previous burden. We find accord ingly the regular old story repeated by Colonel SHAFFENER. The Russians have never been worsted—Sebastopol has never been taken— Cronstadt and tNicolaieff never will be—the bombardment of Sweaborg was a mere delu sion—and so forth to the end of the chapter. In fact, " the gallant colonel" would have us imagine that the existing alliance between France and England is as nothing compared to the forthcoming one between Russia and America—an alliance that will inaugurate the reign of liberty by a steady resolution to spread the dominion of serfdom and slavery. This is one side of the picture—let us turn to the other. An American ex-consul states it as his opinion that the Russian empire is a gigantic humbug, and destined, doubtless, to be " thoroughly chawed up " by the Western Powers. She has not got an engineer who can mount a battery, or a general who can command an army. Nearly half her force is cavalry, and her infantry is wholly ineffi cient. She has got neither "money, powder, " saltpetre, nor cannon." The allies had nothing to do but to walk into Sebastopol, if they had only known it, months before it was taken. Cherson and its beautiful villas are doomed to speedy destruction; and so on, ad infinitum. Now, really when we read over these two accounts, and recollect that both emanate from well-informed citizens of a neutral State, we aro plunged in despair. How are we ever to know the truth? Why should one man say the Russians are more than men, the other that they are less? How are we to tell which of the two is indulging that "natural " taste for perjury" which is supposed to be inherent in certain of our species ? Seriously, however, Brother Jonathan must not abuse his privilege. He has long been permitted to shoot with a long bow, but he must not arm it with a poisoned arrow. If he is friendly to this country he will remember that any state ment, however slightly embellished, is calcu lated to work irreparable mischief; that nothing can be so important to a nation en gaged in war as that the conditions of the struggle should be made perfectly manifest; that every thing which tends to obscure these is in the present instance a boon to Russia, who has means of getting at an enemy's secrets and concealing her own, from which we have spontaneously debarred ourselves ; and that it is a question whether the most friendly office towards England just now be not to hold their tongues on the subject. SCHOOLS FOR CRIME. REFORMATORY Institutions for juvenile crimi nals are rising, as we rejoice to perceive, in almost every quarter. Within the last few days a meeting, over which the Duke of RICH MOND presided, was held at Brighton, for the purpose of founding an establishment wherein the young feloLs of Sussex might be received and reclaimed. Some valuable hints for the management of such institutions have also been contributed by Lord LEIGH, who has published an able and graphic narrative of his visit to the " model " schools, for this class of pupils, at Mettray, in France. Yet the question which lies at the bottom of all these tentative experiments forms at once the most momentous and most intractable problem of the present day. Even the interests attached to the war we are waging abroad—whatever may be the dramatic pomp of its successive in cidents—must be subordinated in real impor tance to those arising from the growth and swell of criminality among our home popula tion. The evil, as we are reminded by a cloud of witnesses, has resisted every at tempt at its cure, and expanded in spite of the most strenuous and most varied efforts for its prevention. We exhaust our ingenuity, and lavish all our means and appliances in vain. " Those who make," said the eloquent Recorder of Hull (in a late address to the THE PRESS. grand jury), " and those who administer the laws aiiinst crime, are fairly at their wits' end—it makes such fearful head against them. The pendulum of punishment hag swung from extreme point to extreme point between seve rity and lenity. Every kind of punishment that can be borne in a free country has been tried, in every variation and combination; but we see that it will not do; both juvenile and adult criminals are too much for us. The cause is in the body politic ; it is spreading and approaching the vital parts. We may shut our eyes to it if we will, but there is the cancer eating on !" The facts that transportation to the colonies has become almost impossible—that the home prisons are overcrowded—that the ticket-of leave system is found subject to serious evils —and that recent attempts at remodelling our prison discipline, have proved very imperfectly successful—may render the problem more immediately urgent, but cannot affect the hard duty which weighs alike upon the Legislature and upon society in general for its solution. It has long been a serious responsibility upon us to devise some means whereby the lava torrent of vice and crime may be stayed ; the criminal reclaimed, if possible, or rendered harmless if irreclaimable—above all, by which the myriads of our juvenile fellow•subjects, who are now hovering on the brink, may be saved from following their predecessors into the hideous abyss. To this onus of responsi bility the instinct of self-preservation may now be added. Again and again have we re ceived solemn warnings, that if we cannot crush the evil we shall be crushed by it. There is no alternative. Crime grows upon us, with a rapidity which we cannot conceal or deny. Annually we see it striking deeper root, and spreading wider in rank luxuriance—infecting larger classes of the community, and at once extending its contamination over a wider area, and assuming a deeper character of atrocity. If we go on as we have commenced, able neither to arrest the enemy in his advan ces, nor to cutoff his supplies from without, the worst evils will very speedily become inevit able. Yet a little longer, and we shall find the moral character of the country degraded, our social organisation diseased, and the springs even of that national prosperity of which we are so proud utterly paralysed. All the ameliorating influences to which the pLilosophical reformers once looked with so much complacency have turned out utterly futile. The " Progress of Society," as they boastfully called it, has proved worse than a delusion so far as crime is concerned. Vice may have lost something of its brutality and acquired a semblance of decency—though even this improvement it would be rash to predicate—but is just as rampant as ever. If a felon has changed his name he has not changed his nature. He does not go out with pistols to rob on the highway, now that rich men travel by railroad and carry a cheque book instead of a bag of guineas, but his comrades are as numerous and his enterprises as profitable as heretofore. Evon the compara tive increase of educaticn, even the alleviation of that frequent cause of crime—poverty — seem to have little or no effect upon the general result. Where schools most abound criminals are not less abundant. In times and places when employment is most easily procured, and when destitution is impossible to the ablebodied and industrious, the reduc tion in the assize calendars bears but a small proportion to the anticipated consequences from the improved physical condition of the community. Yet we cannot dispute the , conclusion that ignorance and intemperance are the " twin stems " from which the hideous growth of crime incessantly springs. We are driven, then, to the mortifying confession that the agencies which we have employed in order to eradicate these sources of evil are ineffi cient in degree or misdirected in their aim. instruction both the means provided for public both charges are applicable. The latest returns show that out of a juvenile population of five millions, nearly one half, or, more pre cisely, 2,250,000, neither attend schools nor are engaged in industrial employments. This fearful proportion of the rising generation is growing up completely shrouded nudeness and 1231 ignorance; that is, under conditions in which a lapse into actual criminality becomes almost a matter of course. But this is not all, nor even the worst. The instruction afforded to myriads of the youth who are returned as " attending schools "is often most inefficacious in quality and quantity, is imparted at rare in tervals, for only a brief period of their grow ing lives, and limited to the merely mechanical acquisitions of reading and writing. At best they obtain instruction which may expand the intellect, but cannot regulate the heart or awaken the conscience. Knowledge is power, and the pupils come forth endowed with higher poNireis for good or evil. But they have imbibed no principles which can induce them —nor even learnt the moral lessons that would enable them—to " eschew the evil and " choose the good." Where, then, must we seek a remedy? The opposition presented on different sides to the bill brought forward by Sir J. PAXINGTON in the late session sufficiently in licates the diffi culty, amounting almost to impossibility, surrounding any attempt to frame an educa tional system in which religious teaching should be an element. Legislative inter• ference with so delicate a matter seems clearly out of the question. Once alarm the con sciences, or even awake the suspicions, of parents on the score of the doctrine to which their children may be exposed, and the great aim of the system will be at once utterly frus trated. On the other hand, the compromise offered by the " Secularists," who propose the creation of establishments where education of merely secular nature shall be afforded, is fraught with very serious objections. The State would undergo a heavy responsibility if it imparted knowledge to its subjects without also teaching them how knowledge should be employed—if it put a trenchant instrument into their hands, and yet told them nothing as to the means whereby it would be wielded usefully or safely. Hampered by such difficulties and restraints in applying education to the general mass of the community, there remains one direction in which the Legislature may exert their powers more freely and with a more immediate effect. There are, unfortunately, large classes, in cluding considerable numbers who are still comparatively young and tractable, that have from different causes forfeited their right of free action. The juvenile pauper, or thief, has accepted subsistence or deserved punish ment from the State ; and by so doing has foregone, at least for a time, some of his privi leges as a free citizen. We do not wish to equalise the two categories, or to confound poverty with crime, for any other purpose than a benevolent one. Still we apprehend that the relationships between both and the State are sufficient to justify the latter in undertaking the functions of education in their behalf. Both have so far surrendered their independence as to have passed into a state of pupilage, and given to the society on whose funds they subsist, or whose laws they have outraged, the right to prescribe whatever means may be judged most effectual to save them from again falling into pauperism or crime. It is by developing this right—in other words, by providing education for the younger inmates of our workhouses and prisons, that the first effectual step can be taken to stop the supplies of criminality. We rejoice, therefore, to see the interest taken in so many quarters for the establishment of reformatory institu tions, farm schools, and other contrivances by which the youthful pauper and culprit can be instructed in industry and reclaimed from his course of idleness and vice. The question how far the Government ought to interfere either for the assistance or the regulation of these establishments, when set on foot by local benevolence, remains to be decided. In France, where the centralising tendency is for the moment paramount, the State seems inclined to take the whole matter into its own hands, insomuch that even institutions like that at Mettray, which have worked long and successfully, and on individual management, will probably be either neglected or absorbed. Among ourselves the interposition of J. cen tral authority is much more jealously watched, and is at the same time much less necessary. . 11116,