The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-23 00:00:00

AUGUST 23, 1856. Court nil fas4ion. Her Majesty and the Royal Family have remained at Osborne during the week. His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge arrived on a visit on Thursday. Their Royal Highnessess the Duchess of Cam bridge and the Princess Mary left town on Sunday for the Continent. The Earl and Countess of Derby and Lady Emma Stanley have left St. James's-square for Knowsley, Lancashire. . _ Lord John Russell and family arrived at Vevey on the 12th inst. His lordship will return to England, to attend to his parliamentary duties, in all probability before the close of February—certainly before Easter. His Excellency the Belgian Minister and Madame Van de Weyer have returned to their residence in Windsor Park, from visiting Mr. Harcourt and the Countess Frances Waldegrave, at Nuneham, near Oxford. The Earl of Cardigan and Lord Alexander Lennox, M.P., have arrived at Gordon Castle, near Foehabars, on a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Richmond. His Excellency Count Creptowitch, the newly appointed Russian Minister at this Court, has left town for Brighton. The Earl of Malmesbury left Heron Court, near Christchurch, last week, for Lowther Castle, Cum berland. Volitttal. HEE MAJESTY THE QUEEN held a Privy Council at Osborne on Thursday at half-past one o'clock p.m. The Council was attended by the Prince Consort, Mr. Secretary Labouchere (officiating as Lord Pre sident in the absence of Earl Granville), the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Harrowby, Lord Privy Seal; Viscount Palmerston, First Lord of the Treasury; the Duke of Wellington, Master of the Horse ; and Lord Ernest Bruce, Vice-chamberlain. At the Council, Parliament was ordered to be further pro rogued from the 7th of October to the 13th of No vember. THE TRANSPORTATION SELECT COMMITTEE of the House of Lords have reported to the following effect:— That a continuance of the system of transportation to some colony or colonies would be highly desirable, pro vided the system could be carried on with advantage to the colony and with satisfaction to the colonists ; that it would not be desirable to send convicts to Moreton Bay, the Red River, or the Falkland Islands; and that, as re• ganls Vancouver's Island, there is not evidence ample enough whereupon to ground a decision at present, although the committee think the plan worthy of full con sideration by her Majesty's Government. The committee call the attention of Government, in the event of a new convict settlement being formed, to the northern portion of Australk and more especially to the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the adjacent islands. Among existing colonies Western Australia seems to offer the only field for the continuance of transportation. The committee recommend an early reconsideration of the provisions by which a convict is called on to repay the expense incurred in carrying him out to Australia, and in certain cases to pay a large portion of the expense of sending out his family. They also state that it is desirable to review and revise the provisions of the act 16th and 17th of Victoria, chap. 99, by which the ti rms of transportation, as previously existing, were commuted for shorter terms of penal servitude in Eng land. They question whether the abridgment of the penal sentences, on condition of their being passed at home, is founded on just principles; and it is certain, they retnark, that the change has placed a new and unnecessary diffi culty in the way of well•regulated transportation. The Minutes of Evidence follow, occupying a space of more than 100 pages. Stetronglitan. THE POOR-LAW BOARD AND ST. PANCRAS are on the point of arriving at a serious disagreement. The Poor• Law Board, it will be remembered, in April last appointed Dr. Bence Jones to report upon the state of the St. Pancras Workhouse. That report disclosed a lamentable state of affairs. The parish authorities have not remedied matters in the interval, and the Poor• Law Board has now taken upon itself to issue detailed and positive instructions for the management of the workhouse, the administration of out-door relief, and the general conduct of officers, and also to appoint an auditor for the parish accounts. Great indignation was expressed by the directors on Tuesday when the communication from the office at Whitehall was read, and the legal authority of the board to act in this manner was questioned. A special meeting of tho entire Board of Guardians is to be called, and steps to be taken for testing the power of the commissioners, THE PRESS. Mn. STEPHENSON, the medical officer of the Stepney Union, has been suspended from office for neglect in his duties of attendance upon pauper patients. The patient Sheehan, a poor woman, died in conse quence of Mr. Stephenson's neglect. _ _ THE NEXT LORD MAYOR OF LONDON will be elected on Monday, Sept. 29th. The ordinary practice is for the Livery in Common Hall assembled to return to the Court of Aldermen the names of the two senior aldermen below the chair, of whom the senior is chosen. These in the present case will be Mr. Alderman Finnis and Alderman Sir Robert Walter Carden. If there is no departure from the practice on the 29th of September, Alderman Finnis will be the next Lord Mayor of London. The following gentlemen will then succeed in the order in which their names are placed : —1857 8, Sir R. W. Carden ; 1858 9, Alder man Wire; 1859.60, Alderman Carter; 1860.1, Alderman Cubitt, M.P.; 1861 2, Sir Henry Mug geridge ; 1802-3, Alderman Kennedy ; 1863.4, Alder man Rose.; 1864-5, Alderman Eagleton ; 1865-6, Alderman Lawrence. THE THAMES NATIONAL REGATTA came off this week with all the éclat possible in such agreeable weather. The famous Claspers, Elswick and Man rhester men, entered, with several of the best London watermen, for the 1001. grand champion four-oared prize, open to all the world. There were also no loss than three entries for the gold challenge cup, for gentlemen's eight-oared boats, and the contest for the other prizes was equally good. The prizes, amounting in value to nearly 8001., were presented to the winners at Cremorne, by the sheriffs, on Wed nesday evening, at nine o'clock. THE PANOPTiCON is to fall under the auctioneer's hammer on Monday next. It was established by a public company, under a royal charter of incorpora tion, as an institution for the promotion and develop ment of science, and 80,0001. have been laid out upon the building and its accessories. THE ARTISANS AT MESSRS. BROADWOOD'S, who suffered so severely by the fire in the loss of their tools, in consequence of the general sympathy ex pressed, and the offers of assistance that have come in from all quarters, have formed a committee to receive subscriptions through one of the London 'aanks. Only a few of the men were insured, and for not more than 101. each—about a seventh of the amount of their loss. The cost of a pianoforte workman's tools is estimated at about 701. THE ROYAL DISPENSARY FOR DISEASES OF THE EAR held its half-yearly meeting on Wednesday, Mr. T. Cooper in the chair. Mr. Harvey, the surgeon to the institution, submitted to the committee the number of patients, amounting to 300, that had been admitted on the books during the last six month:. The committee acknowledged a donation of one hundred guineas from B. V. 11. to the funds of the institution, which are very inadequate to its increasing demands. This institution has now been established since 1810, during which period it has afforded relief to upwards of 16,000 cases of deafness and other diseases of the ear. THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S RETURNS for the past week show the high mortality of 1,250. The Regis• trar•Genetal appends to his report some remarks of interest upon atmospheric impurities, and upon what has to be drained away before London becomes pure, and tells us some unpleasant and unwholesome truths : The problem (concludes the report) for the enkineer to solve is, how can 3,010 tons of town guano be returned daily to the disinfecting soil, from which it was chiefly taken, with the least offence to health, and with the least cost? Shall it be distributed by pipes, or by railways ? Shall it be disinfected by water, earth, ashes, or any chy mieal compound ? Under the present arrangements some hundreds of thousands of tons of this matter lie in store in London, putrefying in cesspools and percolating the streets, while the residue is thrown into the Thames at great cost. 1,575 births were registered last week. Vroilintial. NATIONAL REFORMATORY UNION. A CONFERENCE of the friends of this institution was opened at Bristol, on Wednesday, and continued for the two following days. Lord Stanley, M.P., pre sided at each of the meetings, and on Wednesday delivered the inaugural address. A letter from Lord Brougham, the President of the Union, apologising for his unavoidable absence, having been read, Lord STANLEY proceeded to deliver the inaugural address. The noble lord, after some brief state ments relative to the amount of adult and juvenile crime, the former (between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one) amounting to twenty-five per cent., and the latter (under seventeen) amounting to eleven and a half, of the 100,000 criminals annually tried, came direct to the point whether any other 801 agency than that of reformatories existed by which crime would be decreased ; and stated as his convic tion that the more he looked into the subject the more fully assured he felt that " the only direct and immediate agency exists in the detention, the train ing, and the giving honest employment to criminal children whom the neglect of such means will render offenders for life." The noble lord then alluded to the successful results of the Red•hill es tablishment, and explained that the object of the National Reformatory Union was to form a centre of action to such local efforts, to aid and promote the sys tem, to assist in placing out youths who leave reforms. tones, and to become, in fact, the central authority in connection with the movement. To the practical questions, WAR it necessary and would it succeed, he thought on the first there was little diversity of opinion. The circumstances of the time were pecu liar; we were cut off from transportation, and we had no other alternative but to reform our criminals ; and then came the question—" Can you really reform a depraved character ?" He replied : answer, first, by pointing to that statement of Mr Clay's respecting the causes of juvenile crime—a statement, observe, which does not stand alone, which is in the main corroborated by most persons who have had anything to do with prisoners and prisons. Mr. Clay tells you that three fourths of the young offenders who enme into his hands have been made such by parental misconduct in one form or another. Some, one may suppose, have been directly urged by parents into the commission of crime. Some, even though not so urged. are the children of men and women living habitually by dishonest means—children who have no respectable protector and scarcely a chance of getting employment in any business. Others, whose parents may not be themselves dishonest, have grown up in mere brutal ignorance, and are enticed into mischief by older lads, knowing literally nothing of duty or morality, of credit or disgrace, of what society approves or what it condemns. A few were driven into vice by actual ill treatment, by hunger, by cold, by fear of starvation, and by the fear of blows. Now, of all who come under these four beads—those whose parents teach them to steal—those whose parents set them ibis example of stealing—those who have been taught nothing at home—and those who have been left or turned adrift to shift for themselves—one may say, without exaggeration, that their guilt is the result of circumstances, and not of choice. Clearly, therefore, they at least see not to he given up as hopeless. They are worse than others, not because their inclinations are worse, hut because the option of good or evil has never been placed fairly before them. And these, I believe, form the great bulk of our juvenile offenders. There remained, however, a elass, with regard to which he could not speak with so much confidence : I mean the class, met with both among adults and young persons, in whom the tendency to commit criminal acts appears to arise rather out of a morbid action of the mind than out of any external compelling rause. Even in these less hopeful cases the morbid tendency cften appears to be connected with the physical organisation, and disappears or diminishes under the combined influ ences of example, of teaching, and of healthy bodily training. On that last chance 1 don't dwell, though a good deal might be said touching the connection of some forms of criminality with unnoticed cerebral disease; 1 am con tent to acknowledge the fact that in certain instances the propensity to crime appears due to organisation and not to social accidents ; all contend for is —first, that this class forms a minority, and probably a small one ; next, that even here a cure may sometimes be effected Where the intellect is weak good influences will work upon it, at least, meeting with little active resistance ; where it is acute, the disgrace, the outlawry, the misery of a life of crime may commonly be made intelligible; and thus in neither case is there reason for absolute despair. There was still a third class with whom managers of reformatories will have occasionally to deal, though perhaps it would he better that they should not—the class of casual offenders : Youths who have been led into what the law designates as crime on some single occasion, bat whose general tendencies and habits are good, and with regard n) whom the process of reformation is comparatively easy. I name these only because the mention of them gives me an opportunity of suggesting, for the consideration of law reformers, an improved classification of offences. To have been in gaol in England is a serious thing; the stigma clings to a man for life. No allowance, or very little, is made for youth, for temptation, for ignorance ; self-respect is destroyed, and, once destroyed, it is not easily created anew. Finally, to the question what is it that reformatories can do for their inmates, and with what hope of success? he replied : They can do this. They can remove the boy from con taminating associations, they can teach him habits of cleanliness, temperance. industry; they can give him what in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred he has never hod before—a chance in life—a fair start in the world. They can insure his having addressed to him, I robably for the first time, words of judicious kindness. They can show him what is the social state of those who live in violation of the law ; so that if in later sears he chooses that career, he does it with full knowledge of the consequence to himself. They render impossible henceforth that re• proach to law and to society which arises when a convicted criminal can say with truth to hie judges, " You punish me, but you never taught toe." The noble lord then briefly explained the object of reformatories, characterising it as a moral and indns.