Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-02-04 00:00:00

as great as would have been the average cost of
educating and training them to be virtuous and
respectable members of society.
As a question of pounds, shillings, and pence,
therefore, it would obviously be to the advantage
of the country to have —if not Universities for the
poor, yet certainly schools of such a character as
would give them a moral and religious training,
which must have a very great effect in restraining
them from their criminal courses, the pursuit of
which by so many thousands as are given in the
criminal statistics of the country, is not only so
enormous an expense, but so dire a curse to the
nation. Well might the Cardinal ask; "if it was
not a reproach to the age, that if you wanted to
get a boy a practical education for some future
remunerative and respectable class of life, the best
thing you could do for him would be to make a
criminal of him, and put him into a Reformatory ?"
This very view of the case, then, is just that in
which it is presented in its most naked truth. We
have no such means in operation for practically
and usefully educating the youth of the poorer
classes whilst they are free from crime, as we have
after they have made some progress in a course

of crime

That is to say.

we take little or no "pre-

cautions with them against crime, but reserve our
means until after our neglect has made them
criminals ! Well might it be asked again, there-
fore, " Would it not be worth while then to try
the experiment of prevention, and do what would
have the effect of saving thousands And even
£20,000,000 could not be better bestowed than in
this way. It would be equally beneficial to spend-
ing the same sum in emancipating at least the
slaves in the colonies; preventing, as it would, a

future generation being over-run by a stream of
youths made more acute in their vice and more
dangerous to society."
It is impossible to scan those immense buildings
which have been erected in different parts of the
country as Reformatories and Penitentiamies,
without a strong feeling of regret that they had
not been provided for those who are to inhubit
them, not when they had become criminals,• but
long before, and for the purpose of preventing
them becoming such, Noble erections, some of
them are : and they would have made magnificent
schools for the poor—Universities, if you like : not
of course, Universities, as seats, of learning—not as
places where all the arts and faculties are taught
and studied; but where such of them as were
fitting for the industry of the country, and such of
thetn, the aeqpisition of which would make thou-
sands and tens of thousands useful and honourable
members of society who, are now its greatest bane
How infinitely more pride -and satisfaction would
one not have in pointing-out to& foreigner visiting
our country such evidences of its wealth, and of
its readiness to appropriate it liberally to purposes
of social reformation, if one could only state that
they were designed to prevent crime, rather than
to. punish, or even to arrest it after it got formi-
dably ahead ? But, as it is,. the foreigner naturally
asks,. " Where are your institutions for so training
and educating these classes, of your youth as to
prevent their being the criminals they must
unhappily have become to entitle them to be the
inmates of those extensive and costly reformatory
establishments ?" And one is reduced to the
humiliating necessity of aclatowledging, such is
the nation's fatuity, that its care and cost are
mainly reserved to be bestowed upon the youth of
the poor when the country's. neglect has brought
them to the bar of justice, and made them the
prisoners of our gaols, instead of primarily and
principally directing it to the provision of such
educational and training facilities for their special
behoof, as might have the effect, in no long time,
if properly applied, of rendering those Reforma-
tories and Penitentiariesaltogether unnecessary !

BOSTON ELECTION—Theo appointment of Mr. W. H.
Adams, M.P. for Boston, to, the vacant recordership of
Derby, rendered it incumbent on the hon. gentleman to
solicit re-election at the hands of his constituents, by
whom he is deservedly respected. The election took
place yesterday (Thursday), and Mr. Adams was re-elected
without opposition, }Tawas well received, and made an
able speech.