The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-21 00:00:00

LAIN DUN THURSDAY EVENIN(4, AUGUST 21, 1856.

NATIONAL REFORMATORY UNION.

A conference of the friends of this institution com-
menced yesterday afternoon at Bristol, and will be con-
tinued to-day and to-morrow.
The first meeting took place in the hall of the Society of
Merchant Venturers, which, in spite of unfavourable wea-
ther, was completely filled. Lord Stanley presided on the
occasion, and was supported on the platform by the Mayor
of Bristol, the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, Mr. W.
Miles, M.P., Lord R. Cecil, M.P. ; Col. Pinney, M.P.,
Mr. Commissioner Hill, Col. Burrows, the Dean of Bristol,
Rev. Canon Girdlestone, Rev. W. Turner, of Redhill ;
Rev. W. C. Osborn, Chaplain of Bath Gaol ; Rev. W.
Tyler, of Spitalfiekls ; Mr. J. Hassell, Master of the Society
of Merchant Venturers ; Messrs. B. Baker, of Hardwicke; '
J. Symons, E. A. gandford, E. B. Wheatley, G. W. Has-
tings, W. Morgan, W. Gillow, G. Bowyer, W. Marsh, L.
Thornton, T. P. Jose, R. Leonard, Dr. Wallis, &c.
The MAYOR of BRISTOL, in a brief speech, introduced
Lord Stanley to the meeting.
His LORDSHIP commenced his observations by expres-
sing his regret at the absence of the President of the Union
(Lord Brougham), from whom tho following letter had
been received by Mr. Commissioner Hill :
" Brougham, Aug. H.
"My dear Hill,—lt is • needless to say how very much
grieved I have been by the impossibility ofattending the Bris-
tol meeting of our Reformatory Union, over which I have
always deemed it a high honour that I was called upon to pre-
side at its formation. But my relief has been great in finding
my place on this occasion supplied by one whom all his col-
leagues so highly esteem for his capacity and habits of hard
work, his eminent abilities, and the truly noble use he makes
of them.
" We can hardly overrate the importance of these proceed-
Nio. It 5. not i-cry.vrocable Su 'Naive(' ttpOn Lbr, number of
years that have elapsed since I came to the conviction, which
subsequent experience and discussion with others, in and out
of the profession, have only confirmed, how very much we
over estimate the deterring effect of penal legislation mme-
companied with other measures, and bow necessary it is both
to apply means of prevention, to makepunishment reforma-
tory, and to reclaim those on whom we have been obliged to
inflict it, I have taken the liberty, through you, of laying
before the Union my reflections upon this subject. I look
forward to the happiest results from the present meeting, and
to an ample extension of the great benefits already derived
from the trials that have, both in this and other countries,
been made of the system,
" No one can have a greater respect than I have for the
benevolent and enlightened labours of M. de Metz and hs
late colleague, M. de Courteilles ; and my visit to Mettray,
two years ago, enabled me pointedly to contradict in Parlia-
ment some assertions and expose misapprehensions prevalent
on the subject. It is not, however, true that Mettray was
the first experiment of the kind. The Philanthropic Society
many years before (long before Strettou-on-Dunsmore, in-
deed) had even adopted the family principle, perhaps the
distinguishing feature of the Mettray plan, and only gave it
up, I believe, when they were enabled to erect their building
in St. George's-fields. Stretton-on-Dunsmore was begun as
early as 1818 ; and while we honour the memory of that truly
admirable man, Townsend Powell, whe devoted himself to its
support, we must feel no little shame in the reflection that,
after he had for many years, through good and evil report,
and with the utmost difficulty, kept it alive, for want of
funds it did not survive him, and I was grieved to find last
year that it had been abandoned. I take for granted that its
condition could not have been known to the great and weal-
thy towns of Warwickshire and Staffordshire, which must
have benefitted most by Mr. Powell's labours, carried on as
they purposely were in .a remote district, in order that the
liberated convicts might be separated as much as possible
from the haunts of their former associates.
" Nothing can be more candid than M. De. Metz's admis-
sions on all occasions of having profited by the experience
and the suggestions of others, especially those of Wieheru,
founder of the Rauhe-haus, near Hamburg. But it is greatly
to the honour of M. De Metz's sagacity that he perceived the
advantages of the family principle where it had been adopted,
as it probably was by the Philanthropic Society of London,
from necessity and the want of accommodation, not design-
edly. He saw through its great importance, and voluntarily
made it part of his system.
" I trust that the meeting will not separate without fully
discussing and exposing the evils of short imprisonments. In
the paper which I have sent you will find that this is dwelt
upon as one exception among the errors into which Mr. Ben-
tham fell upon the reformatory operation of penal inflictions,
I well recollect how entirely he agreed with us upon this im-
portant point, when Sir S. Romilly and I were discussing
with him what we took leave to regard as fundamental errors
on other points. It really is of such paramount importance
that it may be said to make all the difference between punish-
ment beinc, an evil or a remedy, a prevention or au encou-
ragement ofc' crime, a mitigation or an aggravation of its mis-
chiefs.

" Among many other subjects which will of course be
brought before the meeting, one surely is the error of some
distinctions taken in the plans of the patronage societies that
are formed. Some, I see, arc confined to females, others to
males, while the same might well take care of both. A more
prevailing mistake is restricting our care to the young. There
can be no reason why the same society should not charge
itself also with adults, assuming, what I apprehend can hardly
be disputed, that it is against all principle and all the results
of experience to confine our labours to the care of juveaile
offenders.

"I ought to apologise for occupying you with the perusal
of a long letter from a distance, when you must bo so fully
and so much better employed nearer home. My disappoint-
ment is really great that I am not with you and our col-
leagues, to whom I desire my kindest regards and respects. I
observe ithat Sir J. Pakington is expected to attend, for
whom I need not say bow great is my esteem, having long
been his fellow-labourerin important measures for the amend-
ment of the law, and it would have given me no little satis-
faction to make the acquaintance of so excellent a person as
Mr. Miles, to whom the Union is greatly indebted.
" Believe me, sincerely yours,
" H. BROUGHAM."
Lord Stanley then delivered the following inaugural
address :—Ladies and gentlemen,—l will not detain you
with any preface to the remarks which it will be my duty
to make, nor apologise for the inevitable length to which
they may extend. The subject of reformatories is to you
deeply interesting—your presence in this room proves that.
The subject is beset with difficulties, else why the contro-
versies, the debates, the writing and speaking that have
taken place concerning it during the last five years. The
subject is one on which action, anti prompt action, is
needed, otherwise it would hardly, in this practical
country and age, occupy the most intelligent minds and
lead to the most strenuous exertions. The Legislature
has taken up, as regards the reformatory movement, a
peculiar, though, I think, a wise position. It assists the
founders of schools ; it gives them legal powers ; it makes
use of their agency ; but it does not supersede their efforts.
The law under which we act takes for granted the existence
of so much public spirit in the community as that indi-
viduals may be left to initiate a movement which ill other
countries would fall within the especial province of the
Executive. It is our duty and our purpose to-day to show
that the confidence of Parliament is not misplaced ; that
those who frame the laws and those who administer them
have not reckoned in too sanguine a spirit on the philan-
thropy and the patriotism of English citizens. I propose, so
far as time allows, to lay before you an outline sketch of
this vast subject. Now, in the first place, in order to know
clearly the magnitude of the evil for which wo have to pro-
vide a remedy, let us endeavour to ascertain the actual and
relative amount in this country of adult and juvenile crime.
I don't apprehend that this can be done in a very exact
manner. Prison returns can draw no distinction, though
morally the distinction is a very wide one, between trivial
breaches of law, compatible with habitual innocence, and
offences which are of a nature to indicate habitual crime.
Nor is the shape of our statistical information on these
subjects convenient. The difficulty I have found in
ascertaining, even imperfectly as I may have done
it, the facts required, supply me, if it were
needed, with a fresh reason to envy and to hold up for
imitation the complete, uniform, and simple mode in
which the judicial statistics of France are compiled. Never-
theless, such materials as we possess we may use ; and look-
ing to the 19th report, just published, of the Prison In-
spectors of England and Wales,
which supplies us with the
returns 011853, I find it there stated that the numbers "for
trial or tried at assizes or sessions" were 26,801 ; the sum-
mary sonvictions, 71,85 )—malting a total of those who have
come under the law, 98,651, or, in round numbers, about
100,000. Now, in that same year there were of juvenile
offenders (that is, under 17 years) tried or for trial, 2,105;
summarily convicted, 9,348—t0ta1, 11,453. We have,
then, the proportion of juvenile to all crime for that year
fixed at 11. per cent., and the figures for 1852 show a
generally similar result. I will not weary yeu with sta-
tistics, but it is worth notice—and proof of what I state
may be found in this same report—that while the propor-
tion of juvenile crime, that is, of crime committed under
the age of 17 does not exceed the figure I have mentioned,
the amount committed between the ages of 17 and 21 is
absolutely enormous, forming, for these four years of life
alone, nearly 25 per cent. of the whole. This fact is par-
ticularly corroborated by the census returns'of 1851, where
of all the prisoners under sentence in Groat Britain on a
particular day, just 25 per cent. was found to be under 20
yearsby
ofage'and 4 result almost identical with this was ob-
taiuMr. Itedgrave, from the census of 1841. It is,
indeed, a startling fact in the investigation of crime, that
tw whilee e h thethe
aes numberof losf
andpersons f living at any one time be-
o o y
1-10th of the en-
tire population at that time, this tenth part of the popu-
lation is guilty of nearly one-fourth of the whole amount I
of detected crime. Now, I don't think that prison re-
turns,
or any returns, can give us an exact idea of the num-
ber
of those with whom the reformatory movement mat
have to deal; there are lads who break the law, and no,
punished, who are yet in no sense habitual offenders ;
there is, perhaps, still a good deal of undetected crime in
counties where no efficient police exists, and no statement
of the number annually imprisoned can help us, except it
the roughest way, to estimate the number of those wh,
may be at large. This only wo know, that more that
11,000 children, a large majority of them boys, pass yearly
through the hands of justice ; with how little ref°,
mgeneral, the large proportion of recom
miattt7s effect
nearlyectin 4,000 out of 11,000 shows plainly
enough. I can hardly imagine anything more vitally it,
portant for us, in carrying on this reformatory work, ti
ascertain than the scale on which we shall have to conduct
our operations. Unfortunately, there id no part of the

whole subject on which se little light can be thrown. We
are working very much in the dark ; we have little ex-
perience to appeal to ; all estimates as to numbers have
hitherto been mere guesses, and those guesses differ from
one another as widely as is possible, I speak with Some
hesitation when I say that, when the reformatory system
comes fully into operation, I think you will not be suffi-
ciently prepared to meet all contiegencies, unless you rec-
kon on a yearly influx of from 2,000 to 3,000 boys. The
term of detention being at the utmost five years, but two-
thirds of that time being the average, you might, according
to that estimate, have at one time about 10,00) in process
of reclamation. I hope lam exaggerating the require-
ments of the case. Nevertheless, when I reflect that the
cost per head to the State of each criminal so reclaimed is
only 131. yearly, and that from this must be deducted the
sums recovered from the parents, I confess there appears
to me no danger of our burdening the finances with a de-
mand disproportionate to the importance of the object in
view. When we speak of the possible cost of reformatories,
it is well to remember the certain cost.of crime. We are
too apt, in dealing with such subjects, to think only of the
taxes which we pay to Government, and to forget the
taxes which we pay to those whom it is the object of
Government to put down. It sounds almost incredible,
but it is on record (I quote it, raleat quantum) that a com-
mittee appointed by the authorities of Liverpool to inves-
tigate losses caused by theft placed those losses at the sum
700,0001. Mr. Clay, of Preston, has assumed the average
income of a successful thief at 1001. yearly; and in the
case of 14 prisoners whose history he investigated, he
found that besides the loss which their depredations might
have caused the average cost, of their apprehension,
maintenance, prosecution, and punishment was 62/. a
piece. Similarly, Mr. Rushton, wriEing, in 1842, to the,
corporation of Liverpool, referred to the ease of 14 prison-
ers, whom he estimated as having caused a dead loss to
the community of between 2,0001. and 3,0001. We have
heard of gaols costing 1501. or 200'. per cell ; there are some
which have far exceeded this estimate. We know how
little productive prison labour can be made; and in esti-
mating the injury produced by crime, we must take into
account the annoyance, the fear, and the trouble caused,
which generally far exceed in importance to the sufferer
the pecuniary loss itself. Financiers have au axiom that
a little uncertainty in a tax is worse than a great deal of
inequality. Now, obviously, no tax is so uncertain, both
in amount and time of collection, none is so vexatious as
regards the manner of collecting, as that which falls upon
us in the shape of loss by robbery. Passing from the ques-
tion of numbers, let us consider whether there exists any
chance of juvenile crime decreasing through other agencies
than ours. We all know—we have heard them again and
again—what are the principal causes of adult crime.
Early ignorance, vicious associations, habitual intemper-
ance (the most powerful demoralising agent of all), and
imperfection in police arrangements, whereby the example
is held out of offences committed without detection. Po-
verty and distress are also operating influences ; but to
what extent they operate is a question much disputed. The
specific agencies at work in creating juvenile criminality
have been analysed with great minuteness by Mr. Clay, of
Preston, than whom no man is better known in connection
with reformatory movements. He found that in 75 per
cent. of the cases investigated by him the fault of the chil-
dren lay unmistakeably at thedoor of the parents. In 57 per
cent, of these cases there had been habitual drunkenness,
often accompanied by brutality, on the part of the father;
in the remaining 18 per cent. habitual indifference and
neglect,—that is to say, in three cases out of every four
of juvenile delinquency which came before him the pri-
soner had had hardly a chance of becoming anything but
what he was. Mr. Clay's calculation is corroborated by
another which I extract from an able and useful pamphlet
by Mr. Adshead. He states that, from an inquiry made
into the cases of 100 criminal children at Manchester, in
1840, the following results were elicited :
Born of dishonest parents
Parents profligate, but not of the criminal

class
Parents honest and industrious

100
All inquiry tends to show that in crime, as in pauperism,
there is a tendency to become hereditary ; and the effect
of neglect in developing crime is demonstrated by the
large proportion of illegitimate children in gaols. It
seems, then, that unless we could deal with the parent
we eannot prevent the corrupting process from going on.
We cannot hinder children being driven or allured out of
miserable homes to seek a living by plunder in the streets.
Now, nothing is more certain than that to deal directly
with the parent is impossible. He is out of our reach,
is beyond our control. He is proof against such influences
as we can bring to bear. So far as he is concerned, the work
of demoralisation must and will go on. Indirectly, no
doubt, we may operate upon that class from whom the
parents of the criminal population are mostly taken. Bat
we can hope to operate upon it only by means of measures
and movements continued through a long series of years,
and needing time for their results to appear, by means of
better schooling, of temperance societies, of places of
rational amusement, substituted for the beer-house; of
cheap literature, of every encouragement which society can
offer to industry and forethought. Meantime, the children
are being misled ; the routine of convictions, imprison.
ments, recommittals continues. The more I look into the
subject, the more fully assured I feel that for both the
present and future diminution of crime the only direct and
immediate agency that can bo employed—l don't say the
best, but virtually the only one—consists in the detention,
the training, and the giving honest employment to crimi-
nal children whom the neglect of such means will render
offenders for life. There are other agencies which in th e
long run may, and we hope will, affect powerfully the less
wealthy classes of society, but these agencies aro indirect
only, and do not meet the necessity which lies upon us of
immediate action. Next, let us consider (and I assure you
that I am endeavouring to be as brief as lies in my power)
what is the past history mil present state of this rcfor'na-
tory movement. I am afraid that we, as a nation, can
hardly claim the credit of having been foremost to discern
and to act upon the principle which this union meets to
provide. It is true that, in 1783, the Philanthropic Society
of London—the society now familiar to us by the name of
its school, Red-hill—was set on foot by private means. it
is true that 15 years earlier, Howard had called attention to
this branch of prison discipline. It is true that in 1315 the
Prison Discipline Society was established, one of the chief
objects of which was to save young offenders from the cor-
ruption of contact with those more hardened, that in 1317
theStretton Institution in Warwickshire was commenced,
and that at a later period the Children's Friend Society,
under Capt. Brenton, undertook the protection of neglected
boys and girls, whether innocent or criminal. But it has
boon chiefly on the continent that the reformatory move-
ment, until of late years, hasthriven and flourished. (After
referring in termsof cordial commendation to the labours
of Fellenberg, Der Reeks, Wichern, and Mettray, the
noble lord alluded to the establishment at Red-hill.) Red-
hill school, as you know, dates from 1810 ; 913 boys have
entered it, of whom 253 remain, 720 having passed
through. Of these about 70 per cont. are known to be doing
well. Those who wish for details on the foreign reforma-
tories will find them in a paper read by Mr. Maclelland
before the British Association at Glasgow, and since re-
printed as a pamphlet. You are aware of the main pro-
visions of the act of 1854, and how it assists the setting up
of reformatory schools. Power is given to detain boys at
such schools during five years, and to receive them at any
age not above 16, Government pays ss, weekly fur the
support of each, but does not in practice other ,vise inter-
fere. Of this act most of the English counties are avail-
ing themselves already. Nearly all, wa hope, will do so.
I say nearly all, because in some instances, where the num-
ber of boys is small, it may be better for more than one
county to join funds and set up a school between them.
The object of the National Reformatoty Union, in connec-
tion with this movement, is to form, as it were, a centre
of action for these various local efforts ; tie enable managers
in different bounties to compare their systems more readily;
to promote the establishment of reformatories where none
yet assist; to enable those who wish to give personal as-
sistance in the cause to discover where their help is most
required; to assist in placing out the youths who leave
reformatories; to supply opportunities of discussing the
general subject, and suggesting improvements in the me-
thods adoPted ; and, should changes in the law of refor-
matories be required, to press on Parliament the propriety
of such changes. There is in existence —founded nearly at
the same time—another similar body to ours—the Refor-
matory and Refuge Union, formed on a wore sectarian
basis, but likely, I hope, to be useful within its own sphere.
I name that body only in order to mention that, though
they weak by nearly the same moans fur nearly the same
objects, there is not —there cannot be—any opposition be-
tween the two. I come now to some practical inquiries.
fs the undertaking necessary ? Is it, a priori, likely to
succeed ? Has it succeeded when tried in other coun-
tries? Now, as to the first point, the necessity of set-
ting about this business, I apprehend there can be but
Kittle diversity of opinion. The circumstances of the
mime aro peculiar. Whatever was tile effect of tran-
sportation, as a punishment, upon Australia, there can
be no doubt but that the effect of the system upon
his country was beneficial. In fact, transportation
.s an English institution dates further back than the die-
-every of the A ustralian continent. We transported once
o America; we transported to the West Indies; we tried,
sfter the American independence, to transport to the Afri
sin coast; for half a century we transported to the antipo-
lean settlements. It is only within the last half-dozen
rears that we find ourselves cut off from an easy and effec-
,ual, though not economical mode of getting rid of our cri-
minal population—cut off, if I may express an individual
opinion, without much propped of being Able tiCs

a practice which we have established, or of being allowed
to find a new outlet for convicts which will not interfere
with the claims of some growing community. Be that as
it may, we have for some time past had to contemplate the
probable alternative of being compelled to keep all our die.
charged prisoners at home. It was a nature/vault of that
position that people should begin to say, " Since you can't
get rid of your criminals you must reform them." But re-
form whom ? Adults? That was felt to b 3, I don't say a
hopeless, but an arduous and unpromising task. Then fel'
lowed the inquiry, " When do these men turn criminals,
in youth, or in later life?" The answer is sufficiently given
in our criminal tables, and in the evidence taken before
Parliament in the years 1832-53. It is ascertained that
from one-third to one-half of the convicts in our prisons
have belonged to the class of juvenile offenders. It is proved
by a concurrence of testimony such as one rarely finds on
any social question admitting of dispute, that short impri-
sonment—the average of all imprisonments in England is
50 days—are not reformatory in their effect, that they are
seldom even deterring ; that, usually, they send back the
offender more hardened than when he went in. The diffi-
culty is not to find witnesses on this point, but to choose
them. I believe there is not a governor of a gaol, not a
chaplain, not a judge, not a chairman of quarter sessions
who is not here of one mind. "To punish young offenders
with short terms of imprisonment," says Baron Alderson
in a recent charge, "is neither a wise nor a humane
proceeding." And he %notes a table of figures prepared
30 years back by the Governor of Glasgow Bride-
well, which is so conclusive that I cannot refrain from in-
serting it here. Of prisoners sentenced for the first time
to 14 days confinement, there returned to gaol for new
offences 75 per cent. ; of those sentenced to 30 clays, 60
per cent. ; 40 days, 50; 60 days, 40; 3 months, 25 ;
months, 10 ; 9 months, 7 ; 12 months, 4 ; 18 months, 1 ;
24 months, none ; although in the 10 years over which
this calculation extends the number of those sentenced for
21 months was 93. It is added that prisoners who came
back two or three times went on returning at intervals for
years, and that many of those committed for short periods
on their first offence were afterwards transported or
hanged. I select one other piece of evidence out of the
blue book of 1853, not as the strongest, but as the first on
which my eyes chanced to fall while re-examining it for
this meeting. In Reading Gaol, Oct., 1852, it was found
that out of 209 prisoners recommitted to separate confine.
ment, 89 were under 17 years of age when first committed,
and those 89 had been in prison altogether 403 times, or
nearer five times than four times a-piece. Even statistical
proof is scarcely necessary to make out the case for which
we contend. Does it stand to reason that a fortnight or a
month in prison can improve the moral character of a boy,
almost a child ? If allowed to mix with others, he is cor-
rupted to a certainty. If kept separate, as he ought to
be, still the question remains, what is he to do when he
comes out ? His character is gone ; his friends, probably,
disown him ; he is forced into the society of those whose
case is like his own; and he is exposed to those debasing
influences with little prospect of getting work, and with.
out time having been allowed for any really reformatory
agency to take effect upon him. If questioned, then, as to
the necessity of this reformatory movement, I answer thus
—that nationally important as it is at all times, circum-
stances have made it doubly important now—we cannot
dispose of our criminals, we must reclaim them—we have
comparatively little hope of reclaiming adults —we deal,
therefore, preferentially with the young ; and, as regards
the young, we have it established that the existing sys-
tems of attempted reformation have broken down. I
ask whether on that score our vindication can be more com-
pletely made out? But then follows the expression, often
openly expressed, still mere often felt whore it is not ex-
pressed, " Can you really reform a depraved character ?
Can you eradicate early habits so that they will not re-
turn? Can you be sure that the good you do will last,
that the apparent change for the better is anything more
than a mask worn for a temporary and interested pur-
pose ?" Well, that is a grave doubt, and deserves to be
fully considered. I answer it, first, by pointing again to
that statement of Mr. Clay's respecting the causes of juve-
nile 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 come into his hands have been made such by parental
misconduct iu one form or another. Some, one may sup-
pose, have been directly urged by parents into the cornmis-
sion 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 themselves be dishonest,
have grown up in mere brutal ignorance, and are entice:i
into mischief by other lads, knowing literally nothing of
duty or morality, of credit or disgrace, of whet society ap-
proves or what it coademns. A few are driven into vice
by actual ill-treatment, by hunger, by cold, by the fear of
starvation, and by tho fear of blows. Now, of all who
come under these four heads—those whose parents teach
them to steal—the 83 whose parents set them the example of
stealing—those who have been taught nothing at home, and
those who have boon left or turned adrift to shift for them-
selves—one m y say, without exaggeration, that their guilt
is the result of circumstances, and not of choice, Clearly,
therefore, they at least are not to he given up as hopeless.
They are worse than others, not because their inclinations
are worse, but 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 remains a
class, I admit, with regard to which one cannot speak with
so much confidence. I mean the class, met with both
among adults and grown 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 com-
pelling cause. Even in these less hopeful cases the morbid
tendency often appears to be connected with the physical
organisation, and disappears or diminishes under the com-
bined influences of example, of teaching, and of healthy
bodily training. On that last chance I don't dwell,
though a good deal might be said touching the connexion
of some forms of criminality with unnoticed cerebral dis-
ease; I am content to acknowledge the fact that in certain
instances the propensity to crime appears duo to organisa-
tion and not to social accidents; all I contend for is—first,
that this class forms a minority, and probably a small
one • next, that eye here a cure may sometimes be
effected. Where the intellect is weak good influences will
work upon it, at least, meeting with little active resist-
tance ; where it is acute, the disgrace, the outlawry, the
misery of a life of crime may commonly be made intelli-
gible; and thus in neither case is there reason for absolute
despair. There is still a third class with whom managers
of reformatories will have occasioually to deal, though
perhaps it would be better that they should not—l mean
the class-of casual offender--of youths who have been led
into what the law designates as crime on some single occa-
sion, but whose general tendencies and habit, are good, and
with regard to whom the process of reformation is com-
paratively 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 iu 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 igno-
rance; self-respect is destroyed, and, once destroyed, it is
not easily created anew. NOW, lam not come here with a
settled plan, but it seems to me that in case of very small
offences we might use fines as a punishment more than we
do—they are felt as a very real punishment, though not a
disgraceful ono in the same sense in which it is disgraceful
to be sent to gaol, taking care that a sufficient term were
allowed for the payment of the fine, or allowing it to be
paid by degrees, so that it might not become imprisonment
under another name. This by the way. Well, then, what
is it that reformatories can do for their inmates, and with
what hope of success ? They can do this. They can remove
the boy from contaminating associations, they can teach
him habits of cleanliness, temperance, industry; they can
give him what in 99 cases out of 100 he has never had be-
fore—a chance in life—a fair start in the world. They can
insure his having addressed to him, probably 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 years, he chooses that career, he
does it with full knowledge of the consequeuce to himself.
They render impossible henceforth that reproach to 1 a w and
to society which arises when a convicted criminal can say
with truth to his j edges, " You punish me, but you never
taught me." " But," I may be told, " some part of your
work will always be wasted; there must be utterly hope-
less cases." I suppose there will be ; but, even as regards
these, is there no gain ? You can't mend them ; admit
the fact. Bat at least you keep them from corrupting
others, as well as from plundering in their own persons.
It is the boy, not the man, who has most influence on the
younger boy. I hoard of a single lad in a reformatory not
far from here, who, before being sent there, had
trained eight expert thieves. Think what a few such
youths at large may do, and the ss. a-week of their
keep looks very small in comparison. One caution be-
fore I leave this part of the subject. Don't let there
be any, even the slightest, confusion between the refor-
mation of the young and the attempted reformation of
grown-up men and women. I say nothing as to the feasibi-
lity
of the lait attempt; I assert only that the two things
differ not only in degree, but in kind. A man of ripe aget
cannot plead utter ignorance. He knows at least what he
world thinks of his doings. In the majority of instances
his habits are formed. In the majority of instances his in-
clinations,e whatever they were at first, have become,i as
guilty as his acts. To change is for him most ffio
ult.
Honour to those who endeavour to help him, but difficult.
Honourfailures
they most expect, and for their failures we cannot be, we
are not., held accountable. Turning to experience, such as
we have, the result appears fully
as favourable as theory
would lead us to expect. At Mettray SS per cent by ono
account, 89 per cent. by another, of the inmates ent out
into the world are doing well. These percentages are taken
from reports of last year (1855), when ¶:00 youths hail
passed through the institution. Of the 11 per cent. who
had relapsed (vagrancy being reckoned as a relapse, with-
out proof of actual crime) ono fourth, or about 21, per
cent., had recovered their lost position. At Rod-hill, where
720 boys have been discharged since the opening of the
school in 1e49 228 being inmates at the present time
Mr. Turner states that 70 per cent. have been reclaimed,
adding that, of all who have left there, the emigrants hav(
done best, and that the proportion of relapses among those
is lower than among those who stay at home. In the Glas-
gow- House of Refuge, out of 400 85 per cent. have been
reclaimed. lam afraid these are the only authentic facts
which I can give. The continental reformatories, except
Alettray, do not supply precedents, breauee most of them
appear to take in vagrant and destitute as well as positively
criminal children. With respect to the danger of encourag-
ing parents to put their children in the way of admission to
reformatories, by holding out advantages which the inno
cent do not possess—of course, if that result follows, yoe
will be doing more harm than good. The precautions b?
which that clangor may be averted aro two—first, the lay-
ing down, as has been done, of a stringent rule, and the
enforcing its ga is Wing 4=OY awry pooaible mans, that