The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-31 00:00:00

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TUESDAY MORNING, ,TAN. 31, 1854.

JUVENILE CRIME.-THE LIVER•

POOL MEETING.

Fs-sv subjects have attracted more attention, or
are likely to lead to more important social results,
than those which seek to regulate the application
of punishment to crime. On nearly all hands, it
is now admitted that punishment must embrace
three separate elements, or its chief, indeed almost
its only value will be lost; these are, nicely adjusted
yet wholesome severity—the probability of its being
a warning to deter others from crime—and the
likelihood of its proving salutary to the individual
punished. Its character must be adequate clearly
to mark the criminal's divergency from the paths
of rectitude—its severity must be sufficient to
operate as a physical monitor, teaching him, in un-
mistakeable terms, that infringement of the laws
will be followed by personal suffering; but it must
also keep in view his reformation as well as the
punishment of his crime. Above all, the adminis-
tration of punishment must be accompanied by that
calmness and solemnity which remove from it even
the suspicion of vindictiveness. To combine these
elements has been found a most difficult task. This
difficulty has been vastly increased, where it has
keen attemptedte adapt punishment to the repression
of delinquency among youth and children of tender
years. No portion of the magisterial duty can be
more painful in its discharge than that of inflicting
punishment on juvenile criminals, where it is ob-
vious, as in many instances it is, that the criminal
has, at first, been the victim of misery, or, alas !
more afflicting still, the instrument of social
monsters, who, dead to every sense of shame, and
regardless of even the semblance of virtue, foster
and trade upon degradation and crime in the un-
suspecting years of inexperienced childhood. How
much would the pain of this feeling be alleviated,
if, while awarding punishment for crime, the magis-
trate could, at the same time, secure the criminal
from being again thrown into the power of those
who instigate and train him to wickedness, or re-
move him from the influence of those pinching
neeesfsities which have driven him to crime. Re-
formatory institutions, which have been tried with
marked success in other countries, would, if
established here, in a great degree accomplish
this ; and we therefore hail, with unmixed
satisfaction, the commencement of an effort for their
establishment. As will be seen from a report, in
this day's Standard, a meeting was held in Liver-
pool, on Thursday last, in furtherance of this object.
That meeting was appropriately presided over by
the chief magistrate of the town, and was attended
by the leading philanthropists of our community.
The expediency, indeed the necessity of the move-
ment? was inculcated in eloquent terms, by gentle-
men of all shades of political opinion, and of nearly
every religious creed. Mr. BaowN and Mr. Holm-
run, representing the legislative section of our
population ; Mr. POLLOCK and Mr. MANSFIELD, as
administrators of justice among us ; while the vene-
rable Archdeacon BROOKS, the Rev. Rector CA.mr-
ItELL, the Rev. Dr. M‘NEILE, and other ministers
of religion, joined in cordial emulation to forward
the great and good work.
In his eloquent lamentation over prostitution, as
one great moral cancer, eating into the vitals of
society, and fertile in the production of crime, the
reverend doctor displayed even more than his usual
delineative power in depicting the misery of vice ;
and, in his highest strain of moral indignation, de-
nounced the heartlessness of the seducer, and justly
reprobated the leniency with which his crime is
looked on by society. The baneful influence of
inebriety was forcibly adverted to, and censured
by him, as among the chief instigators to even
juvenile crime. He appealed, at his conclusion, in
happy terms to the soothing and reclaiming in-
fluences of kindly feeling and Christian love. Of
Mr. POLLOCK'S manly and intelligent address, it
would be difficult to speak in terms of overstrained
praise. His telling illustration of that malignant
emulation which, among the vicious, leads to even
a further corruption of the moral sense, and is a
powerful incentive to crime, was delivered with
rare felicity, carrying conviction to the mind of
every thinking man ; while his appeal for having
the objects of such emulation changed—to have
the vicious teaching replaced by virtuous lessons—
to have the satanic model substituted by one in
harmony with Christian principle and moral beauty,
was creditable alike to his judgment and his feel-
ings. The-sound practical good sense which cha-
racterised the remarks of Messrs. BROWN and
HORSFALL were also of happy omen. The sugges-
tion thrown out and supported by those gentlemen,
for having a floating reformatory moored in the
river, where delinquent boys may be trained into
honest and useful seamen, was in felicitous con-
formity with the genius and requirements of Liver-
pool associations ; and from the spirit of unity and
benevolence which was breathed throughout the
addresses, there seems good reason to hope that
something salutary may be effected.