The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-09-19 00:00:00

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS,

AMIDST our greatness as a nation, and while we
are still felicitating ourselves on the abundant har-
vest which Providence has just vouchsafed us—
albeit it comes checkered with the reflection that
pestilence is stalking with fearful strides through
our large towns—the punishment of offenders
against our laws is a monster difficulty which must
be grappled with. A former sanguniary code took
the shortest way to solve the difficulty by punish-
ing almost all felonies with death. A reaction has,
however, taken place, and instead of that utter dis-
regard of human life which made so many offences
capital, it is now rarely that even the horrid crime
of murder meets with the prescribed penalty.
Juries so easily find extenuating circumstances in
simulated insanity, and, should this ordeal be passed,
a SECRETARY OF STATE panders to morbid philan-
throphy and commutes the sentence, so that in-
stead of human life being, as it were, hedged in by
the dread penalty imposed on its violation, the
murderer has almost the encouragement of the
chances, first of a tender-hearted jury, and then of
a popularity-seeking Minister. The amelioration
of the criminal code rendered some other kind 'of
punishment necessary, and transportation was re-
sorted to, until our distant colonists refused to re-
ceive our convicts, and we are once more compelled
to devise some means of meeting the ever recur-
ring difficulty. We have no apparent alternative
but to throw our criminals back upon society to
repeat their offences, or confine them in prisons at
an enormous expense. Some compromise was at-
' tempted by permitting convicts to be at liberty
with tickets of leave ; but experience has proved
that this was increasing instead of lessening the
evil, as many of the men so discharged were soon
in prison again for fresh offences, and this was
hardly to be wondered at, as they had no means of
obtaining employment. In one instance, it is said
that a discharged prisoner was offered employment
as a cabman, but the authorities refused him a
license, and it was pertinently asked, if he is not fit
for a cabman, what can he be fit for P So that
every discouragement was given to such men re-
turning to honest courses. By far the most prac-
tical scheme, however, for the diminution of crime,
is to strike at the root of the evil, by repressing
juvenile offences, and attempting a reformation be-
fore age and experience have turned the first
offenders into hardened criminals. It is well
known that much of the temptation arises from
poverty, the neglect of education, and the force of
evil example. Some good was done by the estab-
lishment of Refuges for Discharged Prisoners, but
the amount of it was small, owing to the want of
means. This defect may, however, now be reme-
died by an Act which was passed last Session for
the institution of Reformatory Schools for Juvenile
Offenders. The Magistrates have power to levy
a rate for their support ; and as, in many instances,
it has been found that parents encourage their
children in crime in order to gratify their own
vicious propensities, the law compels such parents
to contribute to the maintenance of their children
whilst in custody. So little was done during the
past Session, that it is gratifying to be able to
point to one measure which promises so much
practical good ; and it is bo be hoped that the
Magistrates will put the law into effective opera-
tion, and dry up the sources whence our prisons
are filled, by establishing Reformatory Schools in
which precocious criminals may, at least, have the
opportunity of becoming useful members of society.

THE LIVERPOOL ACADEMY EXHIBITION,

Lin great amount of space devoted to a descriptive ac-
count of St. George's Hall, and the important ceremonies
observed at its opening, will be admitted as a reasonable
excuse for deferring our intended notice of the TA. urpool
Academy. It would be improper, and nikcnt be liable to
misconstruction, were we to emit allusion to a letter, which,
under the signature of Wm. Foulkes, appeazed in the Liver-
pool Courier of last Wednesday. Thil gentleman—of
whom we have not the slightest personal knowledge--com-
mences his letter by saying " a stain is easily fixed, but
not so easily erased." Passing over his somewhat droll
confusion of ideas, in relation to the erasing of fixtures, we
come to the more important portion of his letter, in which,
although it is a brief one, he huddles several statements of
small moment, with others which derive their only impor-
tance from the fact of their being entirely unfoundei. As
we are unwilling to misrepresent any one' we give the
statements in juxtaposition :
Mr. Foulkes' statement. Standard's statement.

Permit me, through your On Saturday last, obedient
columns, to correct a gross to the courteous invitation,
mis-statement of the Liver- of the Academy, we availed
pool Standard's reviewer ourselves of the first oppor-
of to-day. tunity afforded to inspect
In his critical notice of the collection which graces
the present exhibition of the exhibition-rooms, and
the'Liverpool Academy, he were gratified to find a nu-
takes upon himself to state, merous array of ladies and
that previous to the day gentlemen present, • which,
(Saturday last) of private no doubt, would have been
view—to which he was even greater, but for the
"courteously invited"--some surreptitious introduction,
favoured parties had had the on previous days, of some
special opportunity of a prior more favoured, as they were
inspection and selection of more early, visitors than
the choicest pictures. those invited by the Ace-
Now, sir, being officially demr•
engaged in 4-1—
constantly in attendance, I
can distinctly state that no

such preference was given
in any case, with the ex-
ception of four persons, who
only had the entree of the

rooms, and that on business,

not at all in connexion with

the choice or purchase of
any of the pictures. A par-

and, in some cases,

almost an offensive exclu-

sion of parties not on actual
business was ordered, and
strictly observed.

Where the imaginative Mr. Foulkes made prize of the
idea, that parties were admitted to the exhibition with a
view to priority of inspection and selection of the choicest
pictures, it is not for us even to guess; but, whether, as
he was officially engaged in the rooms, and constantly
in attendance, he may have unconsciously mixed up what
may have been an actual occurrence with a merely specu-
lative observation, which he obviously has misunderstood;
we have no business to conjecture. For the benefit of
others, more unacquainted with the facts than Mr.
Foulkes appears to be, we may be pardoned for a brief ex-
planation of one set of those facts ; the only one we are
conversant with. On Friday week, we received an invi-
tation to be present at the PRIVATE VIEW of the Exhibi-
tion, the said private view to take place between the
hours of twelve and five o'clock on the following (Satur-
day) afternoon. Most, if not all, of the Liverpool papers,
published on Saturday morning, many hours before the
professed private view was to commence, contained such
remarks on the pictures as could only have been made by
parties having had access to the exhibition. How far,
under these circumstances, the private view was a private
view, and an invitation to it a compliment, the Academy
and its mouthpiece, Mr. Foulkes, can best explain.
Our lively and sasionoi— - is on V "1-

vet— sarcastic friena, le other
side of the channel meet a case like that conjured up by
Mr. Foulkes, by an apothegm : s'excuse s'accuse, they
say, and very often with great propriety. Some people
may conjecture that Mr. Foulkes' uncalled-for defence to

an imaginary charge is the severest of condemnations.
Let that offipiclus gentleman ponder do this, and if some
less gentle hand than our own should remind him that

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"
he must not too rashly endeavour to saddle the blame of
the unwelcome intimation on the Liverpool Standard,