The Express. — 1868-09-17 (London, England)

EVERY EVENING.  LOS .V DON, THURSDA Y, SEPT. 17.  A LATE PANIC.  EItYBODY knows the last sensation topic. It i". the depravity of boys, which is understood to ft tercel, matured, or whatever else you please, by penny storybooks about " Claude du Val," Turpin," and the " Boy Pirate." If throe 1..0e1;" are not put down, boy-nature will be cl.,,rged for good and all. In fact, it is changed nlready. The boys are coining up in mass, forgers, icurderers, burglar", and anything else to which tlif old legal maxim, svi idol (I t eel/ 1, can IN)f.i.ibly apply. Let society prepare ! Boys are 01; }1.,. way.  I:..:ders with inenwries arc aware that there is a :Li:A periodicity libmit sneial panics. Every •,v, and then the " angels- are " bid to turn • the poles of lf 4rt twice ten degrees and  11;,,i1.." so that we are to expect very different i.sl weather. It was not so very long ago ue were informed that murder, not to -41fishness, came natural to a girl of sixtefn at least this version of what was said 1..111 M ith:n the limits of fair caricature. Yet girLA continue to charm us at home and abroad, and not even in fancy do we see blood on the little boot against which nestles the croquet-ball on the lawn, or on the suivez-nwi-jemie-honina of the damsel in St. Paul's-churchyard. And, the girls having survived criticism, and continued to 'harm us with their innocent kindness, we propose to continue to trust the boys.  Nobody doubts what is obvious, namely, that, in default of any system of national education, immense numbers of the young grow up uncared for and untaught, and then come into collision with the law. But it is not pretended that those new developments of boy depravity which create the panic, occur among the wholly ignorant A boy must be able to read before he can get much harm out of " The Boy Pirate; " and he must be able to write before he can forgecheques. Now, it was the opinion of Wounsworrw, who preached national education irg the " Excursion " before most of us were born or thought of, that society was being enlightened by superficial culture in a degree out of all just proportion to its moral culture. And if that view of the subject was plausible when he was thinking over the Ecclesiastical Bonnets, it may now, perhaps, bc more plausible still. But we believe that those who will take the trouble to examine records of crime for, say a century and a quarter back, will not be able to arrive at the conclusion that there are in proportion to the total number of persons arrested and convicted more young criminals than there used to be. A Newgate calendar of a hundred years ago conveys no such impression—nay, on the oontrary. Nor are we in any particular specially precocious in these days. There is no proof that the young dash into life earlier than they did in the times of the BLACK PRINCE ; on the contrary, perhaps, or at least the case is doubtful. Above all, there is no reason to believe that the majority of boy-criminals have been made criminals by reading bad books. There are, perhaps, few respectable circles in which there are not sad stories that furnish a contrary indication. Does the bad boy, a thorough black sheep, a liar, a thief, a lewd, ungrateful scamp, never turn up in the very " serious" household ? The answer would be a commonplace. And every man of the world could supplement it off-hand by a down heart-breaking facts. There is no room in the question for paradox. Bud books are mischievous, and so is bad cornpauy ; and when a boy is found committing burglary or • forgery it is a very shocking thing. But there is no apparent reason to believe that any power whatsoever has " pealed " oblique the central globe" in regard to  the ;citing of this new generation. and that wo are going to have a great diaproportiontiteinpouring of wicked boyhood.