PREMIUM ON CRIME.

175 who appear at the bar of our police courts are of the most destitute class, and that their offences are generally of the most trifling nature-trifling in the popular signification of the word, and certainly deserve that appellation when compared with the heinous offences brought before our courts of justice. But that word delinquent, and that other word criminal, imply so much that their very use often mislead us. Their exclusive application to children who appear before justices and in jails-their use only to denote the erring children of the destitute and the depraved, have turned away our thoughts from the precise offences and the offenders. If the children of the middle classes and of the rich were treated with the same severity, thousands would appear in prison whose circumstances, whose friends, secure for them an immunity from the dangers which threaten the offspring of the poor. If a poor man's child runs away from a workhouse, he is sent to prison; but if a rich man's child absconds from a boarding school, or from home, he is admonished, or at the most, whipped for so doing. The former suffer by imprisonment for leaving the poor man's home, (if it deserve the name,) an irretrievable injury, by being placed in a felon's jail, and by being numbered among the criminal classes; and on his discharge from the prison walls, perhaps he is placed in the black-ward of some workhouse, and treated with such harshness that a second offence of a similar nature may be positively expected. A poor man's child is found playing in the street, (and where else can he play,) and accidentally breaks a shop-window or a gas-lamp; the policeman is called, and off to the station-house and the jail goes the child. Not far distant there plays a rich man's child in some well appropriated place; but accidents will happen even there; a pane of glass is broken; the expense of repair is deducted from the pocket of the offender, (we say offender, for so the little jail-bird is called, if not by some harder name,) or it is placed to the account of the parents among the incidentals of the schoolmaster's bill.

A half-starved biped, who is denied admission to the workhouse, because his parents will not submit to its confinement, is sent forth to beg; no good fortune attends the recital of his tales of woe; to his parents he fears to return; and therefore on some door-step, or under some hay-rick, or in some cart-shed, or in some iron roller, he takes refuge for the night. The policeman discovers him. A vagrant is apprehended. Imagination makes the child a burglar or a felon. It is certain he could be after no good." He is committed as a rogue and a vagabond for three weeks or three months to the jail.

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Moral principles in such children are not very strong; they never formed a part of their education. A loaf of bread is stolen, or some article at a shop door tempted the little vagrant; hunger of body, ignorance of right, and a training to wrong, have much to do with such offences; still to prison he must go for two or three months, commencing with, and it may be terminating with a whipping. Thus his doom is sealed. For "once in jail always in jail." But, in our public or private schools are moral principles never violated are thefts never known there? Are children never tempted by cakes, by fruit, by halfpence, to break the eighth commandment? Alas! alas! we who have passed through the schoolboy's life, know that if we had been treated in the same manner by the laws of the land as numbers of the poor are, very few of us would have grown up in such happy ignorance of the comforts of a prison.

But enough on the offences and the offenders, as it may here be said, Why assist those in particular? We answer, Because they most need assistance; because they are most dangerous to society; and because we hope, by training them up in the way they should go, that when they are old they will not depart from it. Thus we aim at individual and at the general good. We rejoice at the exertions made for the benefit of the working classes; they have their National Schools, which give a cheap means of instruction for their children. And there are few cities, or even small towns, without their

endowed grammar schools, where a better education is secured to many of the middle classes. Besides, are not colleges assisted, if not established or supported, by royal influence or national funds? Why, then, do we grudge help to the friendless, assistance to the needy, instruction to the ignorant?

If one class of society may be supposed jealous of another, on account of benefits received from charitable or public institutions, why may not the small tradesman be supposed as complaining of those in humbler circumstances who are receiving advantages for which he would be thankful? Why should not the poor, who are buffeting life for a subsistence, complain of food, perhaps more and better than they can procure, being given to the inmates of a union-house? And, in order to meet such an objection, shall we starve people in the workhouse because some starve out of it? It has been remarked, that the poor are envious of each other. If it be so, that has nothing to do with our duty. Suppose it true that the honest and industrious poor grudge the advantages given to delinquent children, but did they ever consider who are the persons that receive the greatest benefits by the reformation or removal of such children? Do they know that thousands of their little ones are every year drawn into crime by the depraved among whom they live? The rich can protect themselves from such contamination, but the poor cannot. A poor man, going to his daily labour, may grumble because some dissolute neighbour's child is befriended; but on his return home at night, fatigued with toil, he may find his own child ensnared, and henceforth considered the black sheep of the neighbourhood. 'Evil communications corrupt good manners."

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With some persons,-who belong more to past generations than to the present, and with others who seem to be most valiant in their defence for honesty and virtue,―arguments and facts will not avail, and therefore they again and again ask, Why criminal children? Permit us to reply by asking, Why did the Saviour of the world come to save the lost? Why is there joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth? Why did the prodigal's return cause his father to rejoice? Why do we give cordials to the dying in our hospitals, whose end may have been hastened by an ungodly life? This wine, this care, would be very acceptable to the poor cottager, who lives and dies forgotten and unknown. But would it be any consideration or advantage to the latter for the former to be neglected? It is clearly our duty to help both-to withhold from neither.

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We are now considering the state of one class of children, and inquiring whether there are any circumstances which should shut up our bowels of compassion against them? Shall we visit upon them the sins of their fathers? Where is reason, justice, or common sense, for such a law? Shall we treat them as outcasts, and say, 'Go, get ye straw where ye can find it?" That were to do to them not as we would be done unto. That were to strangle them for their offences against us, while we are daily crying to the God of heaven, "Forgive us our sins." Ah! it may one day appear that our neglect of these poor little ones was no trifling sin committed against Him, whose stewards we are of every talent and blessing we enjoy.

We would rather befriend these erring children before they are sent to jail ; but if the law sends them thither, we say to it, Exact your punishment by imprisonment, and do it, if you must, by whippings, and have done. Then, if you will not before, or on any other terms, hand over the branded child to the schoolmaster, and to honest employment, and if work cannot be found for him in this country offer it to him in another. Don't be unreasonable, or expect impossibilities. Drive not the lad from crime to crime, when at length you will be willing to give, if not too glad to offer him, as a transported felon, what you now deny him. What! says some political economist give to the delinquent child, the offspring of some drunken parent, the advantages of emigration? We might reply to this in the strain of another class of objections-Why should we expatriate the children of the industrious and honest

classes? Why should they be driven to seek their livelihood in some distant land? It is impossible to please everybody, and therefore we proceed to ask, What better means can be taken in order to make them useful in their generation? Would you rather have them grinding bones, pounding stones, picking oakum, and corrupting one another in the union-house? This is a very impolitic, senseless, godless way of dealing with the superfluous labour of the country. Observe: if I am a tailor, a mason, a gardener, or a labourer, and cannot get work, I must break up my connection with the world, sell all I have to the pawnbroker, go to the relieving-officer, and get a ticket for the workhouse. Farewell wife! good-bye, dear children! we'll walk to the house together, and then we part. We may live to meet again, but when none can tell! Now you have me and mine in your power-now I am a pauper, a vagabond, and eat the bread of honest ratepayers,—now I must come to some uneducated governor, or his faithful or faithless slavedrivers. I cannot bear it very long; if I do not leave the house by fair means I know I shall soon by foul. Come wife and children, let us go and seek our fortune once more! The world is before us; we are disowned and scorned. Never mind, those children must provide for themselves, if not for us; they must get something somehow or other. The parish won't help us, and luck must. We would work, we would go abroad, but they say we have lost our character, while they stole it from us; now we must do what we can. We know more of life now than when we went to the house. There is a lodging-house in St. Giles's, or in the Rookery, where they take people in on trust; let us go. Come along wife, you must not be over particular now; things are come to a pretty pass, but 'tis not our doing; 'tis no use stopping in that place any longer; we should stay there till Doomsday; besides, I would sooner be at the treadwheel, or under prison discipline, for I want that or something else now.

The history of such an one we need not follow. May God forgive us for this part of our poor-law system! No wonder there are drunken parents and delinquent children! No wonder domestic ties are broken, family duties neglected, and the social system torn to pieces. This it is, among other things, that makes emigration necessary for the delinquent child. There is no work for him here, and it must be found for him, either as a free English emigrant, or as a captive transported felon. Which is preferable—

"To furnish and accommodate a world,"

or to corrupt and alienate our colonies? To see peace and plenty enjoyed by our fellow-men, or to see crime and misery perpetuated on the earth?

If lads are turned adrift upon the world by union authorities, with no other alternative before them but to starve, to beg, or to steal-if relieving-officers refuse the admission to the workhouse of necessitous cases, or if they are tardy in administering relief, or if they place many difficulties in the way of satisfying the cravings of hunger-at whose door lies the guilt, or at least a share of it, if a baker's shop is plundered, or if some other offence is committed which brings the offender within the walls of a prison? Are there no accessories to the offence? And if children are thus made criminals, is it a premium on crime to reform them?

If the father of a family be in jail, or otherwise separated from his children, and the mother takes up her abode in the workhouse, leaving behind two or more children to get on the best way they can; if a fatherless child is ungovernable by a poor, ignorant, half-starved mother, who is obliged to leave her family day after day to earn her living, and the lad falls into bad company; if an orphan is allowed to live by vagrancy, to wander over the country, and to elude the police year after year is it not necessary to undo the mischief that negligence, guilt, or unfortunate circumstances have created?

A notorious adult thief, roaming over the country, takes up his abode in a crowded street of one of our towns, becomes acquainted with the children of

the neighbourhood, takes them under his tuition, makes them his tools for prosecuting his villanies, points out to them the very shops they must rob, particularises the articles they must steal, receives and disposes of the plunder, gathers around him a gang of juvenile thieves in the pothouse, gives them lessons in picking pockets, and in uttering base coin, but keeps himself out of danger until he thinks it advisable to remove to another place equally favourable for his abandoned life. Now what becomes of the children? They either continue to live on the proceeds of their iniquity, and so become more settled and perfect in their traffic, or they are by and bye found within the walls of a prison. A philanthropist steps forward, and says to the unhappy children, Why do ye these things; come with me and I will teach you the fear of the Lord; I will show you how to earn your living honestly; I will place you where you may serve God and man. No, it is objected, that is a premium on crime! Does it require a very extensive knowledge of human events to be able to find a respectable family with a rebellious or profligate son? Money, influence, and every earthly advantage, perhaps far more than on the other members of the family, are lavished on the disobedient child. What premiums are here bestowed (it may be said) on vice and folly! One of the brothers takes the lost one to his own fireside, and seeks to restore the wanderer to the family; but a looker-on, who possesses not the feelings of a brother, and one would suppose by his conduct he had no sympathy or connection with the family, remarks, Why so much ado about the delinquent? And, perhaps, some envious brother may observe, when the prodigal returns in humble penitence to the glad parent, "Thou never gavest me a kid."

We might illustrate our subject by showing how hospitals, almshousesnot to mention again workhouses, and all the public and private charities of the land-might be regarded as premiums on poverty, with as much justice as reformatory schools can be considered premiums on crime. But enough has been said to show that there is little wisdom, little mercy, and very little justice in the objection, and therefore we may go on our way, and fear not. We need not hesitate to discharge our duty to them, to our country, and to our God; to teach the knowledge of right and wrong; to teach their hands to labour, and their lips to pray; to point them to the spot which demands their services, and to lead them where they may earn their living by the sweat of their brow. This is but to give them their birthright-this is but to do the will of Heaven. They were born to live in freedom, not to eke out their existence in this world within prison walls. They are what they are made, and to their fellow-mortals they are indebted for much of the misery and crime into which they fall.

Let us do what we can for them, remembering that we are daily receiving mercies from above, though undeserved. We know from whom we have "all our need supplied," and yet who dare blaspheme the God of heaven, and say that he, by his grace, was conferring premiums on crime? Let us do the will of God, who says, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice;" and follow the steps of Him who sought out the lost, instructed the ignorant, changed the heart of the publican and the sinner, and commands us to go and do likewise. Bath.

PREVENTION AND CURE.

W. C. O.

ECONOMY frequently forms the theme of discussion in the senate, is talked of by magistrates assembled at quarter-sessions, and is often the subject of conversation in the domestic circle. As, therefore, it has become such an all-prevailing topic, the subject now about to be treated shall be considered in the first place with reference thereto. To build very expensive jails, to maintain all the extensive establishments requisite to carry out their discipline, to keep up an expensive system of police, and to incur heavy charges in prosecuting offenders, create burdens of which all complain. There is not, it is believed, any return to lessen the expense a rogue might put society to, from his nativity until the time when, in fulness of crime, he shall, a spectacle to thousands, glory in “ dying game," as he would express it, beneath the

PREVENTION AND CURE.

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gallows; but when we consider the value of his early pilferings, the more serious robberies committed in youth, the frequent committals to jail, and the expense of many prosecutions, the total would, it is apprehended, in the aggregate amount to a frightful sum, spent or lost by the community that numbered him amongst them. But here a very serious question arises-not that it is offered to palliate a single crime -Much as he sinned against society, and much cost as he has been to it, has society acted fairly and wisely towards him? If persons are candid, they will answer, Certainly not. Society has punished frequently and punished severely, and expended much in doing so, but did society, before it began to punish, take any notice of the individual? Was he not wholly neglected by it? And, probably, had he not been detected through the vigilance of an excellent police on the commission of his crime, would have lived and died so. Society punished, and no doubt felt great complacency in doing so. Far better would it have been to have taught this individual to love virtue and abhor vice, at the outset of his career, than to let him go on adding crime to crime, until his existence is terminated by an awful and ignominious death, after having led a life of misery to himself, a terror to society, and caused a heavy and useless expenditure to the several counties in which, from time to time, he may have been apprehended and imprisoned.

Do not let any one imagine that crime and sin are only to be met with in large and populous districts, for even in smaller places ignorance and vice is increasing; and that this must be the case is apparent, when it is remembered that landowners, almost as a rule, force their labourers to reside in towns, by destroying or allowing to fall into decay, the cottages situate in the villages belonging to such proprietors. Therefore it is utterly impossible for these poor people to obtain any residences in the country, and they of course remove to the nearest towns, and get lodgings in the cheapest and most wretched neighbourhoods; and being often the worst characters in the parish they have left, rapidly add to the number of the criminal and vicious of the locality in which unfortunately they are compelled to fix their abode. What, then, can be done to check this increase of expense and crime, which affects not only large communities but small? Punishment seems not to have done it. Then it must be to take care, if the parents cannot be reclaimed, that the children are not allowed, through neglect, to run the same course. The remedy has presented itself in the form of Ragged Schools, which alike strive to reclaim the wanderer and to guide the young; they have been of eminent service for both purposes in large towns, and why may they not be extended to every town and large village in the kingdom? Society would, it is apprehended, find it much cheaper thus training individuals to be honest, instead of leaving them alone until their crimes draw attention towards them.

But there is a much higher ground on which the attention of the public may be called to the support of Ragged Schools, and that is, the religious instruction which is there given, and which forms the key-stone and support of the system, the whole strength of which consists so eminently in its taking, not sectarian or denominational, but the great truths of Christianity as the foundation and text on which to win these hitherto unfortunate outcasts from their wicked ways. The work of a teacher is one of great toil and self-denial, especially at the commencement, but great will be their reward even if they succeed in "turning one sinner from the error of his ways." It may be said, that on every Sabbath there are churches, chapels, meetings, and Sunday schools; and on week days, British and Foreign, National, and other schools, with doors all open, and ready to receive these people and children, and they may go to them; but it may be asked, Will they go? Everybody knows they will not. Schools must be formed in the localities where they reside. Those who wish for an interesting account of such a locality, without having to peruse dry statistical details, cannot do better than peruse the articles entitled "The Devil's Acre," in "Household Words," vol. i. p. 297, and "Power of Small Beginnings," pp. 407, 598. The place first-named is that which was lately spoken of as the site of a little Paradise about Westminster Abbey-a name which the reader, on perusal of the article referred to, will not, it is very likely, be much inclined to give it. The formation of these schools may be considered as evidence that society is beginning to learn the great and important lesson, that it is more beneficial so to train up and take care of an individual, that he may grow up with an abhorrence of and abstain from crime, than utterly to neglect him until, overtaken in a course of wickedness, he is detected and punished. It is to be hoped that the sneering observation, "that society neglects a man until he becomes a criminal," will shortly be met with a practical contradiction, by a wide extension of sound and Scriptural education among the very poorest of the poor.