PREFACE.

OUR criminal population (and especially the juvenile portion thereof) has for some time been seriously engaging public attention. The country has fairly taken alarm-not without just causeat the great growth of crime, notwithstanding all that is being done to punish and correct it. Should this evil be suffered to spread, as of late years, it was felt that disasters must ensue to the nation anything but agreeable to contemplate. Hence some schemes have been proposed, and a few plans adopted, with a view to arrest the threatened danger.

In order to stimulate the public mind, in some additional degree, to the consideration of a deeply important question, I have made this tentative effort to investigate the principal causes of juvenile crime; to exhibit its character; and to propose such a cure as seemed at the same time the most simple and effectual; for, as an eminent foreign jurist observes, "It is not only the common in

terest of mankind that crimes should not be committed, but that crimes of every kind should be less frequent, in proportion to the evil they produce to society."

In the treatment of these several subjects it was necessary that I should bring to bear a large mass of evidence from Blue-books and other authoritative documents not easily available to the general public. So far, a variety of interesting information will be obtained from numerous sources to which the ordinary reader could not conveniently have access.

The chief aim I had in view in compiling this volume, was to throw an additional glimmer of light upon a very dark spot in our social system; believing with Dr. Arnold, that "While history looks generally at the political state of a nation, its social state, which is infinitely more important, and in which lie the seeds of the greatest revolutions, is too commonly neglected or unknown."

I am aware that in some parts I have touched upon tender ground; but the step was inevitable. Should I have impugned the principles or offended the prejudices of any party, it was only out of regard to my conscientious convictions; and I only entreat that kind consideration for my opinions which I am ever ready to accord to those of my opponents.

Beccaria dei Delitti e delle Pene, cap. vi.

Surely, nothing can be of more vital importance than that the social diseases which affect a community should be exposed. Indeed publicity of itself would do much towards effecting a cure; more especially in a country like England, where the force of public opinion is the main lever of the State and the originator of every social and political reform.

I am not a little gratified to find that the hitherto immoveable authorities of Newgate have, at length, consented to and authorized important improvements in that prison. One hundred and thirty new cells are now in course of construction, which, when completed, will have the effect of partly preventing the promiscuous association and intercommunication of idle prisoners, for which Newgate prison has been so long and so disgracefully notorious. This statement I now make (although somewhat out of place) as a set-off against the description of Newgate given in Chapter VII.,which, by the by, was fully and truly applicable at the time the account was penned, as it most probably is at this very minute. If, as Voltaire remarks, “Punishments invented for the good of society ought to be useful to society,"* the penitentiary of Newgate cannot boast of having conferred much, if any, public advantage. What it yet may do time alone can tell; for why despair of systems any more than of individuals?

* Comment. on Beccaria, cap. x.

I have to express my indebtedness for the polite attention shown to and the facilities afforded me in compiling this volume, by Sir George Grey, the late Home Secretary; Sir Richard Mayne, Chief Commissioner of Police; Lieut.-Col. Jebb, Inspector of Prisons; Capt. Greig, Chief Constable, Liverpool; R. N. Stephens, Esq., Chief of Police, Birmingham; the Poor-law Board; the Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education; Rev. Sydney Turner, Her Majesty's Inspector of Reformatory Schools; Rev. J. Davis, Ordinary of Newgate; Rev. John Clay, Preston Gaol; Rev. Henry Smith Warleigh, Parkhurst Prison; and the Rev. J. T. Burt, Birmingham Prison.

The intense interest lately excited by, and the deep attention given to, the consideration of social questions by the middle and upper classes of this country, unmistakeably prove that "a benignant spirit is abroad." Hence, I am led to regard the "good time coming as no aërial phantom of the brain, or escurient fancy; and to adopt, as one article of my social and political creed, the terse aphorism of St. Simon: "L'age d'or, qu' une aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans le passé, est devant nous." "The golden age, which a blind tradition has placed in the PAST, is BEFORE us."

LONDON: June, 1858.