would be such as to forbid the experiment, because the inspectors of prisons for the home district have recommended, and the government, we are told, have under consideration a plan for the confinement and reformation of juvenile offenders. In our opinion, if that establishment be conducted so as to take full advantage of the labour of these young prisoners, then the expenditure will not be such as to prevent the experiment being most advantageously tried. The cost of the management and maintenance of prisoners varies in every gaol and county in the kingdom. In the Glasgow Bridewell the cost of both is the lowest; and in this prison, nevertheless, the discipline and management is superior to that of perhaps every other prison in the Empire. Separation is here carried into practice, and industrious habits taught; corruption and contamination are rendered impossible, and that, deducting the value of the prisoners' labour from the gross expenses of the prison, at the low rate of three pounds per head per annum.* If, therefore, asylums for young offenders were established and connected with the great towns, considering that recommittals would be materially diminished in number, and the cost of prosecutions reduced, and that the whole expense of the establishment might be greatly lessened by the proceeds of the labour of the prisoners, it does not appear to us that the apprehension of expense is one under the circumstances entitled to weight. The moral advantages to society must be admitted, were they alone confined to the prevention of the further contamination of those classes of young offenders who are now committed, for very trifling offences, either to our gaols or our houses of correction. Some of these charges are of a most frivolous character." "A boy has been committed to Coldbath-fields for stealing an orange. Several have been confined in Westminster Bridewell for taking a few apples. One boy has been committed to Clerkenwell for stealing two buns; and another for defrauding his master of sixpence. Among the boys who have been in the latter prison, one has been charged with stealing a wooden bowl, another a hair-broom, another a half-ounce weight, an*M'Culloch's Statistics, vol. i. Supplement.

other a handsaw, another a brass candlestick, another sweetmeats, another a cocoa-nut, another a knife, another a whip, another three halfpence, and another two biscuits!" Such is the catalogue of petty crimes for which we thrust boys into our prisons, to be confined for further instruction in crime, and for the more perfect obliteration of every moral and religious feeling! Children, who should be sent to school, are committed to gaol for offences passed over with perfect impunity in the classes of society above them. "Ainsi," says M. Lucas, in his Petition to the French Chamber of Deputies, 66 vous videz les écoles pour remplir les prisons; vous diminuez le budget de l'instruction élémentaire pour clever celui de la justice criminelle. Chose triste dans notre beau pays! on aime mieux avoir à payer des gendarmes et des geoliers pour emprisonner l'enfance, que des maîtres pour l'instruire."*

Perhaps we may be thought to appreciate too highly the value and effect of education as a means of preventing crime, and that we over-estimate its influence on morals; but David Hume, no slight authority on any subject, has taken much the same view before us.

"The prodigious effects of education," he says, "may convince us, that the mind is not altogether stubborn and inflexible, but will admit of many alterations from its original make and structure. Let a man propose to himself the model of a character which he approves,let him be well acquainted with those particulars in which his own character deviates from this model,-let him keep a constant watch over himself, and bend his mind, by a continual effort, from the vices towards the virtues, and I doubt not but in time he will find in his temper an alteration for the better." We can add nothing to this, nothing in reference either to the value of education as the great lever with which to raise the social mass, or to its humbler but rare influence when well directed to check, and finally even to triumph over, criminal passions and desires.

There is one important consideration however, and that is, that no system for the reform of our prisons can be effectual until competent persons of education and *Petition aux Chambres. Système Pénitentiaire en Europe.-LUCAS,

Q

station take part in it. In the French ordonnance of Louis XVIII, relating to prisons, the Duke of Rochefoucauld, a peer, is named director-general" de la prison d'Essai," and the Baron Delaport was appointed his coadjutor; which shows at least the importance attached to the subject. It is, indeed, absolutely necessary that the administration of our criminal law generally, and particularly the administration of it as a preventive to Crime, should be delegated to a central board, or a responsible Minister of justice without other pressing and overwhelming duties, that our Gaols should be placed under his immediate controul,—and that the slovenly, lax, and expensive administration of the law in this respect, in too many instances, should be put an end to.

"Prisons have been called hospitals for patients labouring under moral diseases; but, until recently, they have, in all countries where any existed, and unfortunately continue still to be in most countries, of a kind which ought to be compared rather to the plague-houses in the East, in which every person afflicted with that mortal disorder is sure to perish, and he who is sent there without yet being attacked, is sure to have it.” *

Our prisons are not yet free from this reproach,-they are wholly inefficient for their purposes. They neither deter, nor do they reform. They are, on the other hand, sometimes asylums for the wicked, and always places of corruption to the virtuous. Let us hope, however, that the time is coming when the education of the people,—a well-directed and enlightened system of police, - the speedy and intelligible administration of justice, and moral punishments as opposed to physical, " may be each and all pressed into the service of forming to ourselves a loftier population."

Education must be made to stem the tendency to crime, police vigilance must be made to defeat the object of the criminal, — and then, combined with the more prompt administration of justice, let punishments "unite labour with instruction, and both with seclusion,

*Lieber's Translation of De Beaumont.

and you may hope to see a prison no longer the nursery of crime, but a school of industry and regeneration. Then will Society have performed her duty to her lost sons, and may receive them back again with security. If a few only are saved from corruption, she has her reward."*

B. HAWES, M. P.

* Buckle's Charge to the Grand Jury of the City of Worcester.

ANALYSIS OF THE REPORTS OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE MANCHESTER STATISTICAL SOCIETY ON THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN THE BOROUGHS OF MANCHESTER, LIVERPOOL, SALFORD, AND BURY.

THESE are four most valuable documents. Facts minute, numerous, and well attested, become to be daily more and more recognised as the only ground upon which conclusions with regard to the actual state of the country can be safely built. Fact rescued physical science from empiricism; it is about to perform the same friendly office for education. It is, however, to be lamented that, when an endeavour is made to procure fact, fiction should be supplied, as has been found to be the case with regard to the returns made to government, pursuant to a motion of the late Lord Kerry in the House of Commons in 1833.

"In the township of Manchester alone, (says the Report relating to this borough,) which contains a population of 142,000, there are entirely omitted in these returns, 1 infant school, 10 Sunday schools, and 176 day schools, which existed at the period these returns were made, and contained 10,611 scholars; false returns were made by one individual of 3 Sunday schools that never existed at all, and which were stated to contain 1,590 scholars; and double returns were made of 3 other schools, containing 375 scholars: so that the total error in these returns for the township of Manchester alone was 181 schools and 8,646 scholars. Besides this, 8 dame schools were reported as infant schools."- "In Chorlton-on-Medlock, containing a population of 20,500, the returns made