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SUGGESTIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF JUVENILE DEPRAVITY,

BY BENJAMIN ROTCH.

London: PRINTED BY H. COURT, 26, BROOKE STREET, HOLBORN.

SUGGESTIONS

For the prevention of JUVENILE DEPRAVITY, and the consequent diminution of the heavy Burthens cast, first, upon private Individuals by numerous petty Thefts, and lastly, upon the County by the oft repeated Arrests, Examinations, Committals, Prosecutions, and Imprisonments of JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

The opinions which I have ever held on this subject have remained unaltered amidst all the various changes that have taken place in the Public mind, on the subject of Prison Discipline, the degrading home Slavery of the Hulks, and the awful severance of all natural ties by transportation to distant climes. I have ever held all these to be ineffectual for the purpose of raising the moral standard of a great Nation, and still more ineffectual in promoting that social and domestic happiness which ought to be the bond of Union of an enlightened and Christian People. Nevertheless, I have not hesitated to put my shoulder to the wheel, and have laboured hard to improve our system of Prison Discipline, believing that we shall always have criminals to deal with, but deeply impressed also with the conviction that it is more consistent with the views of Christianity and common sense, that our exertions should be directed to the prevention of crime, especially among the young, than to the correction of criminals, who have been allowed by our present system to become enured to the commission of it.

A most interesting investigation which I have been lately carrying on as a Visiting Justice of the House of Correction at Cold Bath Fields, justifies me in predicting that when more is done to prevent crime than to punish it, our labours to diminish the burthens on the county purse will be crowned with far happier results than any we can now present to public view for the purpose of obtaining public support. From the Investigation before alluded to, it is evident that the want of proper parental care and the absence of domestic comforts are the two by far most fruitful and most manifest springs from which flows one vast tide of Juvenile Depravity and Crime, though let it not be supposed for a moment that these two springs cannot still further be traced to one deep seated source which might with God's assistance be speedily dried up; but the public mind is not yet prepared for this discovery, and we must be content to deal with the two main springs of crime to which I have alluded, until the public mind is more enlightened on the subject.

The present agitated state of public feeling on the subject of Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Criminals loudly proclaims that no other answer can be given to these questions, and we are therefore not only justified, but actually called upon by the hallowed voice of Religion and of common Humanity, to seek some new remedy for the acknowledged evil. We must neither be alarmed by the novelty of such remedy, nor deterred by its cost if it has common sense for its foundation, and practicability in its details. And now for the remedy I would propose.

I should certainly not have ventured to follow on the footsteps of my able friend Mr. Buchanan so closely, by printing and circulating my views on the subject if our plans had not so widely differed in most essential features; but this being the case I am anxious that our views should be in the hands of our Brother Justices as nearly at the same time as possible, so that our discussions in the committee which has been appointed to consider of the subject of Juvenile Offenders may extend over both plans, and that the Committee may be the better enabled to decide between them.

Mr. Buchanan does not contemplate any legislative Interference--I contend that nothing effectual can be done without it--Mr. Buchanan looks to the County Rate for the means which, however, unfortunately is not available for the purpose. I look to the Treasury--Mr. Buchanan proposes a withdrawal from contaminating Association only during the day--I propose an entire separation day and night from all bad Companions--and lastly Mr. Buchanan's is a voluntary System--mine a compulsory one.

Having thus drawn attention generally to these marked differences between the two plans, I will now proceed to develope my own in the firm conviction that it would be found both effectual and practicable.

I propose that a bill should be passed by the Legislature, the Preamble of which should in effect state, that the fearful extent of Juvenile Depravity and Crime in the Metropolitan Districts and in large and populous Towns requires generally immediate Interference on the part of the Legislature.--That the great causes of the said Juvenile Depravity and Crime appear to be the absence of proper Parental or Friendly care, and the absence of a comfortable home, and that all Children above the age of 7 and under the age of 15 years suffering from either of these causes require protection to prevent their getting into bad company, learning idle and dissolute habits, growing up in ignorance and becoming an expence and burthen on the Country as Criminals, and that such protection should be afforded by the state.

I propose that the various clauses of the Act should enact as follows--

How much longer will the overburthened Ratepayers endure to see a drunken Father earning from 30 to 50 shillings a week turn into the Gin Palace or the Beer Shop with his hard earned wages on the Saturday Night to spend it all in strong drink and debauchery. How much longer will that Ratepayer be content to lose from his unguarded Stall, or it may be even his well watched Premises, the petty Articles which the starving Children of that drinking sot are purposely sent out to steal to appease the craving of unsatisfied hunger? How much longer will that Ratepayer be content to pay the enormous sums which are daily drawn from his too often slender resources to pay the heavy cost of the repeated apprehensions by the Police, examinations, remands, re-examinations, and committals by the Magistrates and Justices, Trials and Convictions by Juries, Sentences by Judges, and Imprisonments in our Gaols of those wretched Children? How much longer will intelligent Juries, men not only of common sense, but of common humanity, continue to present the state of Juvenile Depravity, and the mode of disposing of Juvenile Depredators as unsatisfactory and inhuman, and be satisfied to see nothing done on either subject in the way even of an effort to improve? How much longer will the Ministers who rule this great nation, be they of what politics or what party they may, remain deaf to the thousand tongues that are daily proclaiming that nothing has yet met the hourly increasing evils of Juvenile depravity, and not make some bold attempt to meet the difficulty in some new form and in some incipient stage less appalling than that which idleness and destitution present when matured into vice and depravity? It must be remembered that the Children with whom I propose to deal are the very same beings who are now dealt with by the state under the far more expensive character of criminals, and the simple question in the case as a matter of finance will be whether it would be more expensive to maintain any given number of innocent Children, and educate them as I propose they should be educated, than to capture, try, and maintain an equal number of Adult Felons at home and abroad at the enormous cost at which they are now dealt with. No one could for a moment doubt that the balance would be greatly in favor of the new plan now suggested, if considered only as a financial one; but in every other point of view how far more desirable must it be to prevent than to punish crime? To change the system of education among the working classes, and instead of teaching them to arrive at an excellence in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, which only makes them seek places above that which Nature destined them to fulfil, to have them taught those useful Arts which they can employ in every situation of their humble station in Society, learning to Read and Write, and keep accounts merely as ancillary to those useful trades and occupations by which they are to get their living, and so to add to the general stock of comfort and happiness among their fellows. To stop the wages in the hands of the employer which an abandoned and depraved Mechanic would squander on his own ruin, and disburse it for him on the legitimate object of maintaining and properly educating his own offspring. In a word to dry up the springs of Juvenile depravity at their source, instead of endeavouring to deal with the raging flood of Crime, which experience has long taught us when once abroad sweeps away with resistless force every barrier which finite wisdom has ever yet suggested for arresting its awful progress.

This consideration alone should induce us not hastily to condemn any suggestion, however novel or gigantic it may at first sight appear, and will I trust gain from my Brother Justices of Middlesex for my humble endeavour, in what I consider the greatest field for exertion ever opened to the Philanthropist, a few moments Investigation of a plan which, however soon a better may supersede it, is the result of many years of anxious Enquiry and careful investigation, and which I am prepared to show involves no principle which has not been previously acknowledged and acted upon by the Legislature.

BENJAMIN ROTCH.

Lowlands, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex. 21st June, 1846.

Transcriber's Notes:

--Text in italics is enclosed by underscores .

--Printer's, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

--Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

This, by the way, is only one instance of the greatest defect in our volunteer system: the broad and almost impassable gulf of demarcation between commissioned officers and enlisted men. The character of the army requires that this should be eradicated as soon as possible. Enthusiastic patriotism might make men willing to bear with it for a time, or while the war seemed a temporary affair. But since the conviction has settled down upon the popular mind that we are in for a long and tedious struggle, and that a great army of American citizens must be kept on foot during the whole of it, overshadowing all peaceful pursuits, and remoulding the whole character of our people, there begins to be felt also the need of organizing that army as far as possible in conformity with the genius of our people and Government. The greenest recruit expects to find in the army a sharp distinction of rank, and a strict obedience to authority, to which he has been a stranger in peaceful times. But he is disappointed and discouraged when he finds a needless barrier erected to divide men into two classes, of which the smallest retains to itself all the profits and privileges of the service. He comprehends very well that a captain needs higher pay and more liberty than a private, and a general than a captain; but he fails to see the reason why a second lieutenant should have four or five times the pay of an orderly sergeant, and be officially recognized all through the army regulations as a gentleman, while he who holds the much more arduous and responsible office is simply an 'enlisted man,' It will be much easier for him to discover why this is so than to find any good reason why it should remain so. We are managing an army of half a million by the routine intended for one of ten thousand, and we are organizing citizen volunteers under regulations first created for the most dissimilar army to be found in the civilized world. We adopted our army system from England, where there are widely and perpetually distinct classes of society in peace as well as war; the nobility and gentry furnishing all the officers, while the ranks are filled up with the vast crowd, poor and ignorant enough to fight for sixpence a day. To our little standing army of bygone days the system was well enough adapted, for in that we too had really two distinct classes of men. West Point furnished even more officers than we needed, with thorough education, and the refined and expensive habits that education brings with it. The ranks were filled with foreigners and broken-down men, who had neither the ambition nor the ability to rise to anything higher. But we have changed all that. The healthiest and best blood of our country is flowing in that country's cause. Our army is composed of more than half a million citizens, young, eager, ambitious, and trained from infancy each to believe himself the equal of any man on earth. With the privates under their command the officers have for the most part been playmates, schoolmates, associates in business, all through life. A trifle more of experience or of energy, or the merest accident sometimes has made one captain, while the other has gone into the ranks; but unless those men were created over again, you could not make between them the difference that the army regulations contemplate. Once off duty, there is nothing left to found it on.

'I say, Jack,' said an officer at Pittsburg Landing to an old crony who was serving as private in another company, 'where did you get that turkey?'

'Well, cap, I want to know first whether you ask that question as an officer or as a friend.'

'As a friend, of course, Jack.'

The difference in pay is not only too great, but is made up in a way that shows its want of reason. Both have lived on the same fare all their lives, and the captain knows that it is an absurdity for him to be drawing the price of four rations a day on the supposition that he has been luxuriously trained, while in reality he satisfies his appetite with the same plain dishes served out to his brother in the ranks. He knows that it is an absurdity for him to receive a large pay in order to support his family according to their supposed rank, while the private's wife and children are to be made comfortable out of thirteen dollars a month; the fact being that Mrs. Captain and Mrs. Private probably live next door to each other at home, and exchange calls and groceries, and wear dresses from the same piece, and talk scandal about each other, all in as neighborly a manner as they have been accustomed to do all their lives. Indeed, whatever aristocracy of wealth and elegance was growing up among us has been set back at least a generation by this war, which has brought out into such prominent notice and elevated so high in our hearts the rougher merits of the strong arm and the dextrous hand. Every month sees a larger proportion of officers coming from among those whose habits have been the reverse of luxury. It is hard to say which would be more mischievous and absurd: for these to spend their extra pay and rations in an effort to copy the traditional style of an English Guardsman, or to keep on in their old way of life, and pocket large savings that are supposed to be thus spent.

We need therefore to root out entirely this division of the army into two classes. Let the scale of rank and pay rise by regular steps from corporal to general, so that the former may be as much or as little a 'commissioned officer' as his superiors. Abolish all invidious distinctions by a regular system of promotions from the ranks, and only from the ranks, except so far as West Point and kindred schools furnish men educated to commence active service at a higher round of the ladder. Then we shall have an army into which the best class of our youth can go as privates without feeling that they have more to dread in their own camps than on the battle field.

TAMMANY.

IN MEMORIAM.

In the dim and misty shade of the hazel thicket, Three soldiers, brave Harry, and Tom with the dauntless eyes, And light-hearted Charlie, are standing together on picket, Keeping a faithful watch 'neath the starry skies.

Silent they stand there, while in the moonlight pale Their rifle barrels and polished bayonets gleam; Nought is heard but the owl's low, plaintive wail, And the soft musical voice of the purling stream;

Save when in whispering tones they speak to each other Of the dear ones at home in the Northland far away, Each leaving with each a message for sister and mother, If he shall fall in the fight that will come with the day.

Slowly and silently pass the hours of the night, The east blushes red, and the stars fade one by one; The sun has risen, and far away on the right The booming artillery tells that the fight is begun.

'Steady, boys, steady; now, forward! charge bayonet!' Onward they sweep with a torrent's resistless might; With the rebels' life-blood their glittering blades are wet, And many a patriot falls in the desperate fight.

The battle is ended--the victory won--but where Are Harry and Charlie, and Tom with the dauntless eyes, Who went forth in the morn, so eager to do and to dare?-- Alas! pale and pulseless they lie 'neath the starry skies.

Together they stood 'mid the storm of leaden rain, Together advanced and charged on the traitor knaves, Together they fell on the battle's bloody plain, To-morrow together they'll sleep in their lowly graves.

A father's voice fails as he reads the list of the dead, And a mother's heart is crushed by the terrible blow; Yet there's something of pride that gleams through the tears they shed, Pride, e'en in their grief, that their boys fell facing the foe.

And though the trumpet of fame shall ne'er tell their story, Nor towering monument mark the spot where they lie, Yet round their memory lingers an undying glory: They gave all they could to their country--they only could die.

A MERCHANT'S STORY.

'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'

I found Selma plunged in the deepest grief. The telegram which informed her of Preston's death was dated three days before , and she could not possibly reach the plantation until after her father's burial; but she insisted on going at once. She would have his body exhumed; she must take a last look at that face which had never beamed on her but in love!

Frank proposed to escort her, but she knew he could not well be spared from business at that season; and, with a bravery and self-reliance not common to her years and her sex, she determined to go alone.

Shortly after my arrival at the house, she retired to her room with Kate, to make the final arrangements for the journey; and I seated myself with David, Cragin, and Frank, in the little back parlor, which the gray-haired old Quaker and his son-in-law had converted into a smoking room.

As Cragin was lighting his cigar, I said to him:

'Have you heard the news?'

'What news?'

'The dissolution of Russell, Rollins & Co.'

'No; there's nothing so good stirring. But you'll hear it some two years hence.'

'Read that;' and I handed him the paper which Hallet had signed.

'What is it, father?' asked Frank, his face alive with interest.

'Cragin will show it to you, if it ever gets through his hair. I reckon he's learning to read.'

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