SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1875.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1621, 24 April 1875, Page 2

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1875.

It is difficult to estimate the good of such an institution as that now established at Kohimarama. Other institutions might present more immediate and more showy results, but an institution which taps the fountain of juvenile criminality and turns it into refreshing and fertilizing streams, confers twofold blessings beyond anything the eye can see. There is not a city or town in New Zealand in which there is not a larrikin element that seems to be specially fostered by the peculiarities of colonial life; and where parental influence is wanting, or being present is on the side of evil, we have the conditions necessary for training up a race of thieves and bandits and every form cf criminality, that must exact heavyg penal ties from society. Such an institution as this Training Establishment, which seizes incipient larriMnism and turns the vigour and energy of youthful criminality to useful purposes is just what is wanting to meet an evil that again and again has obtruded itself on the attention of our magistrates and the. general public, and we believe it will be doing the best service to the community, if p üblic interest is enlisted in behalf of an institution that has specially charged itself with the waifs and strajs of criminal society, and turning them into useful citizens. Our readers are aware of the nature of the objects of this Training School and training schooner, and that the institution is Colonial, and intended to receive the raw material from all parts of New Zealand. A lease has been obtained of the Mission property at Kohimarama, and the old Mission schooner the Southern Cross is chartered from year to year. The price for these advantages—£loo a year—is so small that it is only to be explained by the circumstance that the Mission directors will not sell the old schooner lest she might fall into the hands of unprincipled men and become a decoy-duck by which the islanders of the South Seas might be trapped into slavery. Engaged in work no less fcenificent than that of her early days, this vessel affords an admirable opportnnity for training boys for the sea, and so giving the natural outlet for that wild enterprise and love of a seafaring life which seem so characteristic of boyhood. It is true that there is many another direction in which the energies of boys might be turned, and with great benefit to themselves and to society. But there seems a peculiar fitness in a Training Ship, from the fact to which we have alluded—the intense longing which so many boys, and especially of the unbridled and ill-regulated class of juveniles have for a "life on the ocean wave and a home ©n the rolling deep." An Institution like our Howe-street Home for Destitute Children, or an Industrial

School, in which boys may be taught farm" ing or various trades, as in the establishment adjacent to Dunedin, cannot fail to do great good; but we hold that such Institutions can be complete only when supplemented by such an Institution as that which centres at Kohimarama, in which the wild boyish instinctive love of salt water may be utilised for turning young steps from crime to honest industry. It is true that as yet this in our case is but an experiment, but it is beyond the region of experiment elsewhere, and though there have been failures in connection with such training ships and consequent disappointment, the causes of disappointment are well known and can readily be avoided. There are some boys who have as much dislike naturally for a seafaring life as others love it, and we believe that in order to an industrial training institution being complete there should be the facilities afforded for various tastes being consulted, and for the various temperaments of the lads being developed in the directions to which they point. With Industrial Schools like that now so successful in Obago, established in the various rovinces or districts, and which, as there, might be made almost if not altogether self-supporting, one establishment for the whole colony like that at Kohimarama would supplement them all and provide the means of stamping out in its incipient stage juvenile criminality throughout the colony. As at pr esent conducted, the institution is the very model of efficiency, and the appearance of the lads in their blue serge jackets and pantaloons, with cap tilted back and shuffling character istic gait along the decKs, their prompt obedience to orders,' their skill and readiness in going through all the operations incident to the working a ship, from splicing ropes to reefing sails—all together present such a vraisemblance o n the part of these little-men sailors that one insensibly expects to see one of them hitch up his breeches and speak to somebody's sanguinary eyes. We do not know anything more interesting than a visit these miniature seamen, and to think of what they were, and what they are likely to be; and we would at least earnestly counsel each of our representatives in the Assembly to see for himself, so that he may be enabled to stand by this truly beneficent but not less truly Colonial institution, when its claims are presented. We venture to say that no man could view with indifference such a sight, or fail, on seeing it, to hope that increased success may attend it in its noble

objects,