JUVENILLE REFORMATION IN IRELAND. (From the 'Examiner,' December 19.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XV, Issue 1134, 11 May 1858, Page 4

JUVENILLE REFORMATION IN IRELAND. (From the 'Examiner,' December 19.)

Ireland, Ht appears, has not been as forward as England in the establishment of Reformatories, those humaue «md hazardous institutions, in which there is so much good to command our approval, and yet at the ' «arne time such an admixture of danger to alarm our „prudence. There if a Female Reformatory in the > neighbourhood of Dublin conducted by the Sisters of Mercy, but in other part* ot the country, with the ex.eeption of the country of Cotk, the subject is only now i beginning to attract attention. In Cork it has not only •been ably advocated for several years by Serjeant Berwick, As»i»tant-Bnrri»ter of one riding of that great .county, but chiefly through his strenuous exertions the question h*s at length reached the practical stage, and another reformatory experiment is on the point of being made under circumstances so peculiar as to invest it with more than ordinary interest. The immediate jjromoters of the work are the members of another Ro-

man Catholic Society, that of St. Vincent <le Paul, under the joint patronage of Dr/ Delany, the Catholic Bishop, and the leading inhabitants of both county and city, of all religious communions. This is one of the striking features of the plan. Another is, that it is proposed to confine the ins.itution to Roman Catholic children, not that there are no juvenille offenders of the Protestant pursuasion, but because it would be hopeless to combine two systems of pious instruction in one establishment, whilst at the same time it was felt upon all hands to be equally chimerical to found a scheme of moral reformation upon any basis but a religious one. It will be seen, then, at once, how unique the present design is, and how highly creditable to the liberality ar.d practical good sense of all parties concerned in starting it. Here is a concurrence of sects, just where their concurrence is most desirable , and they diverge with the soundest discretion, just at the point where to carry their union further wouldtn all human probability defeat their common object. The reasons tor departing in "Reformatories from the principle of fusion acted on in the National schools are so clearly set forth by the Assistant- Barrister in his charge to the Grand Jury at the last Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, that we shall give them in his .own words : — Undertaken by this, which is a Roman Catholic body, it will necessarily be a Roman Catholic institution, and I must say —and it is not only my own opinion, but what I have ascertained from eminent Protestant philanthopists in England who have inquired into and studied the system of Reformatories— that it would be impossible to expect success in any institution such, as this, if there were a mixture of creeds in the inmates or the parties engaged in their instruction. Mixed education is a most excellent thing among the ordinary classes of society, for the period which they are engaged in becular education, but when you come to deal with the whole period of the children's time, from morning to night— particularly when you have to deal with their heaits— it must be done by persons devoted not merely to their seculiar but religious instruction, and it would be theiefore impossible to bring persons of different religious persuasions to act harmoniously together in the education of children in one establishment. Equally anxious as I would be that the Protestant child shfould be attended to as much as the Roman Catholic child, and cared for and converted from wickedness to honesty and virtue— still lam quite satisfied the two cannot, and therefore ought not to be combined. There cannot be in a system thus conducted anything tending to what is called prosclytism, because each will be independent of the other. We need hardly remark that, owing to the greal preponderance of Catholics over thePiotestantsin Munster, particulaily among the poor, the institutions in question must be vastly more important to the former persuasion than to the latter. Mr. Berwick's suggestion is that the counties of the south of Ireland should unite to secure the same advantages for the Protestant population, and he promises such an undertaking all the assistance in his power. The prospectus of the new Reformatory gives ub the following statistical details, being the principle facts on which its promoters ground their appeel to the pubj lc . From the Ist of September, 1856, to the Ist of September, 1857, no fewer than 178 children of both sexes, under the age of 16 years, were committed to the gaol of the city of Cork. Their punishment proved so ineffectual, that 90, or more than half the entire number, were recommitted. Some were recommitted eight times; some nine, ten, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, and thirty times, anJ one not ill-looking lad forty-two times. The daily average number of children in this gaol, even under its present excellent management, is about four, teen. Of these, some are what the police, with a sad quaintness. call "old offenders." But the greater part of them belong to quite another class. Technically these are criminals —in reality they are not so. or can scarcely be so called. They are orphans, or children of drunken parents who neglect them, or oi bad parents, who taught them to beg and steal, as we were taught to pray and read; or of parents whose union was sin, and whose offspring are their curse and ignominy ; victims of bad example of ill-culture- -not knowing right from wrong, or onlythdlf knowing it— committed for offences which, in them at least, were venial crimes, or for vagrancy or begging, which, however proper to repress, cannot be considered crimes at all— these children need not to be punished, but simply to be taught. They are objects of pity, not of vengeance. They are victims to be rescued, patients to be cured. And of all conceivable places a common gaol, however well conducted, is for them the most inappropriate and the most destructive. In the county prison, the juvenile calendar (as might be expected, in the one great depot of crime, for a territory larger than some continental principalities) is as heavy as in the city. From the Ist of September. 1856, to the Ist of September, 1857, 184 were committed ; of these, 56 were recommitted ; 76 were committed for felony, 56 for misdemeanouis, and not less than 52 for simple vagrancy of begging. The most remarkable thing is that they are generally country children, brought from a distance of sometimes SO or even 100 miles. Some, when their period of imprisonment is over, and their prison associations con firmed, are let loose on our city streets, without a friend save these they have made inside, or a shilling but what these "friends" can teach them to get by theft or earn by prostitution. Sergeant Berwick adduced some touching instances of this grievous hardsdip in his evidence before the Parliamentary committee of 1853. A girl was sent to Cork gaol from a. distance of nearly 100 miles for si month's imprisonment. Her offence wat "malicious injury to a turnip field," which turned out to have been eating a turnip pulled in a workhouse gwden. On her discharge from the gaol in Cork, she begged for food in the streets. Not getting it, she broke windows that she might not starve. She was again committed to gaol. On her liberation she fell away utterly, and became a prositute. I have frequently trid children for serious offences who were so small that the turnkeys in the dock were obliged to hold them up in order that I might see them ; and in no case have I not found that the child was brought to that state of crime by committal for a month for begging in the society of experienced juvenile offenders. I tried one child last October for two distinct cases of housebreaking. I was obliged to have the child lifted up that I might see him. It turned out that he hsd been taken up in ftie far part of the West Riding for begging, sent for a month to gaol, and came out an experienced housebreaker. The real offender in the case of the "malicious injury to the turnip-field" was the magistrate who committed the child. With such justices on the bench, confounding all the distinctions of right and wrong, there will be no dearth of arguments for reformatories. The increasing number and popularity of these asylums is an additional argument for keeping the magisterial bench under the strictest control, and paying the most scrupulous regard to its composition. But the mischiefs to be apprehended from wrong committals are by no means limited to such cases as those which justly excited Sergeant Berwick's indignation. There is another and still more serious source of danger, namely, the temptation to make improper committals, and even to prefer trivial or pretended charges for the express purpose of giving a claim to benefits only to be had on the condition of passing through the hands of justice. We can never conscientiously support what is called the reformatory movement without being equally earnest in pointing out the objections such establishments are open to, unless the philanthropy of their advocates and managers is kept well in hand by the coolest and soundest judgment. Ardent as the feelings are with which Serjeant Berwick ha» taken up and supported the question, we should not be afraid of his zeal running away with his discretion. But it is not to the hands of men of superior abilities, inured by education and professional training to habits of careful reflection and discrimination, that we can expect to Bee the direction of these institutions permanently or systematically committed. Our apprehension has always been that tender hearts will in too many cases have much more to do with their administration than strong minds; that under sentimental management the tendency of reformatories will be gradually to lose the traces of their original penal character, the effect of which would be to give their inmates an advantage over the children of the honest poor, than which nothing could possibly be more deplorable, more unjust in itself, or more demoralising in its effects on the community. Guarding agfffcist this obvious danger, Reformatories may unquestionably do a vast amount of good, and we observe with satisfaction that it has not been overlooked by the founders of the Cork institution. "The treatmout of the inmates,' says thf prospectus "will be austere as becomes offenders, gentle as becomes children," words that recognise the principle we contend for, in a strict adherence to which consists, we firmly I believe, the only means of conquering the difficulties of this most difficult of social problems. Etery voyage of charity, however, has its rocks and shoals. There would be an end of works of benevolence if men were to be deterred from prosecuting them by the hazards incident. to all the ventures ot humanity. Let our word of protest, therefore, against the errors to which Reformatories are liable, not for » moment be mistaken for the language of discouragement. So far from discouraging Serjeant Berwick's exertions (for it is to his able and indefatigable exertions unquestionably that the merit of what has been done and is doing in Cork is chiefly due.) they have our cordial approval and our best wishes. We observe that the contributions to the charity already to near £1000 ; the list including the names of many distinguished men of every religious persuasion.