THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13,1881.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6054, 13 April 1881, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13,1881.

• I The disclosures made in the Police I Court yesterday, which resulted in the boy Breen being sentenced to six months' imprisonment, afford conclusive evidence of the inability of the committee of the Industrial Home to manage the institution, and justifies to the utmost extent the proposal "wo made recently that it should be swept away. Here we have a lad not only of notoriously bad character, but convicted of an assault upon a female, left in charge of the place by the late master, and two young girls left at his mercy with the result of one being so grossly insulted that the offender has received a sentence of six months. We have endeavoured to find some palliation of the conduct of Mr. Stickley in the fact that his engagement as master was drawing to a close, but even in that view that he should have placed this young ruffian in command and withdrawn from the poor girls all protection displays a recklessness, a neglect of duty, which none but the harshest terms could fittingly describe. The affair is a disgrace to everybody concerned—to successive Governments that, making no adequate arrangement for the detention of such youthful criminals, they should have been sent to mingle with, and contaminate innocent children ; to the committee that it should not long since have taken strong ground against the admission of precocious villainy, and at the juncture of Mr. Stickley's departure should have taken no special precautions; and to Mr. Stickley, that he, of whose fidelity to his trust we have heard so much, should absolutely have left the institution without any other control than that of this vicious lad, Breen. The conduct of Mr. Stickley is made the more reprehensible by the fact that though he was made acquainted with the insult which the girl had suffered, he did nothing. So far as he was concerned the lad would have gone unpunished. If he communicated the fact of the assault to the committee he discharged his duty so far, but there is no reason to think anything of the kind; on the contrary, it appears as if conscious of the offence being the result of his neglect, he did nothing lest that neglect should be made apparent.

But what is to be said of a committee which, knowing the brutal nature of the lad, did not take the necessary precautions to protect the female children, and whilst vaunting its confidence in the late master, and demurring from the imputations cast I upon its own management, heard nothing of this matter till it was brought to light by the present master , ? What of the ladies' committee, which fussing about in all sorts of impotent •ways, and rendering itself a general nuisance, had so little the confidence of the girls, was so little conscious of I its duty that it too knew nothing of the outrage, and like the general committee, knowing that Mr. Stickley was about to take his departure, exercised no additional vigilance. The position of two young girls left utterly without protection, or rather with the protection of a filthy young reprobate, ( is something requiring the evidence produced in a, Police Court to become in any way credible. Because everyone neglected his duty a mere child became the subject of a foul outrage, and it may be has become demoralised in a way that will influence the whole course of her life. To all governments it is a scandal that they should by their penuriousness have compelled the commingling in the Home of the innocent and the guilty, with results of the hideousness of which the case heard yesterday in the Police Court is but a sample. For all the mischief that has ensued the Government and the committee are responsible, and, as re-

gards the last, if it does not resign its functions, then it should be relieved of them without delay. It is not onlyuseless; it is absolutely mischievous. "We repeat what we said on a former occasion that the institution should be swept away, and without delay, and the children scattered about, and removed from the contaminating influences , which are sapping their morals, j There has been a shameful neglect of a public trust. Public funds and private subscriptions designed for the most worthy object, have been productive of little else than bickerings, mismanagement, and wholesale demoralisation of the children. There is no longer time for reflection, it is the duty of the Government to s.ct, and protect the poor waifs, of whose welfare it is the custodian.