system of supplying him from a fund intended only for the feeble and necessitous. The wretchedness of his condition also, the want of regular habits, and of due subordination to his employer, frequently originate his first dereliction of virtue. Early marriages, contracted either to avoid a prison, or with a view of receiving more from the parish, increase the evil, and multiply a population, for whom there is no certain employment; and thus men are often tempted to offend against the laws to improve their miserable existence.

Poaching is one of the greatest of the auxiliary causes of crime, and is often the first step on the ladder which leads to the gallows. But accustomed as we are to view the poacher in a light in which his occupation, as destructive to our self-interest, is greatly magnified, I will ask to what are we to attribute the very existence of the poacher? Undoubtedly to the game-laws themselves, passed at a period when property, rank in life, and the general feelings of subordination, which property and rank never failed to excite in former times, had greater influence than at present. It is true, that the game-preserver has a right to what is fed and bred on his own property has a right to use all means allowed by law to protect such property; but does he not, by filling his woods with a countless stock of half-tamed poultry, hold out an irresistible temptation to the poor and profligate? and, by supporting the laws of his exclusive monopoly, is he not affording an excuse to the merchant or fundholder to purchase those delicacies of the season, which none can sell him but by a breach of the laws? Are not also the game-buyers responsible for the infringement of the laws by others, and for the remote and certain consequences which attend the career of the poacher? It is an indisputable fact, that nine out of ten of those criminals, who are annually tried at our bars for theft and robbery, begin with poaching; and though I by no means excuse a breach of the law, let the temptation be what it may, or the inefficiency of the law, however notorious, yet while we consider poaching, as an auxiliary to crime, let the gamepreserver, the game-buyer, and the law itself, have their just share of the opprobrium.

Another great auxiliary of crime is, the uncertainty of punishment, and the distant period to which a culprit has to await his sentence. The severity of our laws, which enacts the same punishment for the greatest crimes, as for some of the least in the scale of depravity, have greatly tended to swell the catalogue of offenders, and for this reason:-the offender knowing if the full penalty of the law is enforced, it will not be done above once in a hundred instances, the fear of the mitigated punishment is swallowed up in the hope of escaping the greater; and the change of sentence from death to imprisonment is so very great, that he knows

that he shall suffer little risk in hazarding the highest penalty of the law. This reflection, added to the uncertainty of proof, the chance of escape, the hope of pardon, and a general carelessness of the future, has such a counter-operation to the apprehension he enter→ tains of undergoing the extreme sentence of the law, that the law itself holds out little or no terrors; and he, without scruple, gambles with his life on any adventure which his wickedness or his necessities may offer to him. By the late revision of the criminal law, much of this evil has been remedied; but much remains to be done by wise and gradual alterations.

Another great auxiliary to crime, inasmuch as it has filled our jails with petty offenders, who leave their prison-accomplished thieves, is the indiscriminate payment of expenses to those who bring offenders to justice. Offences of the most trifling nature, and committed by mere children, are now brought before the public with all the parade of the greatest turpitude. The trouble, the expense, and perhaps feelings of a compassionate nature, often saved the young and thoughtless from being sent among the more hardened offenders. A first offence frequently saved the young culprit from being treated with the same rigor, which the repeated transgressions of the experienced villain deserved; and the little wretch, who by timely and judicious correction, might have become a valuable member of society, is now sent to associate with the veteran proficients in their profession. Such is the certainty of having all the expenses attending a prosecution defrayed by the public purse,' that an assize or a sessions partake more of a jaunt of pleasure, than the performance of a serious and painful duty; and the stealing of any article, however trifling, or however youthful the offender, is attended by all the pomp of judicial exposure. This circumstance alone, independent of the evil consequent on the committal of the offender to prison, adds to the increase of crime; for while remuneration is so certain and so ample, will the tradesman be so careful of his property, and will he not expose it to sale without that caution or watchfulness which he would otherwise have taken? And is not a temptation and opportunity offered to the hesitating depredator, who, hardly beyond the age of childhood, commits an offence for which at home or at school he would have received at most corporal chastisement? As a proof that the certainty of funds has tended to increase

It is just and reasonable, that he who prosecutes a criminal for the public good should be reimbursed by the public purse; but care should be taken, that as the law has removed, in criminal proceedings, every pecuniary obstacle, so ought the dispensers of the law to remove every pecuniary inducement; and that while we are just to individuals who bring delinquents to justice, we are also just to the public, who pay the expenses, and who have delegated to us the management of their contributions.

prosecutions, I will instance the effects produced by a late enact ment, empowering the payment of expenses on assaults on constables in execution of their duty. Previous to this enactment, not above once or twice a-year were such indictments preferred, and then only in aggravated cases. Whereas now not a sessions pass

but there are many such cases, all of which would have been treated, as heretofore, by the contempt they merited, but for the remuneration expected.

Another auxiliary to crime is, what may appear at first sight a paradox, but which has undoubtedly a great effect in swelling the catalogue of offenders-I mean, the efficiency of the police for the detection of crime: however efficient they may be for the detection of offences, yet, for the prevention of them, they are la+ mentably deficient. The object of all laws is the prevention of crime; and this is the justification of all earthly punishment, in order to deter others from committing a breach of the laws. The prevention of intended crime, therefore, is of more importance than its detection after committal: but when do we hear of a policeofficer standing between the intention and the act; between the thief, who is meditating a robbery, and the actual commission of it? On the other hand, if an urchin is looking about and watching for an opportunity, instead of timely information, whereby the autho rity of the master or of the parent might interfere, the first step of the police-officer is to see that the crime is sufficiently perpetrated to convict the offender. Half of the petty offences com mitted by the younger part of the community might be prevented by common caution on the part of the tradesman, and common diligence on the part of the constable: instead of which, the offen. der is either taken before a magistrate as soon as the offence is legally completed, and bagged for immediate supply; or allowed to run at large in the constable's preserve, till ready for consumption. Offences of a trifling nature are thus repeated, or brought at once before the public in all the parade of atrocious villany; and what formerly would have been treated with a horsewhipping on the spot, and therefore more efficacious from its summary proceeding, now undergoes the grave and often useless ceremony of a trial.

These, and many others, are undoubtedly efficient causes for an increase of crime: but I consider them secondary causes only; powerful indeed, and quite sufficient to swell the catalogue of offences beyond the limits of former times; but wholly inefficient to account for the fact, that while our population has increased only one-fifth in the last ten years, the committals for felony have doubled. To what are we to attribute this disproportionate increase of offences? To what paramount and irresistible cause are we to place the demoralisation of the people? To what, but

to the destroying, at an age when the dawn of reason has scarcely opened on their mental darkness, those feelings of shame and compunction which are the natural accompaniments of youth, and to which human nature too frequently yields a temporary obedience, even greater than to the dictates of conscience at a more advanced age. It is to the early imprisonment of mere children, and the familiarising them with the walls of a prison, which lay the foundation of that hardihood in crime which we in vain attempt afterwards to remedy or prevent. Excellent alterations and enactments have been adopted, which have in some degree lessened the evils resulting from an increase of crime; and the wisdom of the legislature, the attention of the magistracy,' and the benevolence of individuals, may do much to reform our fellow-creatures. But these enactments and exertions are, however, secondary remedies. The chief cause of the increase of crime, early imprisonment, has remained unheeded and unnoticed; and therefore the remedies that have been from time to time applied, have been inefficient. The reform of the juvenile delinquent has been attempted after the contamination of a jail; after the stigma of a verdict, and after all the dormant propensities to vice have been roused into action. I do not assert that the seeds of wickedness are sown in the hearts of the youthful culprit by his being sent to a receptacle of vice and depravity; but are there not many cases where, was it not for the indiscriminate severity which considers only the violation of a law, those seeds might either have been eradicated, or might have withered for want of nourishment? Hence, must it not strike every thinking mind, that by having no intermediate tribunal, before which the young culprit might be summarily convicted, human aid largely contributes to the perfecting of human depravity, and that the intercourse with hardened villains, and the being made familiar with every species of depravity, must destroy every principle of amendment. Nor is this all in his dismissal from the walls of a prison, (to him often, in his forlorn state, his

'The Warwick County Asylum, established in 1818, and supported solely by voluntary contributions, has been of infinite benefit. Out of eighty-one boys, who have been discharged from it, thirty-nine have been ascertained to have been permanently reformed, twenty-one have been since tried at Warwick, and sixteen remain. But as one thousand eight hundred and thirteen boys have been tried at Warwick in the last seven years only, and as this institution is barely supported by the contributions of the benevolent, it follows, how inefficient an institution, on so small a scale, is for the purposes intended, and how precarious is its existence when dependent only on private benevolence. Boys have occasionally been received into the Asylum without being tried and convicted; and I have it, on the best authority, to say, that the facility of reform is incalculably greater with such boys than with convicted felons. I believe this county is the only county which has founded and supported an institution of this most benevolent nature.

most comfortable home,) the juvenile delinquent has lost that feeling of shame which the name of a prison at first invariably excites. Without character, without friends, and without the means of gaining an honest livelihood, he plunges at once into those vicious courses of profligacy and crime, which increase in magnitude as they increase in number, till an ignominious death closes his career, at an age when his mind has not yet reached the first dawning of sober reflection. Can we wonder then at our jails being crowded with criminals, many of whom have repeatedly visited the same dungeons, and almost consider them as the friendly protectors of their wretchedness, than as the frowning instruments of their punishment: and, am I not justified in attributing to early imprisonment the most powerful cause of the increase of crime.

It is not in the preposterous hope of preventing offences, of exterminating crime, or of eradicating vice and criminality from the human heart, that I wish to draw the attention of the public to this interesting subject; but from the well-grounded conviction, that there are no propensities however rooted, no opportunities however favorable, and no temptations however great and frequent, that are not multiplied tenfold by the want of an intermediate tribunal, where boys may be saved from the most fatal of all contaminations—the contamination of a jail. And if the end of all law is the prevention of crime, and the reform of the offender; and if this object is not only not accomplished, but crimes are increased, and offenders hardened by a system which assists, rather than prevents this increase, it is an unanswerable argument for a wise and timely alteration of injudicious enactments.

Early imprisonment, therefore, is the great and primary cause from which crime originates. From this source most of the evils flow which affect the youthful offender, and at the earliest age lead him into those paths of vice from which there is afterwards no escape from which the light of hope is almost excluded; and where the tears of repentance are generally disregarded. Whatever may have been his first propensities at his first commitment, he invariably becomes worse and worse, and leaves his prison fully instructed in all the mysteries of crime. You will find the still lingering blush of shame quickly give way to the habitual stare of profligate associates; and you will hardly recognise in the familiar boldness of the felon, the distressed and desponding novice in his profession. To him, to return is as fatal as to proceed; he is impelled onwards by every impulse which bad example, bad company, and the scoffs of the world have raised in him; till at last he is driven down the gulf which has so long yawned to entomb its living victim of destruction.

In searching for a remedy by which this increasing evil may be