The Experiment has never been tried of A STATE PROVISION for innocent, but destitute and unprotected Children, nor of a compulsory payment from the parent for the proper maintenance and education of his Child. I must not be told therefore of Refuges and Magdalens and Schools of Industry and Philanthropic Societies and Provisions for Poor criminals on their release from prison, or of any results which have followed on their adoption, as reasons why my plan should not be tried, they are no examples for this purpose. I am satisfied from a long experience in such matters, that no difficulty would be found in placing out boys well taught, well brought up, under rules of strict discipline, and who have not yet become criminals. The expense of maintaining them as innocent children will be far less than that of maintaining them as felons while we shall be destroying the root of this Upas Tree which stands in the midst of every densely populated Neighbourhood, spreading its branches so far in every direction that the good and virtuous even can at length reach them, and think they are destroying the tree by endeavouring to keep its unwieldly limbs within bounds by the pruning knife. A most fatal error!
How much longer will the overburthened Ratepayers endure to see a drunken Father earning from 30 to 50 shillings a week (and there are thousands of such) 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:
Printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.