so far as to offer his estates upon which to found the institution we had resolved to establish together.*

We did not conceal from ourselves, when putting our hands to the work, that the care of forming men's minds, and turning them from evil to good, should not be entrusted to the first assistants that came to hand. This important ministry requires trained minds, a sincere self-devotion, and a morality above suspicion. There is with us no lack of ideas,but rather of men capable of putting them in practice, especially when these ideas are of serious import.

Being convinced of this truth, we resolved to establish, in connection with the colony, even before a single child had been entrusted to us, a special school, where youths of respectable standing, and of a truly christian spirit, might be trained to become, by and by, the chiefs of our families.t

It is to this foundation that we must attribute the prosperity of Mettray. We shall be excused, we trust, for not having passed it over in silence. This school has been daily improving since its institu. tion, and among the excellent pupils which are sent forth from it every year, some, engaged with ourselves, perpetuate the good traditions of the colony; others spread them abroad, and being sought for by charitable institutions, they render valuable services to establishments similar to our own.‡

It was with the aid of such auxiliaries that Mettray was founded. On the 22nd of January, 1840, it received its first inmates.

Between that and the present date, more than fifteen years have past. Many successful efforts have been made during this period; much progress has been effected; many establishments have been founded, which are now prosperous, and spread blessings around them. None can sympathise more warmly than we do, in the hopes which the development of agricultural colonies appointed to receive orphans and foundlings, is calculated to call forth.

Let us trace in a few words, the history of that branch of legislation which regulates these institutions, and indicate the principal traits, at least, of the important act of the 5th of August, 1850. ·

Before speaking of this law, we must mention the instructions issued on the 17th of February, 1847, which confided the patronage of liberated detenues to the municipal authorities, and raised some rather complicated questions into the discussion of which it is not here possible for us to enter.

The law of the 5th of August is of paramount importance; it is in some sort the charter of penal agricultural colonies. It embraces

*I am writing the history of agricultural colonies; and on this account I should fail in fulfilling my mission and still more in the duty of friendship, did I not pay a just tribute of regret to him who has contributed most to the success of these institutions.

† One of our political savans has called this School a Lay Seminary. It is impossible to give an idea of the spirit of this institution, in a more concise manner.

One of our earliest pupils, M. Guimas, who occupied an important post in the colony, has been recently called to the direction of the colony of Ostwald, whose very existence was threatened by the vices of its interior administration. M. Leteur, who was similarly circumstanced, had been already placed as sub-director at the colony of Montagny.

in its regulations, young children detained for correction, by desire of the father, children sentenced for crimes and offences, and, finally, children acquitted by the application of Article 66 of the Code Napoléon. It proclaims the necessity of subjecting all to a moral, religious, and professional education.

Two principles pervade this law, principles to whose profound wisdom we cannot pay too much respect, and from which we cannot depart without compromising those cherished interests which it is intended to protect. We find them in the articles 3, 5, and 10.

The first consists in the employment of young detenues in the agricultural labour and the principal branches of industry connected with it.

The second proclaims the frank and cordial adoption of the co-operation of private establishments. The law reserves to these last a delay of five years, during which they can prepare and perfect the founding of penal colonies.

It is only in the event of the insufficiency of private establishments, that State colonies are to be founded, as is expressed in the last paragraph of Article 10." If the total number of young detenues cannot be placed in private establishments at the expiration of five years, they shall be provided for by the foundation of reformatory colonies, at the expense of the state."

The system adopted by law, thus depends on the existence of private colonies ; it is from these colonies that the State demands the moral education of the young pupils whose guardianship it has undertaken. In itself it has no desire but to complete them, or supply their insufficiency if such should exist.

This large and truly liberal spirit of the laws was no less manifest in the short discussion to which it gave rise. A Deputy had expressed his opinion that the State ought not to confide to any (private) person, the education and reformation of young detenues, and that the law should authorize none but public establishments. The commission hastened to protest against such a system.

The Law encourages charity,' was its answer; it recognises its power, and hopes much from its influence' On the other hand, the government eagerly forwards its views; and it was on the formal proposition of M, le Ministre de l'Interieur, that the assembly raised, to five years, the delay accorded for the operation of private charity, for which two years only had been asked by the commission.

The course taken by the administration merits the greatest praise, To appeal in this manner to the knowledge and co-operation of all, shews a sincere desire to provide a happy future for the country. Oxenstiern has said, 'On the good training of youth, depends the prosperity of the State.'

It must be acknowledged that education is a difficult and complex undertaking; perhaps the most difficult of all. It is a problem capable of receiving different solutions; and it has this peculiarity, that every one of these solutions is the best in some particular case. The meditations, the studies, and the experience of a great number

The law of France empowers a parent to send (under certain condi tions) an intractable child to prison.-ED.

1

of peculiarly gifted men, and the trial of many different methods, will not be found superfluous in fructifying this greatest of all sciences, to produce a race of good men.'

At the same time that the administration was making its appeal to the devotedness of individuals, and calling on them to come to its aid in this great work of penitentiary reform, of which the education of young detenues may be considered as the starting point, it was also itself at work on this; and co operation was the more desirable, inasmuch as the private establishments were far from able to contain all the children of this class, whose number is ever on the increase: we shall have occasion to return to this subject. An agricultural colony was then annexed to each of the maisons centrales of Loos, Gaillon, Fontevrauit, and Clairvaux. These colonies have realised all the good that was expected from them.

While a system calculated to reform young detenues was thus being established in France, either by administrative action or the intervention of the legislature, the public authorities of England were giving the most serious attention to these important questions. The wound which, with our neighbours, we sought to heal, was no less deep than that whose enlargement we were striving to prevent; and that country where so many improvements have been effected, could not hesitate to follow in the path upon which we had entered.

A law of recent date, and which was passed on the 10th of August, 1854, authorises and even calls upon individuals to found agricultural colonies. It seeks to turn to use, with more steadiness and unity of effort than has hitherto been done, those private institutions which have been founded for this object, and authorises the Minister for the Home Department to confer on these establishments which after inspection are judged worthy thereof, the title, Reformatory School.

We do not feel it necessary to enter on a very close examination of this act, framed by the way under the influence of French legislation; but one of the clauses which it contains, appears so conformable to equity, and so fit for imitation, that we cannot pass it over in silence : we speak of the pecuniary responsibility which it imposes on the family of the delinquent.

The statesmen of practical England have considered that it was not just to exonerate parents from the burdens imposed on them by the laws of nature, especially in those cases where the bad conduct of the child, as is only too often the case, is the result of the bad example of the father.

Thus the English, like the Belgic legislature, has decided that a gm not exceeding five shillings per week may be exacted by way of fine from the family of the young delinquent during the period of his detention.

Nothing can be better adapted than such a measure, to disappoint those guilty calculations which sometimes induce unnatural parents to violate the most sacred of all human duties.

The increase in the number of young offenders in France ought to make us desire more than ever, the application of this measure which we have thought it our duty to point out.

But let us conclude what we have to say concerning the French law.

This law appropriates (Art. 2.) special and distinct quarters in our gaols to the special reception of young detenues of every classit creates two orders of reformatory establishments; penitential colonies for the special reception of young delinquents acquitted under article 66, but entrusted to administrative guardianship (Art. 4 and 5); and correctional colonies (Art. 10,) established by the State either in France or in Algiers, for young offenders condemned to an imprisonment of more than two years, and also for young detenues, from reformatory colonies, who may have been declared insubordinate. Let us be allowed here to express our regret that by an interpretation little in accordance perhaps with the general spirit of the law, government has authorised the reception in the same colonies, of young detenues condemned under Art. 67 of the penal code, to an imprisonment of more than six months, and not exceeding two years, with children declared not guilty, and acquitted under Article 66. This confusion which, at first sight, seems of no importance, always produces inconveniences of more than one kind. In the first place, it perplexes the comprehension of the acquitted young detenue, in whose understanding it upsets all notion of justices; he is astonished that the law, while declaring him innocent, imposes on him a detention of four or five years, while it retains, generally for a very short period only, him whom it recognises as culpable. We will only add, that this tends to maintain in the public mind, as in the minds of those who are eventually called on to use the labor of the liberated convict, prejudices very hurtful to his interest.

The active administration, it is true, has done all in its power to counteract that which we must be permitted to call a vice of the law. The magistrates convinced of the evil of mingling in the same place, children of different degrees of depravity, rarely sentence under Art. 67, of the penal code. On the 31st of December, 1852, the number of young detenues amounted to 6,443, and of this number, 197 only were convicted under articles 67 and 69.

In stating so high the number of young criminals, which in 1837 was only 1,493, we cannot dissemble the melancholy feelings with which we must necessarily write such a revelation.

But let us take comfort; this progression,' as M. the Minister of the Interior says in his last report, does not imply a corresponding increase in juvenile crime. The existence of penitentiary estab. lishments intended for the young, encourages and multiplies decisions from which tribunals would have recoiled at an epoch when their life in a prison exposed the young detenues to intimacies and influences worse than those outside its walls.'

In concluding our review of the laws which exercise so great an influence over agricultural colonies, we must direct public attention to one measure which has hitherto escaped notice, notwithstanding its great importance.

The legislator while adopting the principle of agricultural col. onies for young convicts, ought to have equally taken into account those children whose vicious inclinations, or obstinate characters stubbornly resist all instruction, all efforts of domestic discip

line, and who, without having been guilty of an infraction of the penal laws, do not the less deserve severe punishment. We speak of children detained at the request of the father, under articles 375 and 376 of the Civil Code.

If we wish to achieve a reform as complete as it possibly can be, we should come to the aid of youth whatever be its social position, and combat its evil propensities wherever they manifest themselves. In France, detention under the head of correction paternelle is the only means of repressing the transgressions of youth. But Paris alone offers, and there but in an insufficient manner, a house for the reception of such children, which holds out some guarantee to the heads of families.

In the provinces there exists no establishment of this kind. Children under age, whom their parents might wish to correct by with drawing them from the evil counsels and evil examples which are perverting them, would there be mixed pell-mell with the suspected and even the convicted: thus they would be exposed to greater dangers than those from which it is wished to guard them. What father of a family would venture to give to his son, for companions, malefactors and others, subjected to penal treatment.

The inexpediency of resorting to this mode of correction is so fully recognised, that there is no family in easy circumstances, who would not reject such a means; and there is scarcely even a poor but honest family, who would not hesitate to use it. Is it not indeed to be feared that he who had once been obliged to pass the threshold of infamy, would regard himself as disgraced for ever?

Rich families frequently send on long journies and at great expense, sons of whom they have cause to complain; but this plan has often only the effect of substituting one kind of dissipation for another. By this course studies are suspended; the habit of application is lost; the young people meet abroad the temptations from which they were sought to be rescued at home; and they yield to them with the less reserve, as they feel themselves now free from all surveillance: they begin to entertain ideas of independence and insubordination; and after having brought trouble into their families, they, later in life, introduce disorder into the State.

The legislator has imagined that he could remedy the deplorable state of things which we have just described by authorising the transmission of children from the parental jurisdiction to the agricultural colonies, but we fear that in this instance he has not discovered the true remedy.

By the terms of the Articles 375 and 376 of the Civil Code, a child under 16 years of age may be detained one month, and the youth from 16 to 21 years old, six months, We must then, if we wish to produce a salutary effect upon the mind of the young offender in so short time, employ a species of discipline which will punish fast, if we may be allowed such an expression.

Besides, the discipline of reformatory colonies to which young criminals are for a long time subjected, can scarcely present a sufficiently repressive character; the children in these establishments enjoy a certain degree of liberty: field labour would appear, especially to boys, much to be preferred to the study of Latin, for which the greater part