Poverty is not in itself a cause of crime as many very poor persons lead honest, virtuous lives, yet, especially in cities and towns, the poor are often compelled to find lodging in crowded lanes and courts and alleys in wh ch the worthless, the drunken and the criminal dwell, and though the parents may escape the contamination of the foul moral atmosphere of such plac's, the children whom they cannot confine to their miserable abodes, who must seek amusement and recreation on the streets are unavoidably exposed to the corrupting influences by which they are constantly surrounded, and to temptations to which they too often yield. Squalid surroundings, orphanage misery, and the wretched home life or lack of home life in great cities, are undoubtedly fruitful sources of crime. It is a well established fact also that those who are crowded into dwellings in which the air is always laden with poisonous exhalations, and especially those who work in the wretched rooms in which the family exist, suffer from nervous depression, which leads to the use of stimulants, and frequent use of stimulants, especially under such circumstances, leads almost inevitably to drunkenness.

Other causes which act directly or indirectly in causing crime are the ex posure of portable wares at shops doors and on stands where they serve as strong temptations; the want of playgrounds for boys where they could indulge in innocent amusements under proper supervision; the love of dress amongst girls and their preference for employment in shops and factories, even when the wages paid are scarcely sufficient to prov de food; the general tendency to luxury and extravagance and the desire "to keep up appearances." Pawn shops and "marine" stores in which even children may dispose of stolen property, do

much to foster crime.

The neglect of its duties by the State and by society in all its other forms of organization, is largely responsible for the prevalence of vice and crime. The State has not done its whole duty when it has enacted that those who commit crimes shall be punished, and has provided police by whom offenders and criminals may be arrested, tribunals before which they may be tried, and gaols in which the penalties imposed may be exacted. The public arrest of a child, his public appearance as a culprit in a police court, his imprisonment in a common gaol, where he must associate with criminals of all sorts, are usually so many stages in his progress from vice to crime. Such a mode of treatment not infrequently has a most injurious effect on children who have committed merely some law-made offence. All this system of dealing with criminals and offenders rests upon the exploded principle that crime can be prevented, and crimi als kept in check only by deterrent agencies. Nor is it enough that the State provides in addition, a school system the benefits of which all who choose and who have the opportunities may share. Charitable associations make a great mistake if they suppose that when they provide food and clothing, and fuel and shelter for all who seem to be indigent, they do all that is necessary to supplement the work done by the State. The example of Great Britain proves, most conclusively, that much more can be done by the State and by associations to save those who are in danger, and to raise those who have fallen than has yet been attempted in this Province. What more can be done in this country where the work ought to be much easier should be done. How it can best be done is a question which demands the most serious consideration.

Several American writers and speakers contend that the increase of crime in the United States is largely due to immigration. Those of the criminal classes of Europe, who desire to elude arrest or to escape from police surveillance

for a time, in the hope that they may be forgotten, come to America, they say, and of those who have passed through the convict prisons and reformatories of Great Britain and Ireland, many are encouraged to emigrate who, when here, relapse into their evil habits. It is even alleged that the reduction in the number of British criminals is due largely to this systematic, steady emigration. It will be seen on reference to his evidence, that Mr. Round, a gentleman of great experience, is of opinion that a very large proportion of the criminals who infest New York, came from Europe, after they had there received their training in crine. The report of the State Board of Charities and C rrections of Minnesota for the year 1889, expresses a similar view, and publishes statistics in support of it, including a comparison of the nativity of State Prison convicts in eight States of the Union, by percentage. The following are the figures given for the States, whose institutions we have most carefully examined:

These figures seem to prove that the foreign born, and especially those from Great Britain and Ireland, furnish a percentage of criminals much larger than their percentage of the whole population But to arrive at a fair conclusion, we must take into account that a inuch larger proportion of the immigrant population than of the native, have arrived at the age when crimes may be committed. It is inevitable, too, that of emigrants settling in cities, as English, Scotch and Irish largely do, the number liable to fall in to evil habits will be larger than of those who have comfortable homes and steady employment. Where emigrants settle chiefly on land, as the Germans and others do in the Western States, the official returns show a very different state of things. The Minnesota report, from which we, take those igures, states elsewhere that children of foreign-born

parents constitute 71.2 per cent. of the population of the State, but form only 64 per cent. of the population of the State institutions, contrary to the generally received opinion. Scandinavians are 25.1 per cent. of the population, and furnish only 13 per cent. of the inmates of the State institutions. The children of English, Irish, Scotch and Canadian, are 19.1 per cent. of the population, and furnish 29.5 per cent. of the inmates of the institutions.

A delegate of the Trades and Labour Council, of Toronto, who gave evidence, produced statistics of our prisons and charitable institutions, to prove that of those whom the Canadian Government has assisted to come to Canada by paying part of the cost of their passage, and of the boys and girls sent out from British reformatorios and houses of refuge, a considerable number belong to the criminal classes. As in the official statistics no distinction is made between the inmates of prisons, asylums, and other institutions, who have come out on "assisted passages," or under the management of the many societies and agencies engaged in sending boys and girls to this country, and others who have come from Europe, these figures only prove as the statistics proved long before assisted passages were thought of, that the number of the inmates of our penal and charitable institutions, who are natives of Great Britain and Ireland, is proportionately large. Yet the views he put forward should receive the most careful consideration.

Much evidence was taken as to the character and conduct of the boys and girls who, for some years, have been sent to this country from Great Britain. The total number must be very large. The official reports state that the number of those discharged from reformatories who emigrated from the year 1854 to 1888 inclusive, was 2,990 boys and 210 girls, and from Industrial schools from 1862 to 1889 inclusive, 1,432 boys and 324 girls. The reports do not state the number of these sent to Canada, but, no doubt, it was large. Boards of Poor Law Guardian have sometimes sent out children from the work-houses. Of these we cannot find any account. The numbers sent out by benevolent associations is much larger than that sent by the British local authorities. Dr. Barnardo, in his book, "Something attempted, something done," boasts that his "organized parties" had reached "a grand total of 2,400 boys and girls to Canada alone," up to September, 1888, and he has since sent us other organized parties. Several other agents, notably Miss Rye and Miss McPherson have been engaged in similar work. Dr. Barnado, whose evidence will be found interesting, asserted that the boys he sends out are carefully selected and are carefully looked after when settled here, and that a very small number of them have turned out badly. There was no evidence to show that many of those boys have become criminals, although several witnesses expressed unfavourable opinions of them. Medical men and others said that many of those boys are physically and intellectually defective, and that their coming to Canada should not be encouraged. It may be well, it was said, for Great Britain to send them to Canada and so get rid of them. It may be very well for the boys who, coming here, obtain release from their former associations, and have better opportunities of earning a good living if they choose to be honest and industrious. But it cannot be good for Canada to absorb such an element in such large quantities. The importation of criminals half reformed, or reformed only in appearance, of imbeciles, paupers and persons of defective physique or tainted with hereditary disease, must necessarily increase the number of criminals and the volume of crime. The evidence as to the girls who are sent to us by poor law boards, school boards and charitable organizations, was much less favourable than that received concerning the boys.

There are some who, although they do not pretend to deny that there is a great diminution in the number of criminals in Great Britain and Ireland, contend that the official reports are misleading and that there has not been a corresponding diminution of crime. Lord Lichfield-quoted approvingly by Mr. Tallack, secretary of the Howard Association, in his recent work-speaking at Stafford in 1885, said:

'Having carefully investigared the subject I am not prepared to accept the statements so frequently made by persons in authority as to the decrease of crime in the country generally. My own investigations into this matter have led me to a very different conclusion and that is, that instead of crime being on the decrease it is on the increase. Admitting as I do that the figures in the reports (official) are correct, yet the result shown is to be accounted for solely and entirely by the very short sentences which are now passed and by the additional fact that somewhere about a third of the whole number convicted are not sent to prison at all. I find, taking the whole number of convictions in the year 1861 and comparing it with 1878, that there were 165,000 persons fined for offences against the law, and in 1883 there were 431,000 so fined." The official reports show that there was especially a diminution in the number of female prisoners. This he admitted to be correct but, he said, "the total convictions of females in England and Wales in 1849 was 25,846 and in 1883 they were 47,862. There has been a large increase in every description of offences which represent dishonesty, and I think I should be able to show if time permitted that in many of the serious offences there is considerable increase." Of juvenile offenders he said, "Since 1870 there is no record in our judicial returns of the number of the juvenile offenders who are convicted. . . If you take the number of persons who are now fined or whipped instead of being sent to prison at all you will find that the number of juveniles sent to prison does not in any way represent the juvenile crime of the country. Look at the number that, instead of being sent to prison, are sent to the Industrial Schools. Yet these numbers do not appear in the prison returns; just as all those who are fined or whipped do not appear. The total number of all persons fined for larceny last year was no less than ten thousand."

Canon Gregory, whom Mr. Tallack quotes, says in a paper published in 1886: -"It is clear that there has been no decrease in the number of crimes committ d or of small offences during the past fourteen years although there has been a remarkable diminution in the number of criminals captured by the police and possibly a great addition to the stringency with which lesser offenders have been brought to justice."

Mr. Tallack, who speaks of the character of the official returns as equivocal and ambiguous, asserts that in regard to certain serious crimes the statements of Lord Lichfield are well founded." For " whereas in 1870 there were fifteen persons sentenced to death in England and Wales and six executed, there were in 1886 thirty-five sentenced to death and nineteen executed. In 1870 there were 1,517 suicides and 2,222 in 1886." He directs attention to the fact that the number of boys and girls sent to reformatories in Great Britain had risen from 3,276 in 1859 to 6,272 in 1886, and the number in certified industrial schools from 480 in 1861 to 20,668 in 1886, that the number of adults committed for trial and those convicted summarily rose in England and Wales from 103,343 in 1861 to 165,952 in 1886, and in Scotland from 17,366 in 1881 to 44,647 in 1886.

Mr. Tallack adds:-"It must, however, be thankfully admitted that some other great crimes have materially diminished of late years in the United Kingdom."

JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

The commissioners are directed to make investigation of and report upon any improved means of providing and conducting industrial schools" and any "improved means of rescuing destitute children from a criminal career," which may be adopted in this Province. To these subjects they gave the most careful consideration, believing them to be the most important of any coming within the scope of the enquiry.

Under the Mosaic law the Hebrews were strictly enjoined to teach their children the history of their nation and to train them in the observance of the law. It is probable that provision was made by each tribe for the proper education of orphan and destitute children who had no near relatives or friends to take charge of them, as all were entitled to a share in the property of the tribe. From their system, essentially so different from ours, we can borrow little except the principle embodied in the words "Therefore ye shall lay up these my words in your hearts** and ye shall teach them to your children speaking of them when thou sittest in thy house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house and upon thy gates." These and the precept "train up a child in the way he should go" are applicable to all peoples in all ages. Some pa zan nations had high ideas of parental duties, and to enable the father to discharge those duties gave him even the power of life and death over his children: but those nations either took no thought of the destitute, the feeble and the afflicted or regarded them as having incurred the enmity of their gods. In Sparta, regarded by many as the model republic, children who at their birth were deformed or puny were cast in'o a great pit to perish. In Rome destitute children were treated as slaves or were reared for the arena or the bagnio. In this respect as in all others Christianity wrought a great change. "Suffer little children to come unto me," was a command of wide significance. Chastel, quoted by Dr. Wines in his great work on the "State of Prisons and of Child Saving Institutions," says that one of the Apostolic constitutions was "Bishops take care of the orphans, so that they want nothing." And deserted, destitute and exposed children were to be cared for as the orphans. They were to receive primary education at the hands of the widows and consecrated maidens. They were to be taught a trade. "They were to be gathered into the fold of Christ." Afterwards-probably even before the persecution of Christians ceased, orphan asylums and infant nurseries were establishe by devout men and women who thus employed their wealth and often took the destitute to their own houses. "Persons were sought who would receive deserted or neglected children into their families and bring them up in the faith." In all this Dr. Wines sees what is now called the boarding out system, and the employment of such agencies for the rescue of children as even at this day prove most effectual. One of the first acts of Constantine the Great after his conversion was to issue a decree prohibiting the kidnapping of free children and reducing them to slavery. Great charitable institutions, such as have become numerous in this age it would seem had no existence in the Roman Empire at any time. When the northern invasion changed the face of Europe, whatever care destitute or erring children received was bestowed by the Tithing or other petty community to which they belonged. After the rise of feudalism they were cared for by th feudal lord who had a sort of property in all born on his lands and by the religious houses which in time grew up in every part of the old world. Another great change took place in Great Britain in the time of the Tudors. For many generations destitute children had only such care as the Poor Law system provided, and juvenile offenders were treated as