higher character than expediency or pecuniary saving to the community. We have thus endeavoured to show the duty of caring for youth and the great deficiencies existing, notwithstanding the improvement that has, of late years, been gradually taking place. Let us proceed to the discussion of the plans and expedients requisite to the prevention of juvenile depravity. CHAPTER IV. observations. PREVENTIVE MEASURES. "The discipline of slavery is unknown Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace." WORDSWORTH, Excursion. Introductory § 1. Ir has become trite to say that prevention is better than cure. But we may rest assured that this does not arise from the fact that men have become weary of precautionary measures. It is equally obvious that prevention is beset with difficulties fewer in number, and easily surmounted. Already we have remarked upon the cruelty of delay, of systematically waiting for opportunities to apply our reformatory or remedial resources. Humanity urges us on to the speedy adoption of effectual and comprehensive schemes. Nay, our own safety as a thriving community, our daily convenience, call loudly for every possible preventive meaPhilosophical sure. "There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginning and the onsets of things. Dangers are no more light, if they once seem light, and more dangers have deceived than forced men. Nay, it were better to meet some dangers half way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approach; sentiments. for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep. The ripeness or the unripeness of the occasion must ever be well weighed, and generally it is good to commit the beginning of all actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands-first to watch and then to speed."* Preventive measures are numerous, though simple. Reformatory expedients are few, but difficult of execution. You may stride the river at its source, which may be spanned by no bridge possible to human powers of construction at its junction with the ocean. As this insignificance at first is dangerously deceptive, so, on the other hand, the necessarily simple character of means required to prevent, is unfavourable to their hearty adoption. But a salutary lesson may be learned from the Hindoo proverb-" many straws united may bind an elephant." The cause which appears insignificant, effects being out of sight, will be magnified where the results are duly weighed. It would appear that all Preventive preventive measures must embrace four distinct series of operations: (1) those intended to enlighten, assist, and reform the parents of children exposed to sin; (2) those that will afford extended sound and moral education, and industrial training; (3) those that will rouse masters and employers to a sense of their obligations to children in their employ; (4) and those that will provide some general means of shelter and protection from involuntary exposure to temptation, and certain general facilities for self-improvement and recreation. It will be our object in the course of the ensuing remarks to illustrate these points, and to indicate the various modes by which, under the blessing of God, juvenile depravity as it now exists may be eradicated. The reformer and the political economist have projected *Lord Bacon. measures. H attention required. The kind of various schemes of national regeneration. Parliamentary reform, the extension of the franchise, the poor-law system, and last, but not least, the revolution wrought by free trade, have contributed their quota of good, but have only partially banished discontent, and by no means suppressed crime. The temperance societies have, with marked success, operated upon the national vice of drunkenness. The advocates of universal education, within and without the houses of legislature, have by their ceaseless agitation secured great facilities for popular instruction. The friends of voluntary and religious education have covered the land with a glorious network of Sunday schools. The ragged school, the reformatory institution, and juvenile penal establishments are springing up everywhere, not only in this country, but throughout Europe and America. Even the fabulously sweet waters of the Nile are graced by a ragged school. Yet the body politic, in this country at least, has begun but to rally from the effects of malignant disorders. If indeed pronounced "out of danger," it is because of convalescence, not established recovery. The nation is still to be carefully watched; for juvenile depravity is retarded, not crushed. In some cases, plans good in themselves are neutralized by the absence of analogous and auxiliary measures, while in others, wisely contrived schemes are hampered by the want of more liberal means, or a more extended field of operation. The axe laid to the root. We may remark, that in most attempts to reform or train children the character and circumstances of the parents have been entirely overlooked. We feel disposed to insist that before any effective stand can be made against juvenile depravity, the parent must be enlightened, reformed, and assisted to train up, or co-operate in training up his children to a moral and religious life. It is plain that the children of this generation, if correctly educated, will, when they have become the parents of the next, afford to society that help. But this is a slow process. Thirty years must pass away before such co-operation can be looked for. Meanwhile juvenile depravity will continue to develope itself. Thirty years, too, are a short period to name for such a revolution. For it is obvious that nearly every year in that series of years, in which children are continually being born, will require its thirty years to follow, before such a result could be realized. Every attempt to reform the parent will be an efficacious effort to prevent juvenile depravity. Though peculiar circumstances may compel the adoption of other plans, such a course is congenial to our mind, as compatible with the exercise of parental authority, as conducive to a proper sense of obligation to support and educate one's own children, and further, as not only harmonizing with nature and revelation, but as being also more comprehensively merciful. But if the case of the father and mother is hopeless, either because of their depravity, or because of the powerlessness of society to undertake plans thus indefinitely extended and complicated, then the only course remaining is, to remove the child from the vitiating influence of his parents, of which we shall have more to say hereafter. There are, however, certain feasible suggestions, which we shall proceed at once to take into consideration. means. 1. Let such societies as aim at the reformation of the Extension of existing adult be extended in their operations. We need scarcely preventive specify them. The London City Mission, our Provincial Town Missions, agencies of a similar character more extensively set to work in our destitute or neglected villages, together with regular domiciliary visitation on the part of the clergymen and ministers of other communions, would eventually tend to suppress juvenile vice and delinquency. It is found that in our large towns exist the greatest Juvenile number of vicious ungodly parents. A missionary expressly devoted to the work of visiting such parents, to missions. 269876B |