THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CONVENTION.
The whole of the sections of the National Association for the pro. motion of Social Science continued their meetings to the close of last week, and papers were read in each of them. In the section f Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law, at which Lord Bronghasi presided, the principal paper read was by Mr. G. W. Hastings, on the Consolidation of Local Courts. Mr. Hastings's plan for the improvement of the administration of local justice comprehended the amalgamation of the present Bankruptcy Courts with the County Courts, the Recorder's Court, and other local tribunals, the Recorder to be the chief judge, as• sisted by 'one or two deputies who should all be compelled to reside in the county. Mr. A. Symonds contributed a paper on the Legislative arrangements of a Ministry of Justice. His plan comprehended the revising, coned. ing, and indexing of our laws, and for their periodical promulgation in a uniform shape, under the title of the " Victoria Code." In the discussion on a paper on " Compulsory Education," by the Reverend W. Fraser, the Reverend T. P. Kirkman pointed out a curious difficulty in the way of any scheme of enforced education, as ap- plied to a district with which he is acquainted, where the people are principally engaged in weaving : a very young child there is made use- ful to its parents. A young child can nurse a baby while the mother weaves ; and if a young woman happens to have one or two children before marriage, it is actually an advantage to her in securing a match among the many practical husbands of that district of Lancashire! In the section of education, (Mr. W. Cowper, M.P., President,) a very interesting paper, by 'arise Mary Carpenter, was read, on the Relation of Ragged and Industrial Schools, to "The Parliamentary Educational Grant." The purpose of the paper was to establish a strong claim on the part of the Ragged Schools to a large proportion of the Parliamentary grant. Mr. Cowper, who is at the head of the Committee of Council, as Mr. Monckton Milnes reminded the meeting, took a different view of the case from Miss Carpenter, and gave as his reason for not agreeing to afford National support to Ragged schools, that the children who are taught at them are not the children of parents who cannot pay, but of those who will not pay to have their children educated. It would be quite wrong, he contended, to recognize the ragged school class as a per- manent class in society ; the object ought to be to get that class into other schools.
Before the section of Punishment and Reformation, Captain Walter Crofton read an important paper. The subject of his paper was—" Can Intermediate Prisons materially aid in solving the Difficulties of the Con- vict system."
Captain Crofton proposed these three questions at the outset of his essay: What are the difficulties of the convict question ? Why have we not solved. them ? What shall we do to solve those difficulties ? Two lessons, he said, we have learned from transportation. "First, that employment was a most powerful agent in reformation • and, secondly, that, notwithstanding all the evils attendant on bad prison discipline, there was still a large impressible class of prisoners who were willing to work when employment was obtained, who gave satisfaction to their employers, and who ultimately became useful and industrious colonists. But no advantage has been taken of this know- ledge, and we have treated our criminals in masses up to the termination of their incarceration, and discharged them to take their chance and work their will. The difficulty under which a man discharged from prison labours in
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finding employment is admitted on all hands ; but what, said Captain Crof- ton, has been done to enable him to procure it ? We have been under the illusion that because a discharged convict has not been recommitted that therefore he is reformed. The community, objects to employ the criminal when discharged, on the intelligible ground that, although under strict sur- veillance and the utter absence of temptation his conduct had been good, there was no guarantee that it would not be otherwise in free life; and thus the character so obtained under such a prison discipline was of little or no value to the public. What, then, shall we do to solve those difficulties? We must treat our convicts individually, and not in the mass; we must qualify them to obtain employment by so training them that they will •
ce the confidence of the public; we must apply such special training as fit
them for a free life and make them meet for employment; we must i. nform them of an honest world, of which they know little ; and when discharge& we must not lose sight of them, but preserve a supervision which will tend to protect them and their employers. To work out these ends, Captain Crofton laid it down—That labour is necessary to reformation ; that by classification and special training convicts can be better prepared for employment; that by a system of registration after discharge we shall deter from crime and assist reformation ; and lastly, that by noting to the police the more noxious offenders we shall render their incarceration more certain and lengthened, and thus protect society from their vices ; and he maintained that the work- ing of his own system in Ireland proved the practicability and wisdom of prison discipline so conducted as to secure these results. The subject of Reformatories was illustrated by several papers. Mr. Campbell of Liverpool, while discussing the subject generally, gave an odd example of "cold blooded" political economy. He said he looked upon the whole system as calculated to debase and demoralize the work- ing classes of this country ; it was in his eye a premium on crime, and relieved vice and idleness of the punishment which it was ordained should attach to them ; and he would not attempt to reform criminals in the manner now attempted, but by the aid of an efficient police. "In the long run," he said, "it will be wise and cheaper to pay 401. to punish the criminal than 301. to reform him !"
In the section of Public Health, at which the Earl of Shaftesbury presided, was read a paper by Miss Florence Nightingale, on " The Construction of Hospitals." It was full of practical suggestions for the improvement of hospitals, and contained some forcible illustrations of defective hospital accommodation furnished by Miss Nightingale's own experience in Scutari.
In the same section two papers were read, one on " Residences for the Insane," by Dr. Conolly, the other on " The further Amendment of the Law of Lunacy," by Mr. George Robinson, M.D. During the discus- sion which followed the reading of these papers, the president made some interesting observations on the difficulty of finding asylums for those afflicted with insanity whose friends are not able to pay the high charges demanded by the keepers of private asylums. glummefet that difficulty, he said, we should endeavour to found a public middle classes and persons with small incomes, where mode- theould be the rule. Now, if medical men allowed cases to go on en-- t es evidence of insanity was so unmistakeable that every one was - • ed why then the parties would be utterly incurable without any forme • possibill of being brought to their senses again. The only hope was in the first eveloprnent of the disorder; if then put under proper control, the bability was that 75 per cent of the patients might be eured ; but if they awed the disease to _go on for twelve months, he would ask any medical man whether the cures he would effect would be two in a hundred ? It was delicate point of judgment to decide when a person was in the first stage ; hut, if they followed the rule laid down in the newspapers, he confessed they might bring hundreds of these people to utter wreck and ruin.
In the section of Social Economy, Mr. T. M. Mackay, of the shipping firm of James Baines and Co. of Liverpool, read a long and interesting paper on emigration. In the second division of the same section, a paper was read by Mr.
Caioe, on " Prostitution, its Aids and Accessories." Lord John Russell presided during the reading of this paper, and suggested that considerable caution should be exercised by the reporters present in bang with a subject so exceptional. Mr. Caine drew an elaborate picture of the external conditions of prostitution, and fetched out one very important point, namely, that while great numbers of girls become prostitutes from necessity, far the greater proportion become prostitutes deliberately and designedly, to follow the calling just so long as it yields pleasure or profit, and to be given up when it ceases to afford one or the other. But the only remedy suggested by Mr. Caine is in the more stringent enforcement of the law as it exists and of the police regula- tions, and his paper was only intended to induce inquiry and discussion upon the great "social evil" problem. As a remedy for the present condition of particular streets of London, the Reverend J. S. Howson suggested, whether it might not be possible to find something between the registration of France and the absolute license of England. The Reverend Father Nugent suggested a large industrial establishment at the north end of Liverpool, where poor Irish girls, upon the landing in England, might be taken and found temporary employment ; vast num- bers at present being seized upon by designing persons and initiated, by one means or another, into a life of prostitution. Mr. Acton, who read a paper on the subject at the first meeting of the Association last year, said, with reference to the incentives of gain offered to prostitutes, that he considered wages had nothing to do with the matter, when it was a question between earning a few pence and as many pounds. Mr. Acton then read a paper on " Illegitimacy, its Consequences and Remedies," in which he made several practical suggestions, one especially with refe- rence to the conduct of the masters and mistresses of servants who be- come mothers of illegitimate children. The influence of masters and mistresses, he said, instead of being wasted in useless indignation, might best be employed in promoting a marriage between the persons, if it would be judicious ; and in another way the woman might be helped to get back her lost position by being employed as a wet nurse, saving her from destitution, and possibly, from the frightful temptation to child murder—the extent of which Mr. Acton said is appalling.
Several papers were read on the subject of the Restrictive Effects of the Duty upon Paper. No new facts or illustrations were brought to bear on the question ; but the fact was reiterated that some of the most popular periodicals, addressed entirely to the working classes with the view of educating them, pay annually large sums into the Government exchequer instead of being applied to the production of superior works for the advancement of popular education. Other papers were read in this section, on " The Principles of Associative Labour reduced to Prac- tice," on " The Relations between Employers and Employed," on "Friendly Benefit Societies, their Errors and Means of Improvement," and one by Edward Akroyd, M.P. on "Penny Savings-banks, and their Extension by Means of County Associations." These were followed by an interesting paper by Mr. W. Brown, M.P., on " The Disadvantages of the Ordinary System of Money in Education." Mr. Brown put the fact strongly, that the present system of coinage is not formed upon the arithmetic of common numbers,—a scale of successive units, each of which is ten times more than the smaller; and he cited the opinion of Professor De Morgan on the disadvantages of the system, namely, that five hours out of every hundred devoted to all branches of education are lost by the perplexities of the present monetary system. While the pre- sent system of computation, he urged, is calculated to excite disgust on the part of the student, the decimal system is, on the other hand, adapted to interest him and relieve him from many of the difficulties with which he has at present to struggle ; in fact, in the decimal system of coinage, Mr. Brown contended, all the work, pain, toil, and reiteration, necessary to make a fair calculation, was mastered and got over in the learning of the four elementary rules; and he expressed his belief that ultimately the nation would demand and obtain the adoption of such a system. The subject was further illustrated by two other papers, by Mr. James Yates and the Reverend C. H. Bromley.
On Friday evening a banquet, to which ladies were admitted, was held hi St. George's Hall. Four hundred covers were laid and Lord Brough- am presided.
On Saturday the business of the Congress was brought to a conclusion. Before the general " winding-up " business commenced, Lord John Russell read an address which had been prepared by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who was to have presided in the Section of Jurisprudence, but who was prevented by some formality appertaining to his office of "Keeper of her Majesty's conscience" from being present at the Con- roe. The address, which had been prepared with great pains, set forth the purposes of the section, the business of which it was intended te inaugurate. It passed in review the present state of the law, and ("wady advocated a thorough revision, classification, and simplifica- tion of all Parliamentary enactments, in other words, the codification of the laws. We should avail ourselves, says the Lord Chancellor of Ire- land, of all the light and all the information within our power to com- mand, and use our best efforts to make the law consistent with the pre- sent state of opinion, and to have it expressed with grammatical ac- 9 y, and as a model for the consolidation and amendment of the en- tire of our statute law." The reading of the address moved Lord Brough- am to make some highly panegyrical remarks on it. He acid, he hardly remembered anything to have proceeded from any branch of the profession, more especially from the woolsack, which had struck him with greater admiration , and he moved a vote of thanks to the ab- sent author, which was carried unanimously.
With the reading of the Report of the Council the proceedings of the Association were brought to a dose. The report contained a resume of the more important business done in each section, with recommenda- tions as to the steps which should be taken in connexion with several of the subjects on which papers had been read.
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