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PUNISHMENT AND REFORMATION—FRENCH AND ENGLISH SYSTEMS.
Heath Hence, .Stapleton, Bristol, 30th Tune 1856. Sm—The calamity which has aftnted France by the overflow of her great rivers will not 'be without its alleviating consequences. Doubtless, the sympathy evinced in England for the sufferers must strengthen the bonds of alliance between ourselves and our neighbours. The very in- teresting letter which you published last week narrating the services ren- dered by -the youths of Mettray in aiding to protect the city of Tours against its threatened destruction by the floods, will, I trust, cause many a mind to reflect on the value and efficacy of the Reformatory principle. To -the French, the circumstance that an important body like the Municipal-Coun- cil of Tours should have struck a medal in honour of these poor lads, so lately worse than outcasts, will speak in language calculated to produce a very strong impression. On our side of the Channel, we consider ourselves as less affected by demon- stratians of this kind than by the facts which draw them forth ; but surely an evaminafion of the facts themselves can only deepen any impression pro- duced lby such a testimonial. The zeal, courage, devotedness, andpower of endurance, manifested by these lads, their cheerful submission to discipline, and the absence of all attempt to use the position in which accident had placed them to advance any sinister objects, must be received wherever the narrative is read as a conclusive proof that iteformatory institutions are not the toys of sentimental visionaries • that they hold out no incentives either to crime or to indolence ; but that in whatever light they are con- templated, whether in that of a wise benevolence or in that of the nar- rowest economy, they are equally to be approved, supported, and multiplied. With regard to the system of Mettray, in particular, what has occurred -will disabuse the minds of many excellent persons of a belief that the mi- litary observances which are practised at the Colonie are useless and even pernicious. That they are not useless, may, I think, be fairly inferred from the success with which three hundred lads combined their labour, and,. while not shrMking from danger, avoided accident. That they are not pernicious, is-an inference to be drawn from every circumstance of the case.
The inventors of military discipline were driven by a cogent necessity to adopt and to perfect the principle of order and consentaneous action as illustrated in their drill,- but this principle is not essentially connected with the military spirit, and when divorced from it becomes a valuable assistant whenever large bodies of human beings, old or young, are called upon to act in harmonious combination. An army is and must be a -many- handed, many-footed animal, directed by a single head. Therefore, to teach the individual soldier to keep his will in very close subjection to that of his commander, is a lesson essential to the very existence of the body of which he Is a member ; but the object in view at Mettray, as at every other well- conducted Reformatory, is to develop in its inmates the power of self-go- vernment—that is to say, of putting the will under the control of its owner —the owner being so taught and so trained as to acquire the faculty of using this power to his own permanent advantage and to that of the com- munity to which he belongs.
In writing thus, I am far from meaning to disparage our armies, of whom no man thinks more highly. But the end in view being different, there is and must be a correspond g diversity in the means.
The concluding remarks in same It. Verdier &pions the fate of English juvenile offenders in their being subjeted to condemnation, or as we should say, in being convicted; and con- trasts their treatment in this respect with that which the same class meets *with under the law of France. There, if the jury believe that a prisoner under sixteen years of age has committed his offence from thoughtlessness or want of knowledge, he is acquitted, as having acted "sans discernment," just as in England a person of unsound mind who has committed an offence is found "not guilty on the ground of insanity " ; and as with us the lunatic -thus acquitted is detained in confinement, so the courts of France have the power of detaining the juvenile offender until he is twenty years of age' or for any less period. of time. But as regards all other penal consequences his acquittal is eonsidered to be unqualified. Condemnation, however, in France and in England, with regard to such of its attributes as press on the kind spirit of M. Verdier, differs materially. In France, a convicted offender suf- fers "la degradation eivique,"—which, among other privations, excludes him from voting at elections ; prevents him from wearing any decoration— an incapacity very galling to French nature ; he cannot be a juryman; as a witness his evidence is received with many restrictions—for instance, he can attest no instrument ; he can take no part in the family-council, a do- mestic forum endowed with important privileges and much considered ; ex- cept to his own children he cannot fill the office of guardian ; he is deprived of the right to carry arms ; he can neither serve in the National Guard nor in the Army or Navy ; he cannot keep a school, and cannot be employed in one except an servile offices. This is a fearful catalogue of disabilities, and is evidently regarded by M. Beranger, the President of the Court of Cas- satirm, from whose valuable work De la Repression Finale I extract it, as by no means creditable to the French code.
In England both the law and the habits of thinking prevalent among the people place all offenders, and more especially the juvenile class, in a far better position. Nevertheless although I am unable to view the con- sequences of a conviction in inland in the light in which they naturally strike a Frenchman, yet I should be glad to see our law made to conform as regards juvenile offenders with that of the Code Napoleon.
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