SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF JUVENILE VAGRANCY.— Captain Beeterox, R.N.
whose exertions in this cause are deserving the warm praise of every public writer, has succeeded in persuading the Colonial Department to join the Society in sending out twenty young vagrants to be employed in agricultural labour in the Cape of Good Hope; where labour of this description is greatly wanted, and where subsistence in return for it abounds. This is the right way to stop clime, "Catch your thief young," can never be too often repeated. Thieving goes on in a geome- trical progression : the boy of ten steals ten times as much as the boy of twelve, and the boy of fifteen a hundred times,—to say no- thing of the greater atrocity of his offences, and the number of comrades he draws into his society. Two thousand pickpockets might be spread over South Africa, among the different colonists, and. never find a pocket to pick. Besides, who steals with a full stomach, plenty of work, and no bad society ?—they are little likely in those parts to have much society, bad or good. This is the true penitentiary of small crimes. If the scheme is largely and. cleverly managed, it must prove beneficial : we cannot, however, avoid. feeling a species of contempt for the arrangement, on the part of such a Government as ours, by which only half the ex- pense of sending out twenty boys is to be contributed,—while the public daily suffers as it does from robbery and murder. Why ex- periment, in a matter so thoroughly understood, so clear, so mani- festly beneficent to both parties ?
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