LITTLE CHILDREN: THE satire which self-righteousness pronounces -open itself in
its own excesses is often amongst the most effectual counteractives to fanaticism. Few things have happened more injurious to the Ultramontane cause than those eases which are engaging public attention in Dublin, of children snatched' away from their proper guardians. Four of the seven children of a poor sailor's widow are on their way to a Protestant charitable school, and they are carried off from the charge of the matron, it is supposed, by a volunteer missionary on behalf of the 1J1tramontane interest. Miss Aylward, the Lady Superior of an institution which appears to be named after St. ;Vincent de Paul, is asked to account for one Mary Matthews, a child who was in the institution and has disappeared; Miss Aylward, it is said, knowing not whither.
--Alicia and Patrick Murphy, the elder of whom is aged eleven, were in an orphan asylum near Dublin, and they have dis- appeared ; their mother linable to find their retreat. The persons who last had custody of these children are supposed to be, and probably are, very respectable; they profess to have no cog- nizance of the children's custody; and their personal character operates as a shield; while a certain• indulgence is shown even for the extravagance of their conduot, since there is no doubt that in all these cases the motive is religious zeal. When Edmond About oomputed the 'copulation of Rome, " without reckoning the little Mortara" he little thought that his satire was to be inverted by a literal and practical acceptation of it, and that the population of Rome, in a sectarian sense, is te-be recruited in detail by kid- napping so many specimens of the-Mortara tribe, whether belong- ing to Jews or Protestants. The unhappy zealots do not seem to perceive that, presenting themselves after this fashion, in the guise of persons who defy law, who violate natural affection, and contemn good Sitit, they associate the creed which they would serve with everything that is abhorrent and contemptible in the eyes of humanity. Taking a certain enthusiastic and me- taphorical view of the subject, they think that a great conquest has been gained by snatching for the Kingdom of Grace an Alicia Murphy or a John Sherwood; forgetting that it is conduct of this kind, even in a more potent aspect, which has stirred up the hatred and resistance of entire nations. They present Rome in the position of- winning over a little Jew in Italy and half-a- dozen stray-orphans in Ireland, while she is raising her millions in Italy and in Germany, and even strengthening every feeling against her -cause in Protestant countries like England. Far be it from us to speak of the Roman Catholic Church in these terms ; but we draw a distinction between those national majorities in Italy which, while declining to break from "the succession of St. Peter," equally, refuse to hold back from the progress of their age, or to identify their creed with an antiquated bigotry and an ob- solescent tyranny.
This is all very tine, and we are bound to enforce the truth
whenever we can ; yet we English may well look at home. Aye, we may compare ourselves with Ireland, and find the contrast disgraceful to us. The stealing of these children is bad enough, but we have practices in England even more wicked ; we delibe- rately neglect measures which we know would• be successful, in doing what the unhappy zealots in- Ireland desire to do,—that is to say, in redeeming helpless children ; and, as deliberately, we persevere in courses which consign young children to a life of vice and perdition. At the Lambeth Police Office, on Tuesday, three little girls were brought up, all about ten years old, who had previously been placed before the Magistrate on charges of felony ; that is to say, they had been caught stealing, and " the reason why " was soon apparent. Two of them were sisters, and the two mothers of the three girls turned out to be drunken dissi- pated women, whose wretched condition the children are to inherit. Mr. Norton, the magistrate, sentenced them to three weeks' imprisonment, in the hope of transferring them to a re- formatory. But the Governor of the House of Correction at Wandsworth officially writes to the Mit,,,istrate, telling him that there is no reformatory school to which the children could be sent. The Rescue Society has a reformatory at Hampstead, into which children are taken from the visiting justices, when there is a vacancy. In consequence of the delay, for want of jurisdiction to retain the children, there is reason toapprehend that they will be turned into the streets again. In other words, notwithstand- ing the excellent intentions individually of Mr. Norton, of Mr. Theliard Onslow, the Governor of the House of Correction, of the Visiting Justices, and the Committee of the Rescue Society, the intliorities at large so conduct the business of the country, that Stele three little girls who should, in all conscience and common 110119e' be sent to a reformatory, are sent instead to the kennel—to the deformatory.
A few days since, a precisely similar case was before another Police Magistrate. Three little girls had been accused of some petty offences, such as children may commit without being finally condemned as vicious. For, indeed, we could point to
many a man and woman highly esteemed in the highest society, who have, in all technical, sense, been guilty of such " felony," but have been corrected with nothing severer than fostering care and guiding counsel. Mr. Seeker knows this well, and he has been in communication with the Reverend Sydney Turner,—one of the true missionaries for the redemption of lost, classes in this country; so that for these three children there is some hepe. Yet their redemption is exceptional; and it needed all the exertion of zealous and influential men to avoid the failure which. is threat- ened in the Lambeth case, and which befalls in the thousand oases that do, or do not, come before the Magistrates in other courts.
For all the flagrant abuse of these spiritual abductions, that scapegoat for living law-makers and law Ministers, Society, can- not boast of its works in England as compared with Ireland, If we were to lend ourselves to the natural indignation suggested by the knowledge that such incidents are common, wenught apply to Society aforesaid the rebuke by Robert Owen, one of the sui- cerest and most simple of men, to Lord Sidmouth,-, In the early days of his career, when he was only an education. reformer for the humbler. classes, the great Socialist was inspecting some pub- lic place with the Minister of- the day,, who showed him .a male- factor working in bondage. " What do you think of that.?" said Lord Sidmouth. " I think,, my Lord," said Robert Owen, " that that man and you ought to change places." If we are inclined to condemn Society in the same wholesale fashion,, our rigours may be a little arrested by remembering, that each, man of us forms one atom in that same great criminal. We are " Society" ; and these flagrant cases which we encounter every day in the streets, whether of London or Dublin, are only the extreme consequences of the very same ladies that may be charged against ourselves. Every man who possesses a Par- liamentary vote is, in his degree,, answerable for the su- pineness and blundering- of Parliament ; and English Mem- bers are answerable for the fact that, in England, we have still a bad and backward system of .prison discipline. When we have teachers resident amongst. ourselves and a. living example in the whole correctional system of Ireland—with men like C. B. Adderley, AL D. Hill, and Barwick Baker amongst us—we, through our representatives in Parliament, and by our own cold- ness in society, leave the work of finding reformatories to the minority. Our Parliament and our Executive sanctions. the dilatory pleas of a Colonel Jebb, who refuses to believe in.the practicability of a better system of convict discipline, when we have open to our inspection the system carried out by Walter Crofton in Ireland. By the help of practical philosophers like these, we have ascertained that crime, in its very worst aspect, is either bad education or bad natural constitution. In other words, if children grow to be bad men and women, it is either because they are unhappily endowed with an imperfect nature.at birth, or because they are forced through bad schools. And, knowing this, able to see the whole argument, from the cradle to the jail, we still leave things to take their. course, and abet the most depraved of parents by consigning innocent girls to the streets. We read Suffer little children to come unto me,"— and we send them that other way.
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