Page:On the Principles of Criminal Law.djvu/63

56 POSSIBLE AMENDMENT represented (Derbyshire) considerably more than half the criminal offenders were under twenty-one years of age, and during the last seven years 1300 individuals had been tried who were under eighteen, and of these one-half were under fifteen. Thus boys being sent to jail for they hardly knew what, soon became corrupted or depraved, their sense of shame was destroyed, and they were converted into hardened offenders. The bill was dropped, but I should feel much inclined to adopt its provisions so far as to entrust justices with the power of summary conviction in all cases where the criminal was under sixteen years of age, unless he or his father or his mother or nearest relation should require trial by jury, when the child should be removed to prison to take his trial with others.

One other inquiry remains,—i. e., the cost of the proposed system of deportation. In its first operation an increase of expense would be perceivable, but not to any alarming extent; for it has already been shown that a penitentiary in a country where labor is valuable, and the means of sustenance plentiful, soon realizes a considerable sum from the work of its inmates. But if, as it is most confidently anticipated, the effect of the system would be to lessen the number of criminals in this country, then the saving of expenditure which would arise from this diminution of the number of offenders would more than counterbalance any increase on the other side. So far, at any rate, as "juvenile offenders" go, the increase of expense should not prevent the plan proposed from being tried, if in other respects it is good. If a society, by its lack of care and foresight, allow any of its young population to be in such a state that the wonder is rather that crime is abstained from, than that it is committed, the least which that society can do,—if it demand a penalty for the infraction of its laws,—is to take care that the punished child is placed in a situation which allows him the opportunity of becoming eventually a good man. If England have a conscience, she ought not to be satisfied with less.

We next approach those cases in which, although the criminal be an adult, the circumstances attending the