scarcely a question to be argued in such a
case. He agreed in many things that had
fallen from hon. Members in favour of the
Bill; but he thought the noble Lord was
quite right in saying that the question was
not if there should be transportation, but
to find out a place to transport to. The
only point, in fact, was North Australia;
but that he considered to be a highly eligi-
ble spot for the purpose, as in many parts
the land was 2,000 or 3,000 feet above
the level of the sea; and it was next to an
impossibility that the convicts, unarmed
and unprovided for, could work their way
through 12 degrees of latitude down to the
older colonies. He wished to say a word
upon the subject of penal discipline before
the convict went to the colonies, and that
was to tell the House that the gaol was a
very bad place to prepare the convict for a
colony. Indeed, it was of all places the
very worst.
The colonist was obliged to
"rough it," to cook his own dinner, to
make his own bed, and to make himself
useful generally; but in the gaol the pri-
soner's wants were all supplied-he had no
occasion for he was not even allowed-to
exercise his skill, and the consequence
was, that when such a person found him-
self in a colony he was helpless-more
helpless than he was before he was put
in gaol.

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS BILL.

SECOND READING.

which the late Parliament, much to its credit, had adopted. It was calculated that the number of children, in this Kingdom alone, who might be dealt with under a measure of this nature, was about 50,000. At present no means of education whatever were provided for these unfortunate children. The late Mr. Tufnell said that they were the class of children for whose education it was most important that the State should make provision, and that their redemption from idle and dissolute habits would do more to promote the true interests of the country than any number of gaols and gibbets. In fact, these children formed the basis of an hereditary class of criminals, the insuperable difficulty of disposing of whom the House had to-night been discussing for some hours. He did not think it desirable to go too far in establishing new institutions for new classes of cases, but this Bill merely sought to render available existing institutions-for instance, primary schools, workhouse schools, district schools, while reformatories would be kept distinct for criminal children alone. These would altogether make a provision of education for a great number of children, who were now totally without any means of obtaining it. He did not claim any credit on his own part for the measure, which had been brought forward, as he had said, by Sir S. Northcote, and he regretted that that gentleman was not now a Member of the House, that he might carry out his own plan. A similar system to that contemun-plated by this Bill had been applied to Scotland, on the proposition of the hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop), and had proved most efficient. He (Mr. Adderley) hoped the same benefit would be extended to England, and he wished to call attention to the circumstance that this Bill would carry out the measure which had been introduced by Mr. Speaker three

Order for Second Reading read. MR. ADDERLEY said, it would be necessary for him to trespass upon the attention of the House at any length in moving the second reading of this Bill, for, as more than two-thirds of the present Members occupied seats in the late Parliament, they would be fully acquainted with the principles and details of the measure which was introduced during the last Session by his hon. Friend Sir Stafford North-years ago and assented to by Parliament, cote. The principle of the Bill was then empowering the guardians of the poor to discussed at considerable length on the make provision for educating the children second reading, and met with general ap- of out-door paupers. The present measure proval. It had gone into Committee pro would supplement that Act, by enabling formá, and but for the dissolution of Par- the guardians to educate all vagrant chilliament he believed the measure would dren in industrial schools. He believed have become law. The object of the Bill the only probable opponent of this Bill was was to render available such private insti- the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk tutions, in the nature of industrial schools, (Mr. Bowyer), who had opposed it last Sesin England and Wales, as might be adapt- sion, on the ground that it had a proselyed for the care and education of vagrant tizing tendency, and that the establishment children, and to enforce, as far as possible, of these industrial schools was intended parental care. It was, indeed, intended as a as a means of converting Roman Catholic supplement to those reformatory measures children to Protestantism.

He thought

{COMMONS}

the hon. and learned Gentleman did his co-religionists in this country great injustice by raising such an objection, for no one could doubt they were both rich and zealous enough to provide refuges for the vagrant children connected with their own religious community. By the Bill he proposed the Roman Catholics would be placed upon a perfect equality with other bodies. Indeed, he might have anticipated some objections from his hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Spooner), upon the ground that no distinction was made in respect to Roman Catholics, but certainly none from that body itself. He trusted the hon. Member for Dundalk would see that his objections formed no ground at least for opposing the second reading of the Bill, as, if he wished to introduce any clause to protect Roman Catholic interests, he could do so in Committee. If, however, the hon. Gentleman persisted in opposing the second reading, he and those who voted with him would place themselves in the invidious position of saying that, because they could not get provisions exactly as they wished to have them, therefore they would oppose the principle of industrial schools for the reformation of all vagrant children throughout England. The hon. Member concluded by moving that the Bill be read a second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time.

MR. BOWYER, while fully admitting the honourable and benevolent intentions of the promoters of the Bill, still felt it an imperative duty to oppose the second reading. He objected to the Bill upon two grounds. The first ground was, that the Bill had not been sufficiently considered, as it was only read a first time on Friday last, and had only been delivered to hon. Members on that morning. Many hon. Members had not seen the Bill at all. He might be told that the Bill was the same that had been introduced last Session; but he replied that there were very many Members of that House who were not in the last Parliament. Besides, they had all lately been engaged in transactions very interesting to themselves, and, he trusted, beneficial to the country, but which had not left them much time to think over the provisions of former Bills. the Bill had been one of small moment he If, however, would have raised no objection as to time, but upon examining it he found a measure of great he might say-of dangerous im

Mr. Adderley

portance. It introduced principles totally new to our jurisprudence. It was acknowledged that our present laws as to vagrancy were the most invidious portion of our jurisprudence. Those laws were, to use a technical legal term, odious. Foreigners frequently asserted that poverty in England was treated as a crime. The proposed Bill provided that, whenever a child begging or vagrancy, the magistrate should was taken into custody upon a charge of have power to send such child to any certified school, where he or she would be liable to be detained until attaining the age of fifteen years. It was all very well to call such establishments schools, but really they would be prisons, in which children might be kept away from their parents until reaching the age of fifteen years. That, he contended, was an interference with the parental authority of the poor which should be regarded with extreme care, if not with jealousy. what a charge of begging or vagrancy might mean. They all knew any child he found selling matches or A policeman might take up flowers, or sweeping a crossing, or (unless he belonged to Lord Shaftesbury's favoured brigade) cleaning shoes, for in the city no one was allowed to clean shoes unless he belonged to a brigade which had a religious all knew that many of the children in as well as an industrial organization. They London who sold matches and swept crossging, but he should be sorry to see the ings did so rather as a pretence for begday when any one would advise so unChristian a course as to put a stop to the harmless industry of those poor people, although it might be mixed up with what was called begging. He thought there. had been of late too much interference with the poor, and he hoped the House would not carry that interference much further. His second objection arose, he admitted, upon more delicate grounds. The Roman Catholics in this country were in a minority, and, as a minority were liable to go to the wall unless they kept a sharp look out, they were obliged to take every means of protecting themselves, even at the risk of sometimes being placed in an invidious position. ber for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) The hon. Memhad spoken of the means of the Roman greatly mistaken in supposing that those Catholics in this country, but he was means were at all large as compared with the Protestant bodies. Church had the benefit of all the endowThe Protestant

this would render the clause perfectly nugatory. He hoped the House would appreciate the motives he had urged for opposing the Bill, and, although he did not impute to the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) any intention to proselytize by means of this Bill, yet the Bill would, nevertheless, have that effect, and be most oppressive to a very poor class of people. For these reasons he should oppose the second reading of the Bill.

ments bequeathed by munificent founders | rity to pay the expense of removal. Now, to the Roman Catholic Church; it had considering the poverty of these people tithes, and, although perhaps only for a short time, church rates. He would point out to the House the working of this Bill with regard to the poorer classes of Roman Catholics. In London, Liverpool, and other large towns there was a numerous class of poor Irish children exercising the miserable employments to which he had already called the attention of the House; and if the vagrancy law were strictly enforced the greater portion of these children would be brought under its operation. When this Bill was first introduced there was in it an extraordinary provision by which the police were entitled to take up children without any offence whatever being committed, and bring them before a Magistrate. The hon. Baronet (Sir S. Northcote) who then had charge of the Bill made an alteration in this respect, and provided that the police should not be at liberty to take up children without any charge, but when they were brought upon a charge they were to be dealt with according to the provisions of the Bill. This improvement was, however, rather nominal than real. The police did not now sweep the streets of these poor children, because the magistrates would not know how to deal with them when in custody; but this Bill enabled magistrates to dispose of them. The children might be brought upon a charge of vagrancy, and then the magistrate had power to send them to a school. In the first instance all the schools would, no doubt, be Protestant-very good schools probably for purposes of education -but it should be borne in mind that Roman Catholics deemed it important that these children should keep their religion. They wished to see them educated, but in their view the most important thing was that they should keep their religion. They would, however, be sent to Protestant schools, where they would lose their religion. The Bill provided that before a child was sent to school notice was to be given to the parents or the persons with whom the child had been residing; but these poor people were in very humble circumstances, and generally speaking were so afraid of the police and of the magistrates, that they would not come forward to claim a child in such a case, so that, practically, the notice would have no effect. But supposing parents or relations did come forward, they could not remove the child, if they disapproved the school, unless they gave secu

LORD ROBERT CECIL could not see the force of the hon. and learned Gentleman's objection founded on the shortness of time given to peruse the Bill. It was a Bill of only seven pages and could be read in a quarter of an hour, and besides, it was exactly the same Bill that was brought forward in the last Parliament. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to wish the establishment of the Lazzaroni system of Italy in this country. He told the House that to take up vagrants who were guilty of begging and keep them in prison disgraced us in the eyes of foreigners, and that we ought to assimilate the law of England, in this respect, to that of foreign countries. [Mr. BOWYER: No, no!] He could only say that the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the opinion of foreigners on the subject, and represented them as calling our vagrancy laws a disgrace; but certainly the Lazzaroni system of the Italian States was not a wholesome system, or one that ought to be copied in this country. If the hon. and learned Gentleman had read the little book containing the Standing Orders of the House he would have seen that it was not competent for any Member of the House to call any statute of the realm "odious ;" and when he used that term he ought in strictness to have been called to order. [Mr. BOWYER said he had spoken it merely in a legal sense.] It might be a legal expression, but in that House it was certainly a disrespectful one. The object of this Act was not to increase the stringency of the vagrancy laws, but to prevent children from falling under their operation. It was not true, as the hon. and learned Gentleman said, that a child could be taken and kept in prison till the age of fifteen in spite of parents or relatives. If the parent or any other person could show that the child had a chance of getting an honest way of living, that moment the child would be restored.

The hon. and learned

vour to introduce such Amendments as children out of the hands of their parents would separate the agricultural from the for the period proposed by the Bill. In urban parishes. the agricultural districts it was of the utmost importance that a child should learn the use of his hands as well as of his head, and to keep a boy at school up to the age of fifteen would altogether unfit him for earning his bread at a future period of his life. He had another objection to the Bill. By the new Poor Law Act the management of the poor was placed in the hands of Boards of Guardians representing the ratepayers. Previous to the passing of that Act it was alleged that some of the Magistrates were too anxious to exceed the power assigned them by law, and to make extravagant charges upon their parishes; and there could be no doubt that the administration of the Poor Law by Boards of Guardians was generally preferred to that by Justices of the peace. Now, the present Bill reintroduced the old principle of antagonism between Justices and Boards of Guardians, and upon that ground, among others, he could not vote for the second reading. He believed, moreover, that the children in workhouse schools-at least in those with which he was acquainted-were better fed, clothed, and taught than the children of any labourer could possibly be; and there was, therefore, no justification for taxing the industrious classes to give to the children of the profligate a better education than the independent labourer could afford to his own children. His objections on the score of pecuniary expense were, however, far inferior to those he felt from other reasons, as his main objections to the Bill were that it attached an enormous punishment to a trifling offence, and provided for an unjustifiable interference between parent and child.

MR. BARROW felt the strongest objection to the Bill as being an interference with the parental authority, which ought not to be tolerated in any free country. It was a perfectly superfluous piece of legislation. If its object was to remove children who were in the way of crime, or who had become criminals to a certain extent, that was already provided for by the reformatory schools, and the establishment of other schools would only bewilder those who were disposed to forward institutions already established. The child who was found beginning a course of crime might be taken up and sent to a reformatory school. He was quite ready to admit the necessity of having some class of schools intermediate between the ordinary schools and the gaols, and therefore it was that he was anxious that the experiment of the reformatory schools should be fairly tried, but he objected to the establishment of a second set of schools before that experiment had been tried. He had the strongest objection, too, to the manner in which the provisions of this Bill were to be carried out, and particularly to the provisions which allowed the policeman to select the Justices of the peace before whom he was to take the vagrant child whom he had apprehended, instead of taking him, as a matter of course, before the next meeting of justices in the ordinary petty sessions, and having the hearing in open court. The Bill carried the principle of the Reformatory Bill to an extraordinary length. By the law of the land an adult vagrant in full knowledge of the consequences of all his actions could only be punished with a month's imprisonment for the first offence, two months for the second, while for the third he must be tried at Sessions, and then could only be sentenced to six months' imprisonment; but under this Bill a child found begging in the streets might be subjected to an indefinite term of imprisonment from the time when he was apprehended - which might be at the age of five years-until he was fifteen years old. This was an amount of punishment so entirely inconsistent with the crime that he could not consent under any circumstances to vote for such a proIn the Reformatory Bill a child who had been convicted of felony even could not be detained for more than five years. He would not enter into the political inquiry whether it would be right to interfere with the labour-market by taking

SIR GEORGE GREY did not intend to offer any objection to the second reading of the Bill, although he confessed that, the Bill having been delivered only that day, he had not been able to read it through. He supposed, however, that it was the same measure, somewhat amended, which was read a second time before the dissolution of the last Parliament, and committed pro formá, with a view to the introduction of certain amendments. In the discussion of the Bill, taking place as it did on the night after the debate and division on the Chinese question, he was unfortunately unable to take any part. If so, it would require the most careful consideration in Committee, and he hoped its Mover would give to the House ample opportunity for examining its provisions before the arrival of the next