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ready to fall into evil courses as those around him.

good order and economy, children are not admitted into the factories until the age of twelve; and at Nantes and Mulhouse there are schools especially established for apprentices, in which instruction is carried to a considerable extent, and the master's claim

M. Frégier prefaces his remarks on the effects of religion as a preservative from vice, by a long exposition of the present state of Christianity in France. This account goes to the startling length of assert-upon the time of the young people coming that religious faith has in effect ceased to exist throughout the nation, and that Christianity has no longer any hold on the public mind, as a revelation from Heaven. France was the well-spring from which nearly a century ago bold infidelity, nay, avowed atheism, flowed far and wide over many of the continental nations. Our own happy country, strong in its pure and firm Protestantism, was one of the few which, after a brief period of agitation, withstood the shock unharmed. We had believed that of late years this pernicious tide had been flowing back upon France in waves of fearful and still augmenting violence; but if M. Frégier be correct, she has no cause to fear the contagious impiety of any other country:

'The religious crisis,' he says, 'which is now in progress in Germany, was brought to a conclusion in France half a century ago.'

mences only after the breakfast-hour. There are no such specific institutions in Paris; but the more respectable operatives are in the habit, when they bind a child to a trade, to stipulate that he shall be allowed a portion of each day for completing his education, and in return for this indulgence they either pay the master an equivalent in money for the time which he gives up, or the period of apprenticeship is lengthened. It is evident that in France education is carried further among the lower classes, both in the extent of time devoted to it and in the range of the things taught, than it is with us; and we are compelled to say that on this most important subject there is much which we might learn from our neighbours.

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The greatest danger to which schoolchildren are exposed is that of contamination by intercourse with the worthless vagabonds who crowd the streets. We most firmly believe that our author check this as much as possible, M. Fréspeaks too broadly-even if, as we suppose, gier strongly urges that each school should he speaks of Paris rather than of France; have its own separate and enclosed playbut if we were to take him literally, we ground, and that the holidays should be as could not be surprised when he goes on to few as possible. In poor families, where tell us that in France, even among the the parents are constantly employed at a highest orders of the church, what we in distance from home, and are unable to England should call gross infidelity is coun- watch their children, these intervals of idletenanced; or to find that, in treating of mess are periods of great danger. To sureligion as one of the pillars of order, he persede them, and introduce in their stead looks at it only as a system of moral disci- a system of daily school recreation under pline, and gravely places singing classes' in the eye of the master or his assistant, the very foremost rank of the means which would, he says, be an improvement, the the Roman Catholic Church possesses for importance of which can scarcely be calrecovering its hold on the minds of the peo-culated. Our author is also of opinion that ple. Even this division of religious duty is to be indulged in, it appears, only by children or adult males, being too exciting for grown-up females!

A large portion of our author's second volume is devoted to the subject of education. Among the points of difference between the two countries, those which chiefly strike us as offering matter worthy of our consideration, and if possible of our adoption, are the anxiety shown in France to postpone to as late an age as possible the period at which children are permitted to enter the factories, and the system of continuing their education after their working life has commenced. At Sedan, where the operative classes are remarkable for

the abundant diffusion among the labouring classes of well selected books, moral, scientific, and entertaining, might be rendered a powerful instrument of social improvement. He warmly advocates the establishment of public libraries for the poor, which at present are unknown in Paris; and alludes in terms of high praise to the plan, at once ingenious and economical, on which such libraries are conducted in some parts of Scotland. *

* A central library is established, with a certain number of dependent libraries attached to it. Supposing the number of these to be five, each of them of books; retains them during half a year; and then is furnished with a sixth part of the entire collection transfers them to the next station; and so they are

In discussing the important subject of the residences of the poor, M. Frégier, whilst he admits the extreme difficulty which must attend their improvement on a general scale, urges in the strongest terms the duty of making the attempt. It is the government only, he says, that can do it with any prospect of success, as the expenses attendant on the erection of buildings of the nature required are so great in comparison with the rents to be obtained from them, that it never could become a profitable investment of capital; and he instances some speculations of this kind which were made in 1823-4-5, and which for that reason failed entirely. The account which he gives of the inferior classes of lodging-houses, and more especially of the lodgings that are let out for the night, are shocking; l'imagination, malgré sa fecondité et sa hardiesse, ne saurait atteindre, en cette matière, à la hauteur de la réalité;' yet we fear that still more frightful pictures might be drawn by any individual who, with energy and courage equal to his, should penetrate into the lowest abysses of London. Some widely extended

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moved on, half yearly, from station to station, until they return to the central depôt. Thus every division of the library completes its circuit in three years, and each locality has the use of six times as many books as its own separate outlay could conmand. We should rejoice to see this plan adopted upon a liberal scale throughout England. Under judicious management, and with a careful but not too severe selection of books, it might at the present time, when the intellectual activity of the lower orders is rapidly augmenting, do the State incalculable good.

During the last three years barrack libraries have been established for the use of our army, both at home and abroad, and liberal funds to maintain them have been voted by parliament. These libraries are open from two o'clock to eight, and the soldiers who wish to avail themselves of the arrangement pay a subscription of one penny a month. Strict regulations are established for the due preservation of the books, which, under certain conditions, are allowed to be taken by the men to their quarters. The system has worked admirably; the number of subscribers rapidly increases; and the library and the benches at its entrance are crowded with attentive readers. Very many are the instances in which young men, the whole of whose vacant time was formerly spent in the alehouse, have shaken off their habits of intemperance and become zealous and regular students. Great judgment has been shown by our military authorities in the selection of the books. Some are of a grave and religious nature, many are historical, many scientific; those relating to travels and voyages are numerous, and a large proportion are works of imagination, both prose and verse. This is wise-whether homilies and theological treatises are or are not the best of works is not the question: books such as these will but rarely be read by young soldiers. We believe that in another department of government, where the system of libraries was adopted, and where the books were almost exclusively of a religious nature, the result has been far less satisfactory.

measure of reformation on this head is, we conceive, a matter of urgent duty, nay of necessity. As our population becomes more and more dense, the present state of things leads to deeper and deeper shades of depravity; and each year the danger to the health of the metropolis becomes more imminent. Each year also, as the lower orders become more intelligent and more sensibly alive to the advantages of social order, the discomfort of such abodes is more acutely felt by them. We are aware that the subject has of late been much under discussion; and we sincerely hope that the difficulties, great as they are, which surround it, will not dishearten the patriotic members of parliament who have directed their attention towards it.

The number of persons living together in illicit connexion would appear to be proportionately much greater in Paris than in London. One especial cause of the extent of this evil is stated by M. Frégier to be the great expense of the formal instruments which the law requires prior to marriage. It is true that in Paris itself these are delivered gratuitously, but only to those persons who are inscribed as indigent; and when it is necessary to obtain the documents from a distant part of the country, the expense becomes so great, and the process so difficult, as frequently among the poorer classes to render marriage almost impossible. The disadvantage of this state of things became so apparent, that a society was established under the title of La Sociéte charitable de Saint François Régis, for the express purpose of remedying it. The members meet every Sunday evening to aid and assist all the in Paris, as well as those who have already well-disposed and poverty-stricken lovers illicitly united themselves. The applicants on each day amount to nearly 300; and from the institution of the Society in 1826, to the 1st January, 1837, it had, with an annual revenue not exceeding 10,000 francs, afforded assistance to the celebration of the marriages, civil and religious, of nearly 8000 indigent persons, and to the legitimating of many thousands of natural children, of whom the greater part had been removed by their parents from the Hospice des Enfans Trouvés. The society has had the great satisfaction of knowing that in nearly all the marriages of this nature the first object of solicitude on the part of the parents was to reunite their children to themselves; and that they have subsequently brought them up carefully and well. A similar society on a small scale, but with equally beneficial results.

has been established among the Protest-lute wonderment. Were their vulgarity ants at Paris. They exist also in many of the provincial cities.

We have no space to follow our author through his disquisition on the principles of taxation, as affecting the lower classes of society. The gist of his argument is to prove that indirect taxation is not only just towards them, but that it tends to their moral and social amelioration.*

and vice redeemed by any talent, any devel opment of character, any graces of language, our surprise would be less: but nothing can be conceived more entirely devoid of any portion of literary merit than the mass of these works. They are written in a clumsy, matter-of fact, jog-trot style, with about as much life and fire as would suit an engineer's report on a railM. Frégier denounces loudly the mis- way; and in their mode of dealing with chievous tendency of the French drama- their staple commodities, they are immeathe malefactor, as well as the romantic divi- surably inferior to the Newgate Calendar sion of it; for our neighbours at the present or the Police Reports; for they have none moment are, like ourselves, great admirers of that truth of detail which gives interest of the Newgate style of literature. As to those more elevated productions. The play-going amounts to a passion with all the writers of this class have one, and one only, lower classes of the French, but with device for obtaining popular favour-that children and young apprentices especially, of conglomerating crimes. Every page our author is convinced that, were the the- must have its two or three catastrophes; tre strictly and judiciously controlled, in- and they dibble in their atrocities, one to stead of being, as at present, most injurious every twenty lines, as regularly as if they to society, it might be rendered the means were planting cauliflowers. With them of great moral good. We must decline everything depends on the abundance of going into this question at present; the blood and brains-not their own certainly; abominable immorality of the French dra- and provided the murders, robberies, rapes, mas and novels of the day has been of treasons, trials, and executions are suffici late sufficiently exposed in our pages-andently numerous-and they can get some we see M. Frégier quotes parts of our arti-poor artist to prostitute his pencil for their cles on these subjects without being aware illustration-the sale is sure to be extenof their source. Our disgust at the bad sive, and the minor theatres lose no time in taste which can eagerly accept such pro- dramatizing the new masterpiece. ductions as overwhelm ourselves at present, is, we confess, stronger than our alarm at their demoralizing effects. Our ephemeral dramas, which by the bye are vastly inferior to the similar productions of the French stage, are many of them mere remodellings of the mass of periodical trash which is now poured out upon us in a still increasing flood-each monthly issue more worthless than the last. How such works can be tolerated by the public is matter of abso

In June, 1793, a motion was brought forward in the Convention that the poorer classes should be exonerated from all taxation. Cambon, the great financial authority of the time, strenuously resisted the proposition. Robespierre opposed it also; and M. Frégier gives, as a legislative curiosity, the following passage from his speech:-'J'ai partagé un moment l'erreur qu'on vient d'émettre, je crois même l'avoir écrite quelque part; mais j'en reviens aux principes, et je suis éclairé par le bon sens du peuple, qui sent que l'espèce de faveur qu'on lui présente est une injure. En effet, si vous décrétez constitutionnellement que la misère excepte de l'honorable obligation de contribuer aux besoins de la patrie, vous décrétez l'avilissement de la partie la plus pure de la nation; vous décrétez l'aristocratie des richesses; bientôt il s'établirait une classe d'ilotes; et l'égalité, la liberté périraient pour jamais. N'ôtez point aux citoyens ce qui leur est le plus nécessaire, la satisfaction de présenter à la république le denier de la veuve.' The motion was thrown out by the Convention.

The suggestions of our author for the prevention of crime among the middle class are limited to the establishment of boarding-houses and circles of reunion for the students at the university, and evening lecture rooms for the young men employed in commercial pursuits. Great benefit would, he conceives, result to the students from the establishment of boarding-houses under judicious management; but the system to be enforced in them must be moderate, or it will disgust and drive away the young men. It should not exceed in strictness that to which they would be subject if residing with their own families. He is not aware that more than two of these establishments exist at present in Paris.

'The shopmen and commercial clerks are in general little educated; the establishment of evening lecture rooms for these young men would be attended with important advantages both to themselves and to their employers: these latter should defray all the expenses attending them. One lecture room in each of the fortyeight Arrondissements would be sufficient to accomplish this object; and they should be placed under the immediate control of the municipal authorities.'

These suggestions are well meant; but

here, as in all similar cases, the misfortune | his conviction that this singular impulse on is, that the persons who would avail them- the public mind will be of short duration. selves of these advantages would be the moral and well-conducted; the vicious and ill-regulated would reject them altogether.

From the preventive M. Frégier proceeds to the remedial means—that is, the means by which existing vice and crime can best be controlled and diminished; and he chiefly directs his attention to the three vices most widely extended and most pregnant with crime-drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution.

'It is,' he says, 'an easy task for any political economist to point out a variety of plans which, if they could be carried into effect, would abate the vice of drunkenness: but, unfortunately, all these are good only in theory, and are means of prevention rather than cure. That all factorychildren, whose parents are notorious drunkards, should be boarded and lodged by the manufacturer who employs them, and thus screened from the contagion of bad example at home, is one of these:—that all the children of moral and well conducted parents should perform their work at home, and by so doing, avoid the demoralising effects of the vice-crowded factory, is another: that societies under royal patronage should be established to procure for the entire mass of the working classes amusement, combined with instruction, during the Sundays and the other periods of idleness, is a third. All these plans would be excellent were they not impracticable. To subject every drunkard to punishment has been tried in Germany without success. To increase the duties on wine and spirits has been recommended; but in a vinegrowing country like France this would be a check to industry, and it would be unjust to wards the sober portion of the community. Another plan is uniformly to publish in the news papers an account of all the accidents, fatal quarrels, and crimes resulting from drunkenness. As from the extension of education, every one will in a few years be able to read, this public exposure would tend powerfully to check the

vice.'

We greatly doubt it; and, indeed, of all the suggestions brought forward in this section, there appears to us to be only one from which any important practical good might result. It is, that systematically, and by a mutual compact among all the manufacturers and master artificers, every habitual drunkard should be expelled from their establishments, however able a workman he may be. No doubt, if this system were generally and rigidly adopted, there would result from it, after a time, an important improvement in the habits of the working classes. M. Frégier does not advert to the temperance movement in Ireland and England. As he cannot be ignorant of it, his silence may, we presume, be attributed to

Tolerated gambling-houses no longer exist in France; and the plan adopted by the government, of first suppressing them in the provincial towns, and then attacking the grand establishments in Paris, was politic and wise. It would appear, however, that the evil, if abated, is very far from being conquered. The vigilance of the police has indeed, successfully put down the houses established for the specific purpose of clandestine gambling; but it has hitherto been foiled by the augmented numbers and activity of the maisons à parties. In these, high and unfair play is carried on, under the specious exterior of ordinary visiting, to a far greater extent than formerly; and our author is of opinion that alterations in the penal code are imperatively called for to meet these subtle evasions of the law.

Two diametrically opposite systems have been proposed for the reformation of the unhappy victims of prostitution. The advocates of the one, filled with the benevolent desire of reinstating these women in the honest ranks of society, assert that it is the duty of the civil authorities to facilitate this object by assiduously labouring to introduce among them habits of order, forethought, and economy. The advocates of the other system reprobrate, as vitally detrimental to public morals, any measures which would tend to blend these degraded beings with the respectable portion of the community, or to lessen the ignominy which attaches to them, and which forms one of the strongest safeguards, perhaps the strongest of all, to female virtue: they fear, also, that any improvements in the habits of these women would, in proportion as it lessened prostitution, augment illicit connexions more irreparably detrimental to the happiness of families. Far from promoting any objects of this nature, they are anxious to make the line of demarcation more clearly apparent than it is at present; and would willingly bring back the ancient laws which restricted women of this class to certain parts of each city, and obliged them to wear a peculiar dress. Our author inclines evidently to the milder of these systems, and so did also his great authority, Parent-Duchâtelet : in England this controversy is not likely to be agitated.

It is quite evident that the science of prison discipline is, of all others, the one nearest our author's heart; and his ardent partisanship in favour of the system of solitary confinement, leads him, as we have already stated, to devote a very undue portion of his volumes to this especial subject.

upon the local revenues would almost amount to a prohibition; in all it would be severely felt: but the object is one of such vital importance, that, when the superior advantages of the separate system shall no longer be a matter of dispute, the legislature will, we have no doubt, lend a willing aid to extend it throughout the kingdom. The first expense is the only real difficulty; for although the charges of superintendence will be increased, this is a trivial consideration, and will be compensated for a hundred-fold by the gradual diminution of crime.

We shall not attempt to follow him through | many counties in England this demand the details; the question being one which we but recently discussed, and which, if not actually decided in this country, may be considered as on the very eve of being so. The balance of evidence, we think, leaves little doubt that the bodily health does not suffer by even the most strict system of solitary confinement, but the case is by no means so clear with regard to the mind. Here, although the evidence is far from conclusive, there is strong ground for believing that long-protracted confinement, in a state of constant and absolute solitude, will injure the functions of the brain, and induce insanity, or permanent mental im- M. Frégier claims for his country the becility. The matter is one of such import- merit of extending a much greater degree ance, that the only safe thing to do is at of paternal solicitude towards a convict on once to assume the fact to be so, and to act his dismissal from prison than is usual in on that assumption. Confine a prisoner in England. In France, a liberal portion of a separate cell, interdict him absolutely and the profits of his work is paid to him when entirely from all communication whatever, he is discharged, and he is thus not comeither by eye or mouth, with his fellow-pelled by actual want, as is too frequently prisoners; but give him employment and the case in England, at once to resume his instruction-let him, in the course of each career of crime. This is wise and worthy day, be visited by carefully selected gaolers, of imitation: but the system established in by the master artisan who has to superin- France for the surveillance of liberated tend his work, by the schoolmaster, the phy-prisoners, the convict-passports given them, sician, and the chaplain-and experience and the societies of patronage,' as they has proved that there will not be the slightest cause to fear any injury to the mind, however long such a course of solitary confinement shall continue, be it for years, or even for the whole of life. There is also the strongest evidence to prove, that amelioration of character, radical and permanent reformation, is the cheering and encouraging result in very numerous instances. Under these modifications-and they may now be considered as points the necessity of which is generally conceded-the insulation of prisoners may be pronounced to be the best and most successful system which has yet been devised to punish crime and amend the criminal.

are called, the object of which is to facilitate their re-introduction into society, are considered by our author as failures; and he is of opinion, that, except as relates to the younger classes of criminals, they should be abolished altogether. He is decided in his condemnation of our penal settlements; the formation of agricultural colonies in the mother country for the employment of liberated prisoners he demonstrates to be attended with insurmountable objections; and the result at which he arrives is, that the best chance to render the liberated criminal an inoffensive and useful member of society is to give him moral instruction, and the knowledge of some useful trade, during the period of his detention; and that, when he is again thrown upon society, such funds shall be supplied as shall give him the time and means of fixing himself in some honest course of life.

The great additional outlay necessary in the construction of a building where several hundred convicts are to be completely separated from each other, is a weightier objection than it may appear to be at first sight. Every portion of the establishment must be more elaborately fitted up than at With this subject M. Frégier concludes present; the exercise-grounds must be his treatise. Differing from him on many multiplied, the passages and corridors must points, compelled to smile at some passages, be peculiarly constructed, and the entire and to express our reprobation of others, structure must be more extensive and more the final impression which his pages have complicated. In some instances, the exist-produced upon us is one of respect and ing prisons might, by a considerable out- gratitude.

lay, be rendered applicable to this new mode of confinement, but in the majority of cases it would be necessary that entirely new buildings should be erected. In

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