tutions of New York! Is this the fulfilment of the Gospel of charity, or of the Sermon on the Mount, or of the broad principles of Christianity? Perhaps, rather, it is the Rev. Mr. Pierce's elastic system of religion. * Compare these humiliating facts with the self-congratulatory reports on "Emigration" of the Children's Aid Society, which in 1871 sent three hundred and seven of these little wards of the city to the same state of Ohio. At page 10 we read:

"Every year we expect that the opposition of a very bigoted and ignorant class will materially lessen this the most effective of our charitable efforts. We have surpassed, however, owing to the energy of our Western agents, the results of every previous equal period, in the labors of the past year.

"Crowds of poor boys have thronged the office or have come to the lodging

houses for a chance to go West'; great numbers of very destitute but honest families have appealed to us for this aid, and our agents have frequently conveyed parties of a hundred and more. The

give an extract from the Twentieth Annual Report, showing even from the mouths of those who practise it as a good work what a crying evil this is, and confirming the extracts we have given in reference to the sales of children in Ohio:

"Removing and replacing children is one of the important functions of the agency. Our children are first placed on trial, and in nearly every company some have to be replaced over and over again before they are permanently settled. But even after indentures have been executed, new developments often compel removals. Such are the weaknesses of human nature, and such the instability of human affairs, that, without provision to meet the exigencies consequent upon them, cases of extreme hardship and inhumanity would be fre quent. They who have not had experience in this kind of work are not apt to realize, and it is often difficult to persuade them of, the imperative need of such provision. Children will not unfrequently get into improper hands in spite of every precaution, and in many cases success is

more or less problematical. Death of employers also, and change of circumstances, are often the occasion of removals. Not

a month goes by that does not furnish cases

as before; and there has been less complaint the past year than usual of bad habits and perverse tempers. The larger boys are still restless as ever, and inclined to change their places where higher inducements are offered. But this characteristic they have in common with our whole laboring class."

Again:

"Emigration. This department has worked most successfully the past year. A larger number has been removed from the city than ever before."

It would seem, however, that the experience of the New York Juvenile Asylum, though still persevering in this traffic as a good work, has not been as satisfactory as that of the Children's Aid Society. We will

mischief, and irreparable evil would result. A little familiarity with the field work of this agency would convince its most obdurate opponent that to leave children without recourse among strangers in a strange land is an unjustifiable procedure."

Apart from the inhumanity of this procedure, from its unchristian character, from its proselytizing effects, we protest against it in the name of law, of right, and of human liberty. The common law of England is our heritage, and by that common law "no power on earth, except the authority of parliament, can send any subject of England out of the land against his will; no, not even a criminal. The great charter declares that no freeman shall be banished unless by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land; and by the habeas corpus act it is enacted that no subject of this realm who is an inhabitant of England, Wales, or Berwick shall be sent into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or other places beyond the seas." * Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries on American Law (ii. 34), claims the same proud privilege as one of the absolute rights of American citizens, and, while declaring that "no citizen can be sent abroad," states that the constitutions of several of the states of our confederacy contain express provisions for bidding transportation beyond the those two charges from our remark, when we say that the other six charges, constituting the gravamen of the prosecution, are not only sustained in whole or in part by nearly one hundred witnesses, but, with all deference to the five aldermen out of ten who found most of them not proved, we think that no unbiassed reader of the heavily laden and sad volume before us, no true philanthropist, no man of true charity, can fail to pronounce the word guilty as to all or some part of every one of the first, second, third, fourth, seventh, and eighth charges. We are sorry to be forced to the conviction that the testimony is overwhelming. There are cases of punishment cruel in the extreme-some have called them inhuman, and even brutal-inflicted on about sixty boys; and, while nearly every page shows this, we refer particularly to pages 112, 123, 172, 234, 238, 274, 279, 280, 281, 289, 290, 295, 318, 364, 366, 375, 379, 383, 387, 388, 402, 403, 410, 414, 416, 419, 421, 425, 432, 437, 440, 446. See evidences more particularly referring to the use of the loaded whip, page 378; the strap, the cat, the strings, 286, 339; the butt, 492; blood drawn, 364, 485; terrorism, 239, 269, 270, 305, 371, 418, 424, 425, 492; whipping little boys over the knuckles with a bunch of keys, 146, 147; kicking, 447, 485, 526, and 323 of vol. ii.; boys struck on the head with a hammer, 331, 379; profanity and indecency, 280, 302, and page 135 of vol. ii.; Catholic books taken away from Catholic children, 308, 309, 310; state of Rhode Island charged with board of children who had been put out of the institution, 307, which was regarded as " an error of the head and not of the heart," 327 of vol. ii.

state.

We come now to the last and not the least painful task, which the Christian Union insists upon our undertaking; it relates to "the horrible abuses existing in some of our state institutions." And here, as in the preceding remarks, we must confine ourselves to a portion only of the mass of materials before us, and, in fact, confine ourselves to a single institution; for, if such things exist in a single case, this is enough to prove not only the possibility, but also the probability of the same thing in others, and to dispel the fatal blindness which can see nothing defective either in their constitution or management. We must pass over the charges recently preferred against the New York House of Refuge, relating to improper food, of excessive labor, of cruel punishments, employment of unfit and incompetent agents in the management of the institution, and of religious intolerance. While we think that the evidence produced on the trial of the boy, Justus Dunn, for killing one of the officers of the Refuge, goes far to substantiate most of the charges preferred, we have, in common with the community, but little respect for the whitewashing certificate given by the grand-jury, who made a flying visit

• Blackstone's Com., part. i. p. 137.

to the institution, by invitation, on an appointed day. Of course the officers put their house in order, and failed not to put their best foot foremost, on this preconcerted occasion. The managers placed no reliance on this acquittal, for they courted another soon afterwards. The second investigation by the State Commissioners of Charity was very little better; it was ex parte on all the charges except that of religious intolerance, and the Refuge was acquitted on all the charges except this last.

We must also pass over, for want of space, the revolting case which occurred at the New York Juvenile Asylum in June last, in which one of the inmates of the asylum, a colored girl, instead of finding there an asylum from temptation and seduction, fell a victim to the lust of one of the officers of the institution, who fled precipitately on discovery of the fact.* We must pass over, for the same reason, the investigations recently conducted at St. Louis, which are far from showing a satisfactory result for the management and conduct of public reformatories. We must confine ourselvesnow to a single institution-a case in which the evidence is replete with horrible abuses, cruelties, improprieties, and wrongs. While we would be sorry to apply the maxim, ex uno disce omnes, we can but regard this case as a general warning to our people to beware of regarding as good everything in the moral order that goes under the much-abused name of reform.

The Providence School of Reform is an institution supported by funds received both from the state of Rhode Island and from the city of Providence. Its object seems to be the temporal, social, and moral reformation of juvenile delinquents of

• Sunday Mercury, June 23, 1872.

both sexes. Some time prior to 1869, it had been the subject of the gravest charges and investigation, which tended to show that, so far from having been in all its departments and workings a school of reform, it had in some instances become a school for vice

and immorality. The whitewashing process, that facile and amiable way of avoiding disagreeable complications, prevented the accomplishment of any change for the better. But in 1869 the charges against the institution took a more definite form, and were signed and presented by thirtyone citizens of Providence to the corporate authorities-citizens of the first respectability and standing. The Board of Aldermen of the city of Providence, headed by the Mayor, undertook the investigation, and the evidence is contained in two large volumes in one, extending over eleven hundred and forty-two pages.

*

The charges were the most serious ones that could be brought against an institution, especially against one professing reform, and had their origin with citizens without distinction of creed. Their true character and extent can only be understood by a perusal of them:

"First. That vices against chastity, decency, and good morals have prevailed in the school, and have been taught and practised by teachers as well as by pupils; that these vices have existed both in the male and female departments, and that the children usually leave the school more corrupt than when they entered it.

"Second. That teachers have used immodest and disgusting language in the presence of children, and have addressed females in an indecent manner by referring to their past character, and by calling them vile and unbecoming

names.

"Third. That modes of punishment the most cruel and inhuman have been used

Investigation into the Management of the Providence Reform School, made by the Board of Aldermen, under the direction of the City Council of the City of Providence, 1869.

in said school, such as knocking down and kicking the pupils, and whipping them when naked, and with a severity not deserved by their offences.

"Fourth. That young women are said to have been kicked, knocked down, dragged about by the hair of the head, and otherwise brutally treated, but more es

pecially that all modesty and decency have outraged by stripping them to the waist and lashing them on the naked back; taking them from their beds and whipping them in their night-dresses; tying their hands and feet and ducking them; and by other forms of punishment which no man should ever inflict upon a woman. "Fifth. That names of children committed to said school have been changed and altered by the officers of the said institution.

"Sixth. That children have been ap prenticed to persons living in remote sections of the country, and who have no interest in taking proper care of them, and that a needless disregard to the rights and feelings of their parents has often been evinced by the officers of the school.

"Seventh. That the goods of said school are reported to have been used dishonestly for purposes for which they were not intended, and that the state of Rhode Island is said to have been charged with the board of children who were living at service and were no expense to said school.

"Eighth. That a spirit of proselytism and of religious intolerance has prevailed in the school, as is shown in the fact that children of different creeds are compelled to attend a form of worship which is contrary to the conscientious convictions of a large majority of them; which is directly in conflict with the spirit and letter of our state constitution, which ensures to the inhabitants thereof the liberty of conscience, in the following language: No man shall be compelled to frequent or to support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever, except in fulfilment of his own voluntary contract; and that the children of said school are denied the use of books and all religious instruction in the religion of their choice."

There are also detailed in the In

vestigation cases of about thirty girls punished in a cruel and revolting manner. For girls lashed, bodies striped and bruised, see pages 18, 19; a girl struck, caught by the throat, pounded, and dragged by the hair of the head, 23; a girl struck with fist, and black eye, 55; a girl stripped to the waist of all her clothes, except undergarment, and whipped with cat-o'-nine-tails, and body marked, 93; another girl dragged by the hair, 95; a girl ducked, 102; a girl boxed until her nose bled, and water dashed on her, 102; a girl chased, kicked, and held under flowing water, 108; a girl dragged by the hair, kicked, and ducked, 219, 220; another girl dragged by the hair and kicked, 228; another lashed black and blue, 229; a girl lashed on the back after she had gone to bed, 338; another girl whipped with the straps, and kicked, 344; another girl stripped to the waist, leaving only undergarment on, and whipped with a knotted strap, 360; a girl ducked, 272. A mother is refused permission to see her child, who was whipped, and refused information as to whither the child was transported. The mother said: "I will travel Rhode Island through, and I will travel Connecticut through, but what I will find her. I have not seen her for the last six or eight years, and a mother's nature goes beyond any mortal thing in this world. A mother wants to see her child. I could not get anything from them," 374. An-. other girl is stripped like the others, and lashed, marked, and scarred on the back, 395. A witness, at page 396, says: "I saw stripped with her dress down; she was badly bruised on the shoulder; I did not see any blood, but I saw the bruises were pretty bad bruises; there were scars clear across her shoulders; you could not see scarcely a piece of plain