with jury by consent of parties. The Bill of Lord Harrowby, for registering Bills of Sale, is a measure of great benefit in checking fraudulent practices; and Mr. Whiteside (late Solicitor-General for Ireland) has introduced a Bill for extending to that part of the United Kingdom the provisions of the English Procedure Bill of this Session, together with other and further improvements contained in his Bill of last Session, but which were dropt from that Bill owing to the advanced period at which it was introduced. The Criminal Law Procedure Bill, introduced by Mr. Aglionby, for remedying the evil of sending to the Session those who have committed offences of a lighter description, will be a great improvement in our criminal jurisprudence; while the Public Prosecutors Bill of Mr. Phillimore, though dropped for a time, will no doubt soon reappear to be successfully carried, unless the Government should in the meanwhile take up this important subject. At the same time, the labours of the Statute Law Commissioners, who have lately produced their third Report, can hardly fail to be productive of renewed efforts, with more adequate means, for the consolidation, if not the codification, of our law. The appointment of a permanent Board for the improvement of our Statute Law, which has been recommended in the third Report of the Commissioners, and which is probably imminent, will gradually bring about a better mode of legislation, and a remedy for the confusion and consequent uncertainty which now unfortunately characterise our written law.

It may be justly considered, from the facts stated in the preceding remarks, that Law Reformers have no reason to dread any retrogression in public opinion in respect to the principles which they support: and that the object for which the Society has long and consistently striven, that of the amendment and simplification to the utmost possible extent of our national jurisprudence--can assuredly be obtained if prosecuted with a vigour, perseverance, and resolution commensurate with its own importance.

ART. X. METTRAY.

Mettray: a Lecture read before the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. By ROBERT HALL, M.A., Recorder of Don

caster.

MANY good law reformers are, we hope, preparing for the next campaign by a long excursion, getting as far away from books and papers as they can; but if we may judge of others by ourselves, there is a puzzling preliminary to be settled. Where shall we go? Watering places will not do we never saw one yet of which we were not heartily tired in three days, and not unfrequently in three hours; besides, penny postage brings down all that should have remained quietly collecting dust at Chambers. We can point out a good escape.

There is a very pleasant tour to be made down the Loire. Go from Paris to Orleans by railway. Visit the great scenes of Anglo-Norman and French history. In a few days you will find yourself at Tours within five miles of Mettray. If you are doubtful of the possibility of reforming young offenders by the score and by the hundred, proceed to Mettray, and whatever amount of scepticism you may take with you, we can be responsible for your bringing none away. If you are already a convert, still go to Mettray, and enjoy the spectacle of your own aspirations and day dreams become realities even brighter than you had ventured to imagine them.

But you will want a guide to Mettray to teach you "how to observe." Buy, then, Mr. Hall's lecture and study it well. Here are a few samples of the bulk, which, by the way, is not formidable, consisting only of fifty pages:

“I will not detain you with their dietary, which is the same as that which is usual for the farm-boys in the district; it will be admitted that the vin ordinaire of the country mixed with water in the proportion of one to four, will bear a comparison with the 'rare sober liquor' of the nursery rhyme. What practical notions of sensual luxury are to be obtained within the limits of Mettray, you may judge from the fact that the average cost per diem for

each colonist is as follows:-Board, 3d.; clothes, a considerable fraction less than 14d.; fire and light, 2-1000 of a penny; washing 4-1000 of a penny; the board of the employés amounts only to 7d. a day. Of course everything is laid in at wholesale prices, in the cheapest markets, and a premium is given to such of the colonists as keep their clothes in a condition to be worn beyond the time fixed as that of their proper duration. Viewed as a condition of physical existence there is certainly nothing very attractive in all this it has been throughout a leading object to offer no attractions but to the moral sense. It is not uncommon for the young people soon after their first initiation, to ask to be sent back to the House of Correction, where the tension of the system is less unremitting, and some trifling indulgences are not prohibited.

"The sleeping accommodations can hardly be considered luxurious, even when compared with the filthy dens in which the vagrant populations crowd together for the night, at least not to the taste of persons of that description. The same room serves as refectory by day and as dormitory by night: each colonist has his hammock, which, on the signal from his chief, he takes from the wall where it has been suspended by day under his own clothes shelf, and fixes it half way across the room, in which there are two rows with a passage between, and so disposed that heads and feet alternate."

So much for the luxury with which Mettray has been charged.

"Now for the practical results.

"Since the foundation of the colony the number of colonists that have left it at the expiration of their appointed term, some of them as young as twelve years of age, has been 953; of these 774 have continued irreproachable, 58 have conducted themselves tolerably, 18 have declined the patronage of the society, or been lost sight of, 103 have again been the objects of criminal prosecution, and the comparative statistics of relapse stand as follows:"Juvenile prisoners discharged from La Roquette generally 75 per cent. in three months.

"Orphans educated in the Wurtemberg institutions, 25 per

cent.

"Adults in France--Men, 35 per cent. in five years; women, 27 per cent.

"Mettray, 11 per cent.

"In comparing these figures it must be borne in mind that an act of simple vagrancy, if made the subject of a criminal prosecution, counts as a relapse; and that Mettray scrupulously accounts for every colonist that has been liberated from its control from the very first who received his discharge in 1840, whilst the Patronage Societies, and some other colonies take account only of the parties discharged within the last three years; thus the Société des Jeunes Détenus exhibits a proportion of relapses of only 6 per cent.; and if the account for Mettray were confined to the colonists liberated during the last three years it would show only 10 relapses for 304 individuals, or little more than 3 per cent."

Mettray "is said to be a temptation to crime: this placing of criminals in such pleasant places, and making their condition so` much better than it would have been had they never sinned;' moreover, that the taking these children and tending them so carefully, is a premium to all sorts of parental abandonment. It is very true that the homestead of Mettray stands in the midst of a beautiful garden, but the living there is a life of constant toil and sternest discipline, and, until the mind is to some extent sensible of moral beauty, must be extremely irksome. No one instance has yet been heard of in which a young person committed an offence, in the hope of going to an agricultural colony, or in which parents have turned their children into the streets for the purpose of having them sent there. This is more than can be said of either imprisonment or transportation. Lord Brougham, during his recent visit to Mettray, made this point the subject of particular investigation, and could discover no traces of a desire in the past of any person to be sent there or to have his children sent there."

The following observations show that Mr. Hall can not only observe accurately, as we can testify from our personal knowledge of the Institution he has done, but that he thinks deeply. After having disposed of an ill-founded objection, that the system turns too much on military discipline, he continues thus:

"To my mind a much more serious objection is the danger of the system collapsing when the devoted men to whose untiring zeal it has been indebted for its brilliant successes hitherto shall have been removed from their sphere of usefulness on earth; we have too often seen ultimate failures of this description, and it is

no answer to say that the colony has worked with unimpaired vigour during periods, sometimes of several months, when M. De Metz has been absent, engaged on the organisation of other colonies. But amongst master spirits there is this noticeable distinction: - all alike successful in striking out some line of. organised action, some of them hold their assistants in a species of subjection which prevents their co-operation from ever being warmed by the smallest spark of independent vitality: they identify their system with themselves, with them it lives, with them it languishes and dies. I am sorry to say this is the more usual type; a subtle form of ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds, is the secret agent of an unconscious egotism. Others again, if I may use the antithesis, identify themselves with their system, succeed in animating their agents with the spirit and power of independent action, and in the grand procession of humanity commit the torch, which they may themselves no longer bear, to hands as vigorous and as zealous as their own. In this extremely rare type I believe M. De Metz to have been moulded; you cannot converse for half an hour with any of the young gentlemen who are at present employed as chefs and sous-chefs at Mettray, without discovering that they are every one of them animated by the spirit of the place, and have only one ambition, that of being sometime the directors of a colony. In fact, thirtyfive other colonies have been established on the model of Mettray, and I believe are in successful operation. The answer seems to be almost conclusive so far as regards France."