Lords Sitting of 4 July 1848

MINUTES.
Took the Oaths.—The Lord Clements.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1° Prisons.
3° and passed:—Game Certificates for Killing Hares.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. From Merchants of Cork, against any Alteration in the Navigation Laws; and from the Grand Jury of the same City, for the more Efficient Support of the Medical Charities of Ireland, by an Equitable Assessment of the several unions in Ireland.—From Lancaster and Rochdale, for the Adoption of a System of Secular Education in the County of Lancaster, to be supported by the Local Rates.—From Fortingal, and other Places, for the Rejection of the Marriage (Scotland) Bill, and the Registering Births, &6;c. (Scotland) Bill.—From Visiting Justices of the County Gaol of Reading, for the Adoption of Measures for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders.—From Chairman and Members of the Committee of the Bristol Association for Improving the Public Health, in favour of the Public Health Bill.

JUVENILE OFFENDERS.
The DUKE of RICHMONDrose to present a petition of very great importance to the country, and which had reference to the very great increase of juvenile offenders. He was not one of those who thought it was impossible, by education, or in any other way, entirely to prevent a great many of those children from committing those offences for which they were so repeatedly brought before the courts of justice. Although he knew the subject was surrounded with considerable difficulty, he, for one, could not see why they should not endeavour to rescue this portion of their population from the misery they were doomed to undergo in this world, and from that fate which probably awaited them in the next. A child of about eight or nine years was sent out by his parents to plunder; he was taken and tried for stealing some toy, not worth perhaps three halfpence, and for that offence the jury was bound to find him guilty of a felony. From that time, that child had little hopes of doing any thing else but going, week after week, and month after month, before a Criminal Court, until finally he was transported, when he was perfectly hardened in every species of crime. He begged, therefore, to call the attention of the Government to this system. He certainly did not intend to proceed with any measure in reference to the subject this year; but his intention was—if the Government did not take the matter into their hands—to lay on the table, for the consideration of the country at large, a proposition for sending those children, in some cases, to reformatory institutions. He would propose that they should be sent—and paid for as they should now be paid for when they were sent to prison—for a certain period to a reformatory place, where they would have some chance of reforming them. It might be said that, by adopting this mode of proceeding, they would place the parents of guilty children in a better position than

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the parents of well-conducted, because they would relieve the parents of the former class from the burden of supporting them; but he saw no difficulty in having an Act of Parliament so framed that those parties should be obliged to pay a certain portion of the expense of sustaining them. No person could more plainly see than he did, the necessity of having strict discipline in their prisons; but if they wanted to stay crime in this country, they must go to the root of it. When they sent children of this description to the gaols of a great metropolis, it was impossible for them to learn there anything that could be of use to them; and although they went into the prison, comparatively speaking, guiltless, they would come out of it schooled in vice. The petition which he presented to the House was adopted at a meeting called in the city of London, and signed by many of those who attended there, including magistrates of the metropolitan county, merchants, bankers, gentlemen connected with the Philanthropic Society, and the Society of Refuge for the Destitute. When they saw what had been already done by the Philanthropic Society, there was a very cheering prospect that they might be able to extend their usefulness. In conclusion, he would remind their Lordships that this was not a party question, but one to which they might all apply their minds with a view to remedy so distressing an evil.
LORD KINNAIRDsaid, that the subject was one which well deserved the attention of their Lordships. Their Lordships were not perhaps aware that there were in this metropolis upwards of 100,000 children who had no education whatever; and that there were 30,000 vagrant children, who either had no parents to apply to, or who were neglected by their parents. These children would be the men and women of an after generation; and it was impossible to calculate the extent of the vice and crime to which such a state of things might lead. The plan now recommended for adoption in the petition had already been tried with success. In the town and county of Aberdeen, where some time ago the number of vagrant children was, in the town, 280, and in the county, 328; after a school had been established for one or two years, the numbers were reduced to 48 in the county, and to 14 in the town. There had, therefore, been an actual saving of expense, to say nothing of the performance of a high moral obliga-
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tion. It had been calculated that the training up of these children as criminals cost from 100 l. to 150 l. each, while to keep one of them at school, cost at Aberdeen under 5l. a year, and in the metropolis 6l. a year. The petitioners desired that the magistrate should have the power of committing children to a reformatory school, with the penalty of a prison hanging over their heads if they left the school. He thought it quite possible, without giving undue encouragement to vice, that schools of this sort might be provided, partly by a rate, and partly by an educational fund; and that schoolmasters should also be obtained, partly by the same means, and partly by private contributions. He hoped that Her Majesty's Government would consider, during the recess, whether some measure of that sort might not be adopted.
EARL GREYadmitted the importance of the question to which the petition referred, and considered it to be worthy of the attention of Her Majesty's Government. He believed their Lordships were aware that sometimes the practice was adopted of taking boys from prison, and sending them out as apprentices to Western Australia. With regard to the proposition contained in the petition, it was absolutely necessary that they should very carefully consider any measure of the kind they adopted. If they adopted this proposal, it would place the parents of guilty children in a much better position than the honest and industrious parent who took care of his children. He felt, also, that there would be extreme difficulty in making the parents liable for the support of their children; and when they were made liable, there would also be some difficulty in forcing them to pay the amount of the claim upon them.
LORD BROUGHAMcalled the attention of their Lordships to the opinion of the Criminal Law Commission with respect to juvenile offenders. They laboured under a strong impression that it would be advisable to punish small offenders by corporal punishment, instead of sending them to be tried for felonies. They knew there was a great objection amongst the people of this country to that punishment; but it was the unanimous opinion of the Committee that it would be much the better way of dealing with the petty offences of young offenders, for nothing was so absurd as sending a child of eight or nine years old to be tried for felony for stealing two apples.

NORTH WALES RAILWAY.
LORD MONTEAGLE, pursuant to notice, presented a petition from Henry Archer, complaining of the conduct of the directors of the North Wales Railway. The petitioner was one of the original shareholders in this line of railway, which was intended to run between Carnarvon and Bangor. The Act authorising the construction of the railway passed in 1845, and two instalments of 10 per cent were paid up by the shareholders. Soon after, a change in the direction of the company took place; and one of the first proceedings of the new direction was to lend the money of the North Wales Railway Company for the purpose of completing another railway with which the North Wales Railway had nothing to do. Many of the members of the new direction were also directors of the London and Richmond Railway Company, and to this latter company the money of the North Wales Company was lent. But, as the North Wales Railway Company were not empowered by law to lend, nor the London and Richmond Company to borrow, the course taken was not to lend the money to the London and Richmond Company in its corporate capacity, but to private individuals connected with the company on their notes of hand. After a time the Richmond Railway was made, and sold to another company. The directors of the North Wales Company, having lent the money of the company on insufficient security, and contrary to law, nevertheless thought proper, when this took place, to repeat the experiment, and they lent the money of the company to two other individuals. A shareholder applied to inspect the accounts, and after some resistance he was allowed to have access to them. Their Lordships would hardly believe in what manner those accounts were kept. He hold in his hand a copy of the very account in question, and he found these entries:—"Loan to 'A' for investment, 1,500 l." "Loan to 'B' for ditto, 1,200 l." "Loan to 'C' for ditto, 4,000 l." "Loan to 'D' for ditto, 8,000 l." "Loan to 'E' for ditto, 3,000 l." "Loan to 'F' for ditto, 1,000 l." "Loan to 'G' for ditto, 1,000 l." In fact, the account was a cypher which explained nothing. The parties asked for an explanation as to who were represented by the letters "A," "B," "C," "D," "E," "F," and "G," but that was refused. These were the two main allegations contained in this petition, namely,
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first, a misapplication of the funds from the purposes for which they were intended by Parliament, from the North Wales Railway Company to the London and Richmond Railway Company; and secondly, the mode in which the accounts were kept. The answer of the directors to the latter charge related a most curious fact. They stated that this mode of keeping accounts, namely, that of putting forward an unintelligible account to be inspected by the shareholders, and keeping a private ledger for their own use, was the common course taken by other railway companies; and they justified themselves by this most extraordinary plea. He thought it behoved their Lordships and the Parliament to take notice of this matter. He should content himself at present with presenting the petition; but if the subject should be allowed altogether to drop, he conceived their Lordships would he partly making themselves accessory to a system of fraud. Of the parties he knew nothing. He had no connexion with either of the companies. The facts were admitted by both sides; and they clearly showed a departure from the law of the land, and a violation of a public trust. The prayer of the petition was that a Bill might be passed to exclude these parties from the direction, and to appoint others to carry out the railway. So important did he consider the question that he should be inclined at a future day to move for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into these facts, and to report upon them to the House.
EARL GRANVILLEsuggested, that whether the noble Lord brought forward a Bill, or moved for a Select Committee, it would be better that he gave a formal notice of the course he intended to pursue.
LORD WHARNCLIFFEconsidered this to he one of the most scandalous cases that had occurred in the mismanagement of railways. He considered it to he highly incumbent on their Lordships to apply a corrective and check upon these proceedings.
LORD REDESDALEsaid, that unless some noble Lord should hereafter make a statement on the other side that should satisfy their Lordships, he considered this was a case in which the Legislature ought to interfere. These great bodies ought to be compelled to render accounts of their proceedings. If they concealed them from the shareholders, they could never hope to possess the confidence of the public.
The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNEsaid, it appeared to him to be a subject of very considerable importance. It had been said that there was a Bill pending in the other House of Parliament to facilitate the dissolution of one of these companies. He had not seen that Bill, but he thought that no such steps should be taken without first ascertaining the state of the accounts of the company, because Parliament might otherwise he sanctioning a great injustice. Their Lordships ought not to allow any facilities whatever to the parties until after a full investigation into these facts, especially after a Bill had been rejected which would have enforced a distinct and bonâ fide audit of all these vast budgets that were going on in the country under the direction of these companies.
LORD MONTEAGLEsaid, that before the Bill empowering the company to effect a dissolution reached their Lordships' House, he should move for a Select Committee to consider and report on the facts stated in the petition.
The petition laid on the table.
House adjourned.