The increase of juvenile delinquency has become alarming. The criminal statistics of the country show that one-eighth of the offences which occupy our courts of justice are committed by mere children, and one-fourth by transgressors under twenty years of age. The depredations daily and daringly committed, especially in towns, and the destitution continually exhibited by crowds of young persons, have, during the current year, caused the public to manifest a very general anxiety to inquire into causes of so great and augmenting an evil. The inquiry cannot proceed far without eliciting the mournful fact, that the mode of dealing with crime in its earlier stages is not only seriously defective, but tends to foster and increase rather than to diminish it. Not hundreds, but thousands, of children are daily seen in London, and in every other large town, without the means of moral or intellectual culture, except that which has recently been provided by private benevolence. Abandoned by their parents, unrestrained, uncared-for by the law; hungry, and without food; cold, without clothing; weary, and without whereon to lay their heads; existing amidst every kind of suffering, and consequently influenced by the strongest temptations, they embrace crime as the only means of escape from want. Then, and not till then, does the law condescend to notice them; not to succour or reform, but to punish. In this respect we are immeasurably behind the legislatures of other countries, not only modern, but ancient. The laws of Greece placed children of tender years in a state of pupilage, and made their teachers and pastors responsible for their conduct. Orphans who had no natural protectors were apportioned to 'patrons,' who were charged with, and made accountable for, their wellbeing. In modern France, and in other continental countries, children under sixteen years of age are not held responsible for the crimes they may commit, but their parents are; and if they have no parents, the state provides for them in its own fashion. The sixty-sixth article of the French penal code stands in English thus:-- 'When the accused shall be under sixteen years of age, if it has been decided that he has acted without discernment, he shall be acquitted; but he must be, according to circumstances, returned to his parents, or sent to a House of Correction, there to be "brought up" (_élevé_), and detained during such a number of years as the judgment shall specify, and which in no case must extend beyond the time when the accused shall have attained his twentieth year.'