Thus it is that an action and reaction are continually kept up; and from this short sketch it may be readily seen how crime, and especially that of young persons, increases, and will increase, until some comprehensive remedy is earnestly applied. We repeat, that in our present official system no machinery exists for helping the helpless: the iron hand of the law does not hold out the tip of its little finger to aid the orphan out of the gulf of ignorance and crime which yawns for him at the very threshold of his existence. This is the root of the evil--the radical defect in our system; for it has been ascertained that not one in fifty ever becomes a depredator after the age of twenty. Crime, therefore, can only be checked by removing pollution from its source. Before we take a glance at the beneficial efforts towards this result which have been made by private benevolence, by means of Ragged Schools, and other reformatory establishments, we must point out one more trait of the infirmity of the law, by showing the enormous expense to which the country is put by keeping the cumbrous and clumsy legal machinery in operation. A child indicted for a petty theft is often honoured with as lengthy an indictment, occupies as much of the time of a grand jury, and when brought into court, has as great an array of witnesses brought against him--all involving draughts on the county rates--as a capital offender. A petition was presented to parliament last year by the Liverpool magistrates on this subject, in which Mr Rushton gave the criminal biography of fourteen lads, whose career of wickedness and misery had cost, in their innumerable trials and convictions, about L.100 a-piece. This is only a single instance; but a more comprehensive calculation shows that the total amount we pay for punishing, or, more correctly, for fostering crime, is two millions per annum; and it has been computed that from two to three millions more are lost in plunder. In the year 1846, the cost of each prisoner in England and Wales averaged L.26, 17s. 7¼d.