Since the above incidents and facts were observed, and reports from the public prints were recorded, general attention has been drawn more fully to the very great increase of ignorance, demoralization, and crime, amongst the lower classes, both old and young.  These things call on us most loudly for active effort and exertion; and it becomes the patriot and philanthropist, but especially the Christian, to look around, to think and to consider what effectual means may be found, and what efficient plans may be adopted to strike the evil fatally at its roots, and cause it to wither away.  If these things be not done, the moral pestilence must increase, and eventually deprive us of all that is dear to us as men, and citizens.

CHAPTER III.

CAUSES OF EARLY CRIME.

Degraded condition of parents—­Dreadful effects of drunkenness—­Neglect of children inevitable and wilful—­The tutorship of wicked companions—­Tricks of pantomimes injurious—­Mischiefs arising from sending children to pawnbrokers—­Fairs demoralizing—­All Kinds of begging to be repressed.

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  “Why thus surprised to see the infant race
  Treading the paths of vice?  Their eyes can trace
  Their parents’ footsteps in the way they go: 
  What shame, what fear, then, can their young hearts know?”

* * * * *

Appalling as the effects of juvenile delinquency are, I think we may discover a principal cause of them in the present condition and habits of the adult part of the labouring classes.  We shall find, very frequently, that infant crime is the only natural produce of evil, by the infallible means of precept and example.  I do not intend to assert, that the majority of parents amongst the poor, actually encourage their children in the commission of theft; we may, indeed, fear that some do; as in the instance of the two little girls detected in shop-lifting, whose case was detailed in the preceding chapter; but still, I should hope that such facts are not frequent.  If, however, they do not give them positive encouragement in pilfering, the example they set is often calculated to deprave the heart of the child, and, amongst other evil consequences, to induce dishonesty; whilst in other cases we find, that from peculiar circumstances the child is deprived, during the whole day, of the controling presence of a parent, and is exposed to all the poisonous contamination which the streets of large cities afford; and hence appears another cause of evil.  Here children come in contact with maturer vice, and are often drawn by its influence from the paths of innocence; as we have already seen in many instances.  What resistance can the infant make to the insidious serpents, which thus, as it, were, steal into its cradle, and infuse their poison into its soul?  The guardians of its helplessness are heedless or unconscious of its danger, and, alas! it has not the fabled strength of the infant Hercules to crush its venomous assailants.  Surely such a view of the frequent origin of crime must awaken our commiseration for its miserable victims, and excite in us a desire to become the defenders of the unprotected.