ART. V.--THE DANGEROUS CLASSES, AND THEIR TREATMENT. The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years' Work Among Them. By Half Century with Juvenile Delinquents. By B. K. PEIRCE, D.D. New York. 1869. AN age producing men of exalted talent, coupled with learning and eloquence, may still be grossly deficient in the sentiments and practices of a true morality. No amount of mere human culture can enable the fallen intellect to fully discover the enormities of moral evil, or prompt the heart to the nice discharge of its highest obligations. Heathen civilization attained its zenith in Greece and Rome, but that age of philosophers, poets, and statesmen was marked by inhumanities unknown to the patriarchal period, and which a Christian population shudders to contemplate. Those cities of wealth and splendor contained slums of moral putrefaction for whose purification no one toiled, and large classes of individuals were perpetually multiplying whose moral renovation was never contemplated. This was eminently true of the hereditary slaves, the captives of war, the gladiators, and of unfortunate children. At precisely what time slavery began it is not now easy to ascertain, but traces of it are found in the earliest historic records. It existed in China thirteen hundred years before Christ, and was common among the ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Carthaginians. The Mosaic regulations concerning the different forms of servitude imposed important limitations on the prerogatives of masters, which always prevailed among the Hebrews, and the slavery of the Hellenic heroic age, and of the earlier Romans, was comparatively mild and generous. Labor was not then considered beneath the dignity of the great. Master and servant toiled in the same field; the Roman patrician, at times, as we learn from the history of Cincinnatus, plowed his own field. But the cupidity engendered by a widening commerce, the increase of luxury, and the rivalries of wealth, coupled with the struggles of the revolting bondman for his liberty, led to the constant tightening of the reins of authority, the lessening of facilities of culture and happiness, until slavery became, in fact, "the sum of all villainies," engulfing the captive in perpetual darkness and ruin. The early Roman was content with a dozen slaves, or with fifty at the extent; but the later lorded it over twenty thousand with tyrannical exactions previously unknown. The gladiators originally sprang from the captives, the born slaves, and the condemned criminals. Under the Roman republic, free-born citizens, and under the empire, senators, knights, and even women, entered this demoralized and perilous arena. Their training was brutal to the last degree, leading to the utter extinction of every moral sentiment. Hence the gladiator became the tool of the crafty politician, the source of deep popular demoralization, the scourge and waste of his people. As the manumitted Grecian slave could never become a citizen, so the Roman gladiator, though free-born, could never resume his former rank. This established social and political ostracism led to the most fearful results. Man in any condition is a magazine of power. His resources while ignorant, imbruted, enslaved, and financially poor, are vastly too immense to be overlooked; and, because no system of moral or social renovation was extended to those toiling and sporting millions, they became to their age the "dangerous classes," contributing largely to those revolutions and convulsions which rocked their countries, and culminated finally in the extinction of their institutions and nationalities. An immense source of supply to these vicious and dangerous classes was found in the multitudes of unfortunate children. Paganism has never evinced any true conception of the value of human life per se, nor of the inalienable rights of the human soul. Persons not likely to be supporters at home or of service to the State have been considered of no account, and have found little favor. It is also chilling to mark the icy deftness with which the Roman parent could dissolve his relation with his child. Infanticide, particularly the destruction of deformed children and the female children of the poor, prevailed extensively, and was approved by men as distinguished as Plato and Aristotle. Children were coolly sold into slavery by their own parents through motives of gain, and by homeless and thriftless parents to save them from starvation in periods of financial distress. They were also sold by the authorities for debt due the imperial treasury. A more common practice, however, was the exposure or abandonment of children who were crippled, or were from any cause a disagreeable incumbrance to their parents. "Crowds of these little unfortunates were to be seen exposed around a column near the Velabrum at Rome," to be carried away at will by ruthless hands, some to become slaves, some prostitutes; some to be the traveling companions of gypsies and beggars, whose features, joints, or spine they had wickedly distorted, that their public exhibition might draw from the multitudes larger charities; and others were strangled by magicians and witches, their bodies being employed in their incantations. This is the picture which the most enlightened and polished States, outside of Judea, presented at the dawn of Christianity. As the deepest shade may exist in the rear of the cathedral whose front and spire are bathed in the brightest light, so an age of reputed statesmanship, of conquest, chivalry, or of philosophic study, may spread its dark shadow over neglected or ill-taught millions who are so gnawing at the foundations of society as to threaten the engulfment of all. The ameliorating influences which came in the later centuries of Roman historythe founding of a few institutions for the poor and helpless, and the tardy legislation for the punishment of inhuman parents were the outgrowth of that measure of Christianity introduced into the kingdom. Mr. Brace has then truly said, "Christ leads the reform of the world as well as its charity." But the principles of Christianity have been nowhere so thoroughly applied as to utterly exhaust the "dangerous classes." They collect and rapidly multiply in all great centers of population. Mr. Brace's book on "The Dangerous Classes of New York" is probably the most important volume on the cause and cure of juvenile crime ever issued from the American press. The author graduated at Yale College in 1847, and subsequently entered the Union Theological Seminary of New York, where he completed his preparatory course for the ministry. Here he offered his services on the Sabbath to Rev. Mr. Pease, then laboring among the wretched at the Five Points, and to the penal and charitable institutions established by the city on the islands of the East River. Having completed his theological course, he crossed the Atlantic and traveled on foot over a large part of Europe, making special study of the vagrant and criminal classes, and of the institutions established for their correction and improvement. Returning to New York, he engaged for a time in somewhat desultory toil for the criminal and abandoned classes, until the founding of the "Children's Aid Society," in 1853, when he became, and has for twenty years remained, the indefatigable secretary and master-spirit of the organization. Gifted with a vivacious and sympathetic nature, shrewd discernment of character, unusual skill in organization and government, he has so ingeniously linked himself between the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the benevolent and the needy, as to wield a powerful influence in promoting the equilibrium of society. His toils have been lightened and strengthened by many high-minded men of wealth, representing the different Protestant denominations, and by intelligent, queenly women not a few, who have brought their noblest offerings to insure the success of the undertaking. His position has afforded wide opportunity for the study of that portion of our population which furnishes the mass of our criminals. His work is a compact duodecimo of four hundred and fortyeight pages, divided into thirty-seven chapters, and treats concisely of the duties of society to the foundling, the street waif, the youthful criminal, the prostitute, and the pauper. He discusses the methods for organizing charities, treats of State aid to charities, and gives a graphic history of the workings of his own society since its organization. The volume, printed on tinted paper, is embellished with thirteen original engravings, illustrating the career of the street waif and the methods employed for his rescue. The tone of the work is always earnest, and in style is clear and chaste. We cannot review all its topics, or indeed glance at them, in the limits of a brief article, and our heading has already intimated that we did not propose to confine ourselves strictly to a review of his volume. It is a noteworthy fact, gleaned from many carefully-collected statistics, that the vast majority of our paupers and criminals of all ages and grades, which impose the chief burdens on society and form the "dangerous classes," are of foreign birth, or, if American-born, are of foreign extraction. Of fifteen hundred and sixty-three prisoners committed to the New York Penitentiary in 1869, eight hundred and thirty-three of them were foreign-born, over three fourths of them came from Ireland and Germany, and a large percentage of those born in America were of foreign parentage. Of the twenty thousand sent annually to the workhouse on Blackwell's Island, but few are of genuine American blood. Of the forty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty-three incarcerated in the New York city prisons during 1869, thirty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-five, or nearly four fifths, were of foreign birth, and most of the remainder were the progeny of families reared in those distant countries. It has been ascertained that of the prisoners at Auburn from one third to one half are foreigners; at Clinton fully one half are such; at Sing Sing about three fourths; and of all detained in the Albany Penitentiary for the twenty years past, nearly two thirds were foreigners. The same relative proportion is found in the New York Almshouse, in Bellevue Hospital, and in all the juvenile reformatories scattered over the islands. Though Ireland contributes only about two thirds as many immigrants to our shores as Germany, yet her sons are justly charged with two thirds of the crime committed by the representatives of these two nationalities. The English and the Scotch immigrants less frequently descend to criminal practices here, yet we are told that at "home the Irish are one of the most law-abiding and virtuous of populations--the proportion of criminals being smaller than in England or Scotland." The English, the Scotch, and the German know more of liberty, of genuine self-restraint, and of popular government in their own countries than the Irish. Hence, when the latter bids adieu to the rigors, both of Church and State, under which he has long been bound, and enters our far-famed land of freedom, the immense reaction in his inflammatory nature too generally interprets liberty to signify depraved license, which mistaken theory so early hurries him to a hospital or a prison. Emigration, also, is unfavorable, as a whole, to improved morals. Unhappy illustrations of this fact are found among the citizens of all countries. Our author well says: "The emigrant is released from the social inspection and judgment to which he has been subjected at home, and the tie of the Church and priesthood is weakened. If a Roman Catholic, he is often a worse Catholic without being a better Protestant. If |