REVIEWS. 415 



reject valuable assistance because it comes from an unexpected quarter. 

 You will find the lady appealing to the best sources of knowledge, not 

 unaided by some of the highest authorities of the age on such ques- 

 tions. You will find her uniformly employing a judgment trained by 

 the best education and matured by practical experience in connexion 

 with juvenile reformatories, to which she has benevolently devoted so 

 much of her attention. You will find her uniting the delicacy which 

 belongs to her sex and culture with a dignified sxperiority to mere 

 conventionalism, and an earnestness of philanthropic zeal, which make 

 her fully equal to what she has undertaken ; and it is our belief that 

 there is scarce a man to be found, however able, enlightened and 

 benevolent, who could have accomplished the work as well as she has 

 done. It might possibly occur to some that in a new country like 

 Canada we can have little to do with the difficulties attending the 

 treatment of criminals, and that we may safely watch the experience 

 of other countries without any extreme anxiety as to the adoption of 

 immediate measures different from what have hitherto been deemed 

 sufficient. Such persons show as much ignorance of what is passing 

 around them as neglect of such wise cautions as obsta principiis : 

 Make your arrangements before-hand to meet difficulties and dangers 

 which must arise, and which will be the more formidable in propor- 

 tion as they are allowed time to come to a head before they are pro- 

 vided against. Unfortunately it is too certain that in proportion to 

 the numbers and degree of crowding of our population, we have more 

 crime than older countries, and are already suffering severely from 

 the insufficiency of our means of contending against it. Nor is this 

 greatly to be wondered at when we consider that, among persons 

 induced to emigrate, there is a larger proportion than in an equal 

 number of settled people remaining at home, of the less steady and 

 respectable class ; that religious and harmonizing influences are with 

 much difficulty brought to bear on a very scattered population, and 

 that adjoining by a long frontier a great nation with the same lan- 

 guage and general manners, we are of necessity subject to receiving 

 from them many of their worst characters, who find it convenient to 

 change their residence, whilst, from our smaller body, they cannot 

 draw oif anything like an equal number. We must not, then, flatter 

 ourselves that inquiries respecting the origin of, and the means of 

 suppressing crime, do not immediately concern us. On the contrary, 

 we ought to feel most deeply interested in them, and most anxious to 



