able adequately to fulfil the task? This reasoning, altogether French,
would not properly take into account the American temperament, the
genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, of its institutions, and of its usages.
In France, since the fourteenth century, misdemeanors have been
prosecuted the more generally by the public minister, acting under whose
orders are numerous officers of judiciary police, who entertain the
complaints of the public and send them, with the result of their
examination, to our courts. The magistrates charged with the case
complete the investigations, if they take place. The elements of the
evidence are therefore combined when the prosecution is instituted. In
the United States these intermediate officials exist but imperfectly
between the injured party and the magistrate who renders judgment. From
lack of sufficient evidence, the rights of this injured party run the
risk of being compromised through his inexperience. Moreover, the
complaint of the child, often directed against its parents or its legal
guardians, involves the examination of a delicate situation, which must
be conducted with much discernment. Without comparing the two systems,
American and French, which correspond each to the particular genius of
the two nations, it will be seen that the American system leaves much
more to private initiative, and that it would become ineffectual when
the victim of the offence, being a child, has neither the energy nor the
knowledge necessary to demonstrate that its complaint is well founded,
without the aid of some one in power. This is the aid which is given by
the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; and we
can now understand how the exigency of the case, so powerfully felt by
the practical intelligence of the Americans, has called into existence
this potent organization, which we may call the guardian of the rights
of childhood, for the repression of the offences from which it is liable
to suffer. The following anecdote shows how the necessity for this
institution arose, in a manner at once thrilling and dramatic:--