congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and
heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals,
established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that,
when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime
punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by
imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or
justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such
imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is
placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy
thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in
the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal
law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at
their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any
boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age
of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.

It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in
piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular
course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such
other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment,
reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for
whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by
crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims often of
circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,--issuing from
homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome
impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance,
and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly
chargeable. In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law
were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts,
where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly