enerally (often the only witnesses of
a crime against a child), were, till recently, all excluded from Court.

2. And everybody else was excluded from the scene of his wickedness. His
house was "his castle," not to be entered even by a warrant, save if he
had stolen a watch.

3. Even when the facts were got at, and legal proceedings taken, every
injustice was done to the little sufferer on whose behalf they were taken.
It could never be removed from its torturer's custody. Even when after the
hearing of the case, it was committed for trial, still for a period
possibly of three months the child had to be left in the custody of the
culprit to pamper, to coax, to warn and threaten into the denial of
everything on which a conviction could be obtained.

Is it wonderful that, under these conditions of the law, one-half of the
brutes towards English children were unpunishable brutes, and practised
their damnable deeds in safety?

Happily, every one of these conditions is changed.

4. One practice of Courts--an almost universal one--I must mention in
passing, as most unjust to a child--viz., the custom of accepting
testimony against it without any confirmation; and that, too, from the
person who has ill-treated it. Men who are cruel to a child easily add to
their cruelty a damaging false witness, which, being only against a child,
nobody ever prosecutes. In consideration of lies, the sentence is often
admittedly reduced. After 400 wronged children have spent two, three,
four, and six months in our Society's Shelter whilst their maligners were
in prison, speaking generally, I may say that charges pleaded in excuse,
and accepted in extenuation of outrages, have proved to be mere inventions
of cowardly malice. When the grave, frightened little looks with which
they came had passed away, they were full of the ways of sunny childhood.
More pleasant docile children, or children more ready to twine their arms
around your neck, you seldom find, than have been some little people who
had been called liars, thieves, vixens (even infants in arms have been
called vixens), and the like--by savages before magistrates as pleas for
their mercy. And from every quarter to which children have been sent, the
same testimony comes as to the untruthfulness of the charges their parents
made in Court, against the children and for themselves.

III.

There are many other things yet to be changed, both in the laws and in the
customs of this countr