CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF EARLY CRIME.
_Degraded condition of parents--Dreadful effects of drunkenness--Neglect of children inevitable and wilful--The tutorship of wicked companions--Tricks of pantomimes injurious--Mischiefs arising from sending children to pawnbrokers--Fairs demoralizing--All Kinds of begging to be repressed_.
* * * * * "Why thus surprised to see the infant race Treading the paths of vice?
Their eyes can trace Their _parents_' footsteps in the way they go: What shame, what fear, then, can their young hearts know ?" * * * * * Appalling as the _effects_ of juvenile delinquency are, I think we may discover a principal cause of them in the present condition and habits of the adult part of the labouring classes.

We shall find, very frequently, that infant crime is the only natural produce of evil, by the infallible means of precept and example.

I do not intend to assert, that the majority of parents amongst the poor, actually encourage their children in the commission of theft; we may, indeed, fear that some do; as in the instance of the two little girls detected in shop-lifting, whose case was detailed in the preceding chapter; but still, I should hope that such facts are not frequent.

If, however, they do not give them positive encouragement in pilfering, the example they set is often calculated to deprave the heart of the child, and, amongst other evil consequences, to induce dishonesty; whilst in other cases we find, that from peculiar circumstances the child is deprived, during the whole day, of the controling presence of a parent, and is exposed to all the poisonous contamination which the streets of large cities afford; and hence appears another cause of evil.

Here children come in contact with maturer vice, and are often drawn by its influence from the paths of innocence; as we have already seen in many instances.