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:--

Ten years ago in New York, on the top floor of a tenement-house, in a
miserable room without furniture, a dying woman lay on a pallet, in the
last stage of consumption. A charitable lady who visited her asked what
she could do for her. The dying woman replied: "My hours are numbered,
but how can I die in peace when night and day I hear the beating by her
mother-in-law of the unhappy little girl who lives in the room next to
mine." And, in fact, for a month her heart had been torn by the cries of
this child, Mary Ellen, kept in confinement by this brute. Much moved by
this recital, the visitor felt impelled to demand the interference of
the police. They told her this was impracticable unl