THE FARM SCHOOL AT REDHILL.

WHILE acknowledging the excellence of the institution, the neighbours of the Farm School which the Philanthropic Society is establishing at Redhill have taken alarm at certain consequences to themselves. In a printed paper, of which the original appears to have been communicated to Prince Albert on the morning when he laid the first stone of the chapel attached to the farm, we find such statements as these- " The site is beautiful; on an undulating, well-wooded range of sandstone hills, fronted to the South by the great Weald of Sussex, with the South Downs in the far distance, and immediately backed to the North by the high range of Surrey Hills or North Downs.

"The fixed population of the neighbourhood is altogether rural, being seated In villages, farms, and labouring cottages. The sandstone range being highly ' con- vertible, with a stiff clay adjoining it in front, and abundance of chalk and lime- stone in the hills behind, its rustic populati.s. le rather dense than scanty._ population is remarkable for its quiet,. old-fashioned ways, and hatillir' re_ duct. No police has ever been required or thought of .114;. ef late great Gently, the education of the commolroieatieb: Asa schools. and successful exertions have 6^- •

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•• into the midst of this virtuous and happy poptdation, your Royal Highness is about to sanction the introduction of several hundred smart, clever Landon boys, picked up from among the basest and wickedest classes of the modern Baby- lon. Twenty-two of them are already here, and are to be seen in the pleasant foot- paths and wooded lanes of Redstone and Nuffield, jauntily scraping acquaintance with the boys and girls of the peasantry, who admire even their uniform-dress,

and still more their bold and jovial manner. When the building shall be full of which your Royal Highness is to lay the first stone, the pleasant parishes of Rei-

gate-foreign and Nutfield will contain hundreds of these semi-criminal young- stem, whose occupation in the fields must unavoidably bring them into communi- cation with the youthful peasantry.

" The intended Farm School is intersected by public footpaths between the schools of Redhill and Nutfield. The semi-prisoners mast be visited by their relatives and friends from London ; and for the accommodation of these visiters,

(not less, when the institution shall be full, than some thousands in a year,) low beer-shops and lodging-houses will be erected, which can hardly fail to become, to some extent, the residence of a changing criminal population. A revolting moral infection of the neighbourhood is inevitable. The moral sense of the youthful peasantry will be injured by the mere presence of these boys in their dress of degradation, but better fed, clothed, and housed, than the peasantry sur-

rounding them: and when we reflect on the certainty of much intercourse be- tween the peasantry and the semi-criminal boys with their friends from London,

on the admiring curiosity of the peasants, and the clever seductiveness of the Londoners, both in and out of the institution, we cannot help thinking that your Royal Highness is helping unconsciously to plant amongst us a most promising establishment of missionaries from the Devil.

"Our complaint is not of the institution, but of the selection of its site. It ought to be placed on some such spot as Ashdown Forest, or Banstead Downs,

where it might be distant by a couple of miles from any inhabited house. The placing of it amidst a dense and virtuous rural population we conceive to be a cruel wrong done to the whole neighbourhood." There is much force in this deprecation ; but the prospect is not hopeless, if the institution be properly managed—all depends

on that. The alarmed folks should remember that the object of the farm is to teach the boys agricultural occupations: now it is probable that the sheep-walks of Banstead would not have been nearly so good for the purpose as the " highly convertible" soil on which the farm is placed ; and on the other hand, it is probable that no readily " convertible" soil would have been found in this country without its being already peopled ; so that the society had little better than Hobson's choice—to select a bad site, or one alarming to neighbours. The Surrey repudiators say that the

society has already received a subscription of 1,0001. not to esta- blish its farm at Barnet ; and probably the excellent institution would have found every district mingling praise and repulsion.

But, having set itself down in the beautiful site of Redhill, the society has unquestionably incurred a very heavy duty towards

the neighbours—that of not visiting them with the dreaded con-

tamination. And the responsibility is the greater, since it seems quite possible to fulfil that obvious duty. The society has a pro- totype for its farm school; which was indeed suggested by Mr.

Minter Morgan, in his Letters to a Clergyman, after a visit to Mettray, in the autumn of 1845. The suggestion has been

adopted; but of course the suggester expected that the Redhill farm would be equally happy in its management and results with the reformatory that has for so many years been carried on by M. de Metz on the lands of M. de Bretignieres de Courteilles.

We hear nothing of contamination to the neighbourhood there : but then, the reformatory farm is kept in the most perfect order. By an ingenious and beautiful organizanon,—which needs not indeed to be servilely copied, though its results ought to suggest serious reflections to our juvenile-prison-reformers,—by the closest vigilance, and a discipline as painstaking and strict as it is admi- nistered with never-failing kindliness, the conduct of the youths at Mettray is forced to be so good that it might serve as a model for schools. The system is too large and powerful to be resisted by the young scapegrace who finds himself involved in its machinery, moral or physical ; the kindly influences are too powerful to be evaded; and he becomes well-disposed in spite of his perverse train- ing in the past—in spite of those innate weaknesses which in a small minority of instances betray him again to evil courses after he has left the institution. But two circumstances greatly aid the effi- cacy of the general system of the institution at Mettray. One is the inexhaustible personal solicitude of M. de Metz,—a degree of devotion perhaps scarcely to be expected from the paid officers of our charitable institutions, though happily equivalent instances may be found. The _other fortunate circumstance is the isolation of the young culprit at Mettray : his friends can visit the place, but only under restrictions, and only to view the young colonist engaged in his new life—not to speak to him, nor recall him to the bad world that he has left. In like manner, there surely will be no communication between the colonists at Redhill and their " friends" so called. If the boys must see those dangerous friends,—which is a grave question,—let them be brought up to town by a rota : but under no circumstances ought the youths at Redhill to hold any communication of any sort with the world outside the bounds of their own farm.

The Philanthropic Society is not only responsible to the neigh- bourhood—it is responsible to the country, and to philanthropy itself, for taking the utmost pains to make the new experiment succeed. Rather than bring upon the plan the damaging effect of failure, the experiment had better have been left alone. The farm ought to do at least as well as Mettray : but indeed it ought to do better, since it has the advantage of the experience acquired by the excellent managers of that reformatory.