C HI LD - S TEALING.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin;--In your article of September 1st, describing the Naples panic about child-stealing, you mention that there was no known cause to give rise to it. This is a mistake. With the view of making suitable; provision for the many little waifs and strays which abound in our great towns, the Minister of the Interior bad sent round instructions to the police to collect statistics, as a preliminary step, as to the numbers and condi- tion of abandoned children in their respective districts. It appears that these inquiries were began with little tact, and alarm began to spread among the ignorant populace, always prone to suspect evil in every Government act. It happened contemporaneously that four children were really missing. In such cases the time-honoured resource of the public bell-man is here:still in use. He goes about ringing his bell in the squares and cross-streets, and proclaiming aloud to the assembling crowd the description of the missing child. You can easily imagine how four children could thus easily be multiplied into twenty or more, and how this, acting on the already aroused suspicions of an excitable populace, cul- minated in panic. It was ourious to observe how inveterate are feelings handed down from former generations. For centuries these Southern shores were exposed to the raids of Algerine rovers, and the traditions of plundered villages and people carried off into slavery still survive. Now that children were thought to be stolen, the old fears came to the surface again, and it ran from mouth to mouth that the guilty parties were
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