ceases to be a public ward at the age of eighteen. The average period that elapses after a child is removed from dependence on public support until he reaches the age of eighteen, is about eight years. Hence, the actual saving to the State for each $6,000 expended is approximately $160,000. The sum of $6,000 is mentioned because that is the amount appropriated at present for the support of the State agency. It has to pay the salaries and travelling expenses of its three workers, as well as the office expenses of the department.

Rela

These figures are based upon actual experience, but they by no means represent the full extent of the agency's capacity. Nor do they take into consideration the large number of children taken out of the asylums by parents and relatives, when they know that the State agent may come at any time and remove their children to distant parts of the State. In one county, where forty-four children had been the average population of the asylum for several years, the State agent selected ten to go into families. Nine others were immediately taken out by relatives, some of whom, strange as it may seem, had arranged with the associations to let them know when homes were offered for the children, so that they might then take them themselves. In another home there were seven children, representing two families. The State agent notified the association that he could place one from each family at once. tives took the whole seven as soon as they heard of what was proposed. The law makes it the duty of the associations to require, from parents allowing their children to become public wards, an absolute release of the children to the association. The Board of State Charities has insisted that the associations shall live up to the letter of that law, with the result that hundreds of children have been retained in the hands of their natural guardians, instead of becoming public wards. When such parents found that placing their children in the asylum meant that they could not have them at will, they decided that they could care for their own. Before the passage of this law, it was quite usual for shiftless parents to put their children in an orphan asylum, where they would be cared for at the public expense, while they themselves, relieved of this burden, would go off for indefinite periods, secure in the knowledge that their children were all right, and that whenever they chose to return they could get them back.

The careful and frequent inspection of orphan asylums has produced good results in their administration. No longer are Dotheboys Halls to be found in the State. A corresponding inspection of almshouses keeps them free of children. WILLIAM B. STREETER.

ERRORS TOUCHING THE SCHLEY COURT OF INQUIRY.

THE Court of Inquiry, of which Admiral George Dewey was president, and which sat recently in the city of Washington for the purpose of investigating the conduct of Rear-Admiral Winfield Scott Schley during the war with Spain, was the most illustrious and important military tribunal ever assembled in this country. The personnel of the court, the prominence of "the applicant," and the gravity and far-reaching effect of the cause submitted to it for adjudication united to bestow upon this particular tribunal an importance which may be likened only to that of the court which tried and, under compulsion of the law, condemned Admiral Byng, of the British navy, to death.

The Navy Department and the court itself seemed in the earlier days of the inquiry to be duly appreciative of this importance. The members were selected with an especial view to their freedom from partiality and prejudice, and, confessedly, with the idea of winning in advance the confidence of the public in the justice and righteousness of the report which, after painstaking research and mature deliberation, was to be submitted to the convening authority. The original membership of the court exemplified this. There could not have been found three men more entirely free from bias than Admiral Dewey and Rear-Admirals Benham and Kimberly, retired. Public confidence in the impartial purpose of the Navy Department received a shock through the revelation of Rear-Admiral Howison's prejudice, a revelation following fast upon his appointment to succeed Admiral Kimberly, who asked to be relieved of service; but the court, mindful of its high position, instantly retrieved the error by excusing Admiral Howison from duty, and the Department's selection of Rear-Admiral F. M. Ramsay, retired, was generally applauded.

Thus constituted, the court enjoyed the public confidence as a body composed of men of judicial temperament, exemplary fairness, unsullied record, and adequate experience. An unhesitating trust was reposed in its impartiality, a trust it did not fail to augment in the first days of the public inquiry by its rulings upon mooted points. During the forty

days of this inquiry nothing occurred to shake this confidence. The court proceeded about its work deliberately and intelligently, never for a moment showing the slightest inclination either toward "the applicant or away from him. Its sense of its dignity and importance was always apparent; its sessions were notable for their solemnity; and it labored incessantly with no revealed purpose other than an ever-present desire to get at "the facts." Some there were who disputed its wisdom and justice in limiting the inquiry so as not to touch upon the conduct of any officer other than "the applicant "; but surely that was a matter lying wholly within its discretion as an investigating body, and in its decision in this respect "the applicant," by counsel, cheerfully acquiesced. This acquiescence was due to the fact that Rear-Admiral Schley sought neither to impugn the motives nor to criticise the conduct of any other officer; his sole purpose being to elicit all the facts touching his own conduct, and to have them passed upon by his brothers in arms, in whom he had full and unreserved confidence.

When at

So it was that the court was created, and so it labored. the end of the public inquiry it retired behind closed doors to deliberate, interest in the court did not abate. When the doors were once more opened and there issued the report agreed upon by the court, there followed immediately an almost unparalleled outburst of popular indignation. The report was contrary to what the people expected and what they believed the testimony to warrant; and merciless revilings and unstinted criticisms have been the court's reward. Two of its members especially have received visitations of the public wrath; the reaction consequent upon so unexpected a finding leading to the oft-repeated charge that, from the beginning, those two members were prejudiced against "the applicant " and hostile to him.

But while having nothing to do with such an accusation against the two officers referred to, Rear-Admiral Schley and his attorneys absolutely decline to accept either the court's finding of fact or its majority opinion as being in consonance with the evidence adduced during the public investigation, or the solemn duty entrusted to the court.

This plain statement calls, naturally and necessarily, for explanation, and prompts the query: To what, then, do "the applicant" and his counsel attribute the findings of the court? The answer is ready. The action of the court was based upon premises that were fundamentally false. This answer explains the refusal of Rear-Admiral Schley to accept quietly the judgment which has been rendered against him. The falsity referred to is traceable directly to the fact, now apparent, that

both the Navy Department and the Court of Inquiry confounded the nature of the latter with that of a court-martial, and failed to differentiate between the extraordinary character of this particular court and the character of an ordinary court of inquiry. Let us look at the facts.

Courts of inquiry are authorized by act of Congress. With the act of Congress as a foundation, the Navy Department has, from time to time, promulgated regulations prescribing the character, methods of procedure, and powers of courts of inquiry, until at the present time the official volume of "Regulations for the Government of the Navy of the United States" contains a formidable chapter devoted to this subject. These regulations amplify the act of Congress. They thus correspond to the statute as to the identity of the convening authority, as well as the number of members and the general powers of courts of inquiry. But as departmental rules for the guidance of bodies authorized by law, the regulations alone define the conditions and circumstances under which courts of inquiry may be convened. It is under these rules, and according to the ends to which they have uniformly been put, that the naval service has come to interpret the nature and province of courts of inquiry. The statutes and their original contemplation of the character of such bodies have been almost, if not entirely, lost sight of. This is clearly evidenced by the very first regulation dealing with courts of inquiry. It is therein declared that, where the facts are numerous and complicated, or where there is reason to suspect criminality, a court of inquiry affords the easiest and best method for determining the facts and elucidating the situation for the better guidance and fuller information of the Department.

How ancient this regulation may be I am not prepared to say; but its effect is apparent to the most casual student of such matters. Under the regulation, courts of inquiry have come to be regarded by the service as mere advisory boards to the Department or to other executive officers of the naval establishment. The authorities, under a long line of precedents, agree that such courts are powerless to utter judgments, inflict penalties, express opinions, or pass sentences; that, in short, they are incapable of finally determining any mooted question. This limitation upon their power, in our military jurisprudence, unquestionably springs from the fact that, under the statutes, courts of inquiry, unless expressly authorized by their convening authority so to do, are inhibited from expressing opinions; their duty being restricted to the discovery and collation of facts. Considered jointly, this regulation and the statute have had the effect of making courts of inquiry almost uniformly preliminary to

courts-martial. In other words, the court of inquiry corresponds in ordinary American military practice to the grand jury in our judicial system.

Being essentially an inquisitorial body, whose duty it is to sift fact from fancy and report what is established as true, it follows that, ordinarily, the action of a court of inquiry is in no wise determinate. It labors solely for the information and guidance of a higher authority. According as it presents an array of facts justifying punitive measures against the officer under investigation, or exonerates him, the higher authority is enabled to act more intelligently in the premises. It rests, however, with such higher authority to take or refrain from taking further action; the report of the court of inquiry being in no way binding upon him. A notable instance of this analogy between courts of inquiry and grand juries is of recent occurrence. Charges having been preferred against a colonel of the Marine Corps, a court of inquiry was ordered to determine the facts (truth or falsity) of such charges. The court labored and brought forth a report upon which the Secretary of the Navy prepared a precept (indictment) for the guidance of a court-martial convened to try the accused officer. Here the procedure was almost identical with that in criminal jurisprudence, where the grand jury investigates, the state's attorney indicts upon the facts found by the grand jury, and a competent court tries the accused under and according to the indictment. The almost constant use of courts of inquiry for purposes very similar to, or identical with, its use in the case mentioned has impregnated every officer in the service with this conception of an order for duty on such a court. He goes forth to inquire, not to determine finally.

cases.

But in the case of the Schley Court of Inquiry a wholly different procedure was followed; and, consequently, the nature and province of the court were radically different from those of such a body in ordinary It was because this dissimilarity was not impressed upon the court by the convening authority that the fundamental error with which it is chargeable was committed. Conscious of the statutory inhibition of the trial of an accused by court-martial when more than two years have elapsed since the commission of the offence with which he is charged, the Navy Department well knew that, in this instance, further proceedings were impossible, no matter what facts the court might find. Neither upon his own request nor upon the election of the Department could Rear-Admiral Schley be arraigned before a court-martial. The Department, therefore, abandoned entirely the ordinary usage and ac