Little Giovanni Alessandro Bosco, the bright-eyed Italian boy who has a couple of white mice to attract the attention of passers-by, or believes that kind folks will perchance give a copper for hearing a tune played on a small barrel-organ, is not perhaps aware that he has risen to the dignity of being officially noticed. In other words, Italian organ-boys, image-boys, street exhibitors, and appellants to a compassionate public, have been the subject of correspondence between the diplomatists of Italy and those of England. The despatches or communications have lately been published in a blue-book or parliamentary paper; shewing that European governments are now alive to sympathies which would have had but little chance of manifesting their presence in an earlier and ruder state of society.

About three years and a half ago, we gave an account of what had come under our knowledge in Italy concerning the deportation of Italian boys as beggars or exhibitors. We stated that 'Much to its credit, the parliament of Italy have before them a bill to abolish the system of apprenticing children of less than eighteen years of age to strolling trades or professions, such as mountebanks, jugglers, charlatans, rope-dancers, fortune-tellers, expounders of dreams, itinerant musicians, vocalists or instrumentalists, exhibitors of animals, and mendicants of every description, at home or abroad, under a penalty of two pounds to ten pounds for each offence, and from one to three months' imprisonment. It is to be trusted that this will shortly become law, and so put an end to one of the most crying evils of our time.' Subsequent facts shew that, although this law has passed in Italy, and may in that country be producing some good results, it has not in any way lessened the number of vagrant Italian children seen in the streets of London and other English towns. How it happens that the remedial measure has not relieved our shores from this incubus, we will explain presently; but it may be well first to summarise a few of the statements in the former article, sufficient to shew the mode in which this cruel traffic is carried on.

In years gone by, when Italy was split up into a number of kingdoms, dukedoms, and petty states, very little attention was paid to the general welfare of the people; the peasants and small cultivators were often so hardly driven that the support of a family became a serious responsibility; and a people, naturally kind rather than the reverse, were tempted to the adoption of a course from which their better feeling would have revolted. They did not actually sell their children, but they apprenticed them off for a time, on the receipt of a sum of money. The padroni or masters, to whom the children were apprenticed, were men whose only sympathy was for themselves and their own pockets; they made specious promises, and got the poor young creatures, eight years old or so, into their hands. Too often, the parents never saw the children again, and remained quite ignorant of their fate. It was not in Italy that the scoundrels kept their victims; they mostly crossed the Alps into France, whence many of them found their way to England. Or else they were shipped at Genoa, and conveyed at cheap rates to such shores as seemed likely to be most profitable to the padroni. As these men acquire an accurate knowledge of the extent to which sheer open beggary is illegal in this or that country, they adopt a blind, by turning the poor children into exhibitors of white mice, marmots, or monkeys. Advanced a little in age and experience, the boys are intrusted with small organs, and perhaps later with organs of larger size. Those whose strength of constitution enables them to bear a life of hardship during the so-called apprenticeship can sometimes obtain an organ on hire from one of the makers of those instruments, and become itinerant organ-grinders on their own account. But there is reason to fear that the poor boys too often succumb to the treatment they receive, and die at an early age. As to what befalls the girls thus expatriated, another sad picture would have to be drawn.

No resident in London, no visitor to London, need be told of the organ nuisance. Some of the organs, it is true, are really of excellent tone, and play good music; but they become a pest in this way—that the men, taking note of the houses whence they have obtained money, stop in front of those houses more and more frequently, in the hope of being paid, if not for playing, at least for going away. Some of these organ-men have been organ-boys who came over with padroni.

And now for the diplomatic correspondence relating to this subject.

In 1874 the Chevalier Cadorna, Italian Minister at the Court of St James's, addressed a communication to the Earl of Derby relating to these wretched and ill-used children. He stated that a law had been passed in Italy, the success of which would depend largely on the co-operation of other governments. It had been ascertained that in many provinces of that country parents lease or lend their children for money; boys and girls under eight years of age, who are taken by vile speculators to foreign lands, there to be employed as musicians, tumblers, dancers, exhibitors of white mice, beggars, &c. It is a white slave-trade, in which the unfeeling parents participate. London is especially noted for the presence of these unfortunates; the padroni or masters find that a good harvest may be made out of the injudicious because indiscriminate charity of the metropolis. 'Miserable it is for the children,' says M. Cadorna, 'if they fail any day to obtain the sum which their tyrants require from them! This is the reason why we often see them wandering about till late at night, exhausted by fatigue and hunger, rather than return to the lodgings where they dread ill-treatment of various kinds from their pitiless masters.' The police magistrates of London are frequently occupied in listening to the complaints of these poor creatures. But no: this is hardly the case; for the victims are generally afraid to make their sorrows known, lest they should suffer still worse from the vengeance of their taskmasters; sometimes, however, they are too ill from bad treatment to conceal their misery; while at other times they are taken up for begging. Who knows? perhaps the poor things receive better food and lodging during a few days' imprisonment—certainly better in a reformatory or a workhouse—than in the squalid rooms which their tyrants provide for them.

The Italian government are endeavouring to check the evil at its source or fountain-head; making the leasing of children by their parents illegal. If this does not produce a cure, then they are endeavouring to watch the slave-traders (as we may truly call them), and forbid them to carry their victims across the frontier or out to sea. When the Chevalier Cadorna made his communication to the Earl of Derby, the new law had been too recently passed to supply evidence of its practical effect; but he pointed to the fact that the law could not meet with full success unless foreign governments would render aid, by making this kind of Italian slavery unlawful in the countries to which the padroni bring their little victims. A suggestion was made that the Extradition convention, signed between England and Italy, might possibly be made to take cognizance of this state of things. Not so, it appears. The Home Secretary, when appealed to, stated that traffic in children is not within any of the crimes named in the English Extradition Acts. 'It appears to Mr Cross that the source of the evil arises in Italy, and that measures might be there adopted for preventing the egress from that country of such children as are described in the letter of the Italian Minister. He supposes that it would be competent to the Italian government to decline to grant passports for such children, and thus prevent their crossing the Italian frontier. There is no power to prevent such children from landing in this country. All that can be done is to protect them from any cruelty or ill-treatment on the part of padroni; and Mr Cross is assured that the metropolitan magistrates are most anxious to carry out that object, and that they are very desirous to abate the evils as far as our laws empower them to do so.'

So the matter rested for a time. Three years later, in May of the present year, the subject was mentioned in the House of Commons; and the Italian Minister, General Menabrea (successor to the Chevalier Cadorna), informed the Earl of Derby that the Italian government cannot effect all they wish in preventing the exodus of the padroni and their victims. 'It is easy for them to elude the vigilance of the authorities; for passports being now practically abolished from Italy to France, and thence to England, the traffickers in children can, by expatriating themselves, relieve themselves from the punishments they have incurred.'

Thus the inquiry ended nearly as it began, so far as definite conclusions are concerned. England is very chary of making restrictions on the freedom of entry of foreigners on our shores. Deposed emperors and kings, princes in trouble, defeated presidents and past presidents, persecuted ecclesiastics, patriots out of work—all find an asylum in little England; and many things would have to be taken into account before our government could legally forbid the Italian children and their padroni from setting foot on English ground.

No one can glance habitually through the daily newspapers without meeting with cases illustrating the condition of the poor Italian children. Some months back the magistrates of North Shields had a boy and a girl brought before them charged with begging. The fact came out in evidence that their padrone had bought or farmed them of their parents, and brought them to England. Marianna Frametta was fourteen years of age, Marcolatto Crola eleven. He had bought or rather leased them for twelve months, at ten pounds each: his calculation being that this sum, four shillings a week, would be amply covered, and much more, after providing them with board and lodging, by their earnings. They usually, it appears, got from nine to fifteen shillings a day by begging, possibly with the addition of some small pretence to an exhibition of white mice. If they brought home less than ten shillings each, they were beaten instead of fed at night. These sums appear strangely large; but so stands the record. It is satisfactory to know that the fellow was punished with imprisonment and hard labour for his cruelty. But what would eventually be the life of the children themselves? They were sent to the workhouse for temporary shelter, food, and medical treatment; these could only last for a time; and the youngsters would still be aliens, without definite occupation or means of livelihood.

There can be no doubt that the English habit of giving small sums of money to people in the streets and at the street doors has something to do with this matter. It may be due to a kind motive, but it unquestionably increases the number of applicants, and opposes a bar to the endeavours of governments and legislatures to bring about an improvement. Nevertheless it is quite right that all should be done that can be done to prevent ruthless speculators from bringing over poor Italian children to our shores, and then treating them like veritable slaves. This should all the more sedulously be attended to, because the padroni (so far as concerns the metropolis) live almost exclusively in one district, around Hatton Garden and Leather Lane. The narrow streets, courts, and alleys in that vicinity are crowded with them; every room in some of the houses being occupied by a distinct Italian batch, crowded together like pigs in a sty, and forming hotbeds of disease. When the 'Health Act' and the 'Lodging-Houses Act' gave the police power to enter such wretched apologies for dwellings, fearful scenes of this kind were brought to light. Matters are gradually being improved, but only by dint of constant vigilance.

Evidently there is an anxiety on the part of the Home Secretary to do all in his power to suppress the scandal, as is evidenced by the following circular, addressed to the police authorities of the metropolis: 'The attention of the Secretary of State has been called to the practice under which children bought or stolen from parents in Italy or elsewhere are imported into this country by persons known by the name of padroni, who send them into the streets to earn money by playing musical instruments, selling images, begging, or otherwise. It is most important to suppress this traffic by every available means, and Mr Cross relies on the vigilant co-operation of the police for this purpose. In many cases the employer will be found to have committed an offence against the Vagrant Act, 5 George IV. cap. 88, by procuring the child to beg. If so, he should be forthwith prosecuted, and the result of such prosecution should be made the subject of a special report to the Secretary of State. The child will probably come within the provisions of the 14th section of the Industrial Schools Act, 1866 (29 and 30 Vic. cap. 118), either under the first clause (as a child begging alms), or under the second clause (as a child wandering and without proper guardianship). An application should therefore be made to the justices for the child to be sent to a certified industrial school. Further application should be made, under section 19, for the temporary detention of the child in the workhouse until the industrial school has been selected, information being at once communicated to the Secretary of State, in order that, if requisite, he may render assistance in making the necessary arrangements. The final result of each case should also be reported to the Home Secretary.'

In conclusion, we are glad to see from the newspapers that the Brighton School Board, by enforcing the provisions of the Elementary Education Act, have been successful in terrifying the padroni who bring Italian vagrant children to the town, and thereby have banished them with their unhappy victims. The circumstance offers a good hint to local authorities. Rigidly apply the School Act, and we shall probably hear no more of the infamous practice of importing Italian children for vicious purposes.