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at the moment of investigating the case further, he promised to give the five shillings to get the working clothes out of pawn. The pawn ticket was shewn to him, and he counted out the money required, and handed it to the man. Immediately the woman exclaimed, "Shure, Sur, he would want a little more to get a bit of breakfast." A shilling was handed to her for this purpose, and at that moment the man whined out as if he had just made a painful discovery, "Oh, Sur, you've giv' me only four shillin'." "No!" was the reply, "five were carefully counted and given to you." He rejoined, "Do you think, Sur, I would desave you?" accompanied with solemn protestations and asseverations of his injured innocence for the purpose of supporting a lie and obtaining more money. In short, the spectacle was complete of modern savage life, degraded as any in pre-historic times; not in Greenland or Tierra del Fuego, but in the metropolis of the world. Unhappily the instance is not rare; it represents the state of many thousands of our poor benighted and degraded brethren in all the poorer quarters of London and our large towns, concealed behind the screen of decent habitations. Seldom do the prosperous, the refined, and the sensitive see them, except when they come out of their holes to beg, to thieve, or do violence. They are not unseen by the Great Judge of all, and the question is important to decide which is the most responsible in His sightthese wretched savages, or the civilized and Christian people within whose community they are born, reared, and maintained? To those who feel their responsibilities in this matter the difficulty of humanizing and improving this population must be very great; the power of bad habits is immense, and it is no easy thing to break through the love of dirt and idleness, of vagabondage and intemperance, when by years of indulgence they have become the nature. It is well known that if these wretched people were placed to-morrow in cleanliness and comfort, with the opportunity of maintaining the improved position by their own industry and effort, that for the most part they would quickly relapse. Reformatory work must be always difficult, and requires great expenditure of means and perseverance; not so that of prevention. In this particular instance, the two poor children, at present committed to the life and training of misery and roguery, might be snatched from the fire, and, in schools of industry, reared for personal happiness and public usefulness with comparative ease and certainty. By this method, we have the means of stopping the fount of bitterness at its very source, and could we but do this on a sufficiently extensive scale, we might hope by God's blessing within two generations to transform this wretched population entirely; and while discharging the highest and grandest work of philanthropy permitted us, we should at the same time be ridding our country of a disgrace and a danger that like a great putrefying and mortifying sore, threatens by its continuance the well-being of the whole State. The fact that so much has been done to relieve distress, to repress pauperism and to punish crime, while so little has been effected for the prevention of crime and pauperism, may account for the ill success of

our enormous expenditure, and explain the lamentable fact that the millions annually spent produce no appreciable effect in diminishing the want and misery around us. Out of the millions sterling yearly expended on charitable institutions, all that we can find devoted to the most important and initial work that of Industrial Schools to educate, morally and industrially train the young of the lower orders for the business of life, is about £60,000. Is it to be wondered at that our labour fails, and that the devotion of the largest means to the relief of pauperism instead of its prevention offers, as it were, a premium to the growth and perpetuation of the evil? If we would be in earnest, let us, therefore, throw more of our energy into the grateful and successful duty of educating and training our young, a duty in which England is far behind America, Prussia, and almost every Continental State.

The following list of the principal Institutions now at work in connection with this object in London, supplies information regarding the income, the number of children received,—the cost per head (after deducting the amount earned by the children towards their own support)—and the average amount of the latter or self-support, per head.

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From these details we find that, in some instances, the managers expend as much as £30 per head, and in others as little as £15. It will probably be found, on reference to the balance sheets of the former, that some of the money has been expended in the purchase of premises, and not in the ordinary maintenance. The St. Giles' Refuge affords a fair intermediate example of cost after eliminating such particulars; and here we find that the work is done at an expense, after deducting £5 108. a head (the nett amount earned by each boy's industrial work) of £17 88..

Thus we find that the gross annual income of 23 of these Institutions is £52,594. That the children benefited in them number 1606, that the average cost per head is £25, and that the average earnings of the children in 19 of them is £2 9s. per

annum.

Looking to the number of schools required to carry out this great work, it becomes a matter of extreme importance to ascertain how economically it can be effected; moreover, with a view

to another object-that of turning out the young people educated in these schools with the most practical fitness for contending with the difficulties of life and earning their own living, it is most important that they should be habituated to self-dependance, and that the schools which maintain and train them should be supported, as far as possible, by their own industry.

The Philanthropic Society's School Farm boys earn a nett profit of £5 4s. 6d. per annum, and the St. Giles' Refuge, Great Queen Street, £5 10s. On inquiry, it is found that double or treble their average earnings might be produced if the boys were retained in the school a longer time; but it is found that at first the work they do while learning their trade is effected at a loss; and generally, as soon as the boy can work at a profit he is removed from the school. There is also good reason to think that where these schools are conducted in the country on cheap land, or in conjunction with factories, much saving of expense would be effected.

In the school now proposed it is therefore intended to take a suitable portion of land, to erect thereon simple and inexpensive houses for the children, after the model of the Philanthropic Society's School Farm, to receive 300 boys and 100 girls-the houses for the two sexes to be separated by the largest extent of the property, and to be capable of holding each about 30 children.

It is proposed that the children should be received into the school in the 8th year of age, to avoid the difficulties caused by previous acquirement of vicious and improvident habits. The establishment will include three schools. (a) The Infant School, to receive the children from 8 to 10, in which the chief business will be, development of the physical powers, and acquirement of the instruments of knowledge, reading, writing, and ciphering, together with the degree of religious instruction and practical training suited to their tender years. In this school, play and rest will, of course, occupy a larger space than in the other schools. (b) The Probation School, to receive the children from 10 to 12. Here work and study will occupy a larger share of the time, and the particular qualifications and tendencies of the children be discovered, thus indicating their position in the next, or (c) The Trade School, in which, from 12 to 16, the children would learn and practise the occupation of their future lives, which, for boys may be that of farm labourers, carters, smiths, carpenters, shoemakers, brickmakers, bricklayers, bakers, and butchers. Where the schools are situated near factories, or other centres of labour suitable for the employment of the young, arrangements would be established with the proprietors for carrying out the objects of obtaining remunerative employment for the children consistently with their educational, moral, and physical interests. For girls, the occupations may be those of seamstresses, tailors, laundry-women, dairy-maids, housemaids, or plain cooks.

The principles on which the work of education and training will be carried out are as follows:

Recognising the threefold constitution of mind,-intellect,

affections, and will-the first, or intellect, will be taught not only the instruments of knowledge, reading, writing, and ciphering, but also the practice of thinking, remembering, and judging correctly, together with the groundwork, as well as the superstructure of the trade or occupation adopted for the business of life. The second, or affections, will be educated in the precepts of religion according to the light of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church of England; and the third will be practically trained in the schoolroom, the playground, the field, and the workshop, by the teachers seizing every opportunity of demonstrating the good policy and enjoyment, as well as the obligation of practising truth, honesty, justice, and industry-thus habituating the will in an unhesitating compliance with the dictates of duty and conscience. The inducements to good conduct will be those of a carefully-adjusted system of rewards and punishments, in which the former will especially assume the rule of allowing every child to participate in the profitable results of his or her individual industry. Here, again, the model of the Red Hill Farm School will be adopted, and in this way each child from the beginning will have a gradually accumulating store, like the deposit account in a bank, kept by the master, but ready to supply any proper requirement of the pupils which the master may approve; subject also to the exaction of fines for misconduct, but in every case payable, whatever it may be, to the pupil on leaving the school. The punishment would be partly the liability to fines out of this store of industry, and partly confinement, or non-participation in the special amusements or enjoyments of the school.

The conditions on which children will be received at this school are,

1st. That they shall be rescued from poverty and moral contamination, that is, selected from the most helpless and degraded classes.

2nd. That they shall be apprenticed to the school for eight years, that is, from the 8th year to the 16th.

3rd. That if the parents or guardian be able, they shall contribute a sum to be agreed upon to the school fund for the support of the child until the child has attained the 14th year, after which the parent or guardian shall be released from this undertaking. This condition would admit of legal enforcement if at any time a compulsory law for the education of children were enacted.

The school, thus constituted, conducted, and conditioned, it is hoped and expected may be supported at a very trifling expense after it is once fairly launched. The Managers found this hope on the following reasoning:-If the best managed of the present schools can obtain a nett profit of industrial work equal to an average of £6 per head, under the disadvantage of the children leaving the school almost as soon as they have become productive, it is probable that, with three or four years of productive industry, the average profit may be brought up to £12 per annum.

It

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