In Ireland, the success of the reformatories, both Protestant and Catholic, is in a high degree satisfactory, more especially when we remember the general poverty of the people. The decrease in the number of young offenders is remarkable. The Report of the Board of Superintendents of 1863 states that, in Dublin, a juvenile pickpocket had become a rarity; and in that of 1864 an equally strong testimony is given as to the effective working of the Act. The Board particularly notices how few of those sent to reformatories relapse into crime after their release. Of 125 discharged in 1863, 113 are known to be doing well; of 133 in 1864, 115. The success of the system in Ireland, in Dublin particularly, is to be ascribed, in a great measure, to the rigorous enforcement of the parental payments, a point so much neglected in England. The orders are made out on the lowest scale, and regulated, not so much by what the parent ought to be able to pay, as to what he can really pay with certainty. Sometimes as little as 2d. or 3d. a week is claimed; but the payment is peremptorily demanded, and the parents are warned that unless it is forthcoming they schools is satisfactory, though the payments of the parents bear so small a proportion to the expense as to count for little or nothing. The receipts were, in 1865: : £ S. d. 64,735 7 10 2,499 8 7 ... 95,807 18 10 96,167 5 8 J The total expenditure for reformatories in the year was will infallibly be sent to gaol. This warning, which experience has taught them is not an empty threat, is so effectual that it is rarely found necessary to carry it into execution, and a considerable sum is regularly collected. The certified industrial schools in the United Kingdom are increasing, though slowly. There are 31 in England, 20 in Scotland, in Ireland none. The number of children admitted the 31st of December, 1864, was 1,765-1,194 boys, 474 girls. These schools, the inmates of which, with some exceptions, belong not to the criminal but to the vagrant class, though the distinction is not very easy to draw, are valuable adjuncts in the improvement and reformation of the youth of the lower orders, wherever the Act is energetically applied. And yet, despite all the efforts made in this direction, thousands of destitute, neglected, ignorant children are still swarming in all the great cities in the United Kingdom. To estimate their number is impossible-their name is legion. In Manchester alone, we learn from a recent writer that only one child in three receives the elements of education. Thus 50,000, out of a population of half a million, are growing up in the densest ignorance, not from the poverty of the parents--many of whom are earning amply sufficient to maintain and educate a family -but from their drunken and vicious habits, which absorb all their available means, and render them indifferent to the fate of their children. In Liverpool, at the close of 1865, there were no less than 10,280 children who could neither read nor write; the lowest degree of education compared with any preceding year, and quite in keeping with the tables of crime.* The more general diffusion of education- moral, * Report of the Governor and Chaplain of the Liverpool Prison, religious, and intellectual-is the only cure for this evil, and the increase of ragged schools for infants and juveniles seems to us one of the most effectual means of reaching the lower strata of the population, where vice and ignorance naturally most abound. No other description of school that we are aware of can penetrate into these foul and hidden depths; and it is deeply to be regretted that the Government grant in their aid should be so penurious. True, the free working, the missionary spirit, "the faith which discerns the immortal spark shining through all that is revolting in the squalor of these little creatures," * are essential to carry on this work of mercy. But why should Government aid destroy that spirit? One of the most strenuous supporters and devoted friends of those schools has declared the idea fallacious.† A capitation of 10s. per annum for infants and £1 for juveniles, which would cover half the expense, is all that is demanded. The rest would be easily defrayed by private benevolence. How small would be the outlay, in comparison with the immense good it would effect by carrying some rays of civilisation, of moral and religious instruction, among the thousands now growing up in ignorance and sin, and who will inevitably, at no distant period, swell the list of criminals already so fearfully large? The fate of millions yet unborn lies in the hands of the present generation. Can any effort be too great, * Miss Carpenter's evidence before the House of Commons, 1861. †The twenty-second annual meeting of the Ragged School Union has been lately held at Exeter Hall, under the presidency of Lord Shaftesbury. According to the report, it has now 747 schools, with an attendance of 61,986 children, 3,029 voluntary teachers, 396 paid ditto, 480 monitors. In the refuges were 450 boys and girls. There were 102 penny banks, with 15,564 depositors; the total amount paid in during the year was £6,778, that withdrawn was £6,100. any expenditure too vast, which offers a reasonable hope of preserving them from perdition? Within the last few months, the Recorder of Birmingham, M. D. Hill, Esq., whose name has so often appeared in the preceding pages, and to whose untiring exertions in the cause of penal reform the triumph of the principles now established are in a great degree due, has retired from the office he had held for twenty-seven years with so much honour to himself and so much advantage to the country at large. Among originators and advocates of the treatment of criminals with the view at once to their reformation and the protection of society, Mr. Hill will ever hold an honoured and conspicuous place, 133 THE HISTORY OF PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND, With an Appendix, bringing it down from the WORKHOUSES, REFUGES, FRIENDLY SOCIETIES, WORKMEN'S PAUPERISM and crime, have sensibly diminished within |