PREFACE.

THE first and most essential condition of doing good, is the thorough knowledge of the evil to be combated. The cankers which are eating into the very heart of modern society can be cured only (if cure be possible) after a careful and scrupulous investigation. It is only by patient and diligent research into the causes of destitution that we can discover the means of overcoming, or at least of mitigating it; and to reduce the effective army of crime, we must first know under what moral and social influence that army has been raised and recruited.

But it would be of very little use to expatiate on the nature of the malady, without at the same time proposing the means of removing it. Indeed, a curious and instructive lesson may be learned from the parallel between the disease itself and the remedies employed against it.

To draw a faithful picture of the crime and pauperism which are making such fearful havoc in wealthy and industrial England, and at the same time to paint in true colours the generous efforts of a whole nation to attenuate their evil results and lighten their perils-to point out, on the one hand, the millions plunged in the depths of misery and sin, and, on the other, the institutions of every description established to aid and relieve them-to pro