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penditure 2537. 3s. 2d., about 5l. 15s. a head, of which 1437. 3s. 3d. is for diet (31. 5s. a head per annum, or 1s. 3d. per week).

“Twelfth Annual Report of the Perth Ladies' House of Refuge for Destitute Girls.

"This is one of the schools certified under Dunlop's Act (17 & 18 Vic.). The number of inmates is at present thirty. Since the opening of the Institution in 1844, fifty-five girls have been reclaimed and trained for domestic service, many of whom are now performing the duties of life well. Besides the needle work and knitting done for the establishment, 177. 2s. 9d. has been realised for the Institution by the produce of work sold. The expenditure, including rent, salaries, food, and everything, amounts to 2301., or about 71. 6s. 8d. per head, but the girls are all boarded and lodged."

We concur

Is this a mere Utopian scheme? we think not. with Mr. Baker, of Hardwicke Court, and Mr. Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, in their hopes of success. Mr. Hill is now calling upon the town in which he exercises judicial functions to aid him in his efforts to produce the Reformation of Adults. The "Spectator" calls this very aptly "The forgotten element in Politics," and writes as follows:

"Seventeen years ago, Mr. M. D. Hill was elected Recorder of Birmingham. He found a practice commenced by the Warwickshire magistrates, of restoring juvenile offenders to their friends, with a view at once of saving them from prison contamination, and of cutting them short in their career of crime. The Recorder adopted that plan, and has carried it out for the seventeen years. He has in that time saved more than four hundred young men from the total perdition to which the old plan of administering the law would have consigned them. The benefit conferred upon society has been very great. The money saving has not been contemptible; instead of four hundred thieves and vagabonds sent forth to prey upon society, four hundred have been added to the industrious classes who aid in augmenting the wealth of the community. only does the sentence of the prisoner operate as an example, but the abstraction of so many from the criminal class abstracts so many bad examples, and reduces the increase of the class in a geometrical ratio.

Not

"Mr. Hill could not have accomplished that reform unaided. It was necessary to provide actual homes and places of employment for the young persons who were rescued from prison employMen who had the management of official departments, or of large establishments, pleaded that they were not in a position to undertake the responsibily of that constant watchfulness which is

ment.

necessary to preserve the youth who has once fallen from falling again. But there were persons who were not engaged in superintending large numbers; they were the small shopkeepers, or the artisans-poor men, in many cases obscure men. They were not in a condition to encounter loss-to make a sacrifice; they knew that the employment of the youths in question did involve a risk of loss; and yet those very persons came forward at Mr. Hill's summons. They sought the moral advantage to others rather than themselves; forgot the injury which they had received, or remembered only to return it with benefit, and took back the erring youth. They consented to co-operate with Mr. Hill in carrying out a species of administration to the necessity and advantage of which the general community was not yet alive, and which Parliament had not yet sanctioned. They undertook that sacrifice, because they could do good by it."

The clergy of this still growing town, who are so active in promoting the spiritual welfare, as well as the innocent and elevating recreation of its people, will doubtless aid the Recorder and the laity, in the attempt to reclaim the adult criminals of both sexes.

"An attempt is being made to establish in the heart of England a newspaper which would labour honestly, and, it is hoped, powerfully, in aid of the Reformatory cause, both juvenile and adult. The panaceas of political charlatans have ever the result of stirring up class against class, and interest against interest. Our aim and ambition would be to destroy this antagonism. As a great means of accomplishing this, we would turn to our much praised, but unappreciated and consequently unused, Institutions, and earnestly set forth the immense moral advantages which would flow from a real municipal organisation. Under a perfect system of local selfgovernment, each man would be made to feel that he had a stake in society; a strong feeling of self-reliance and responsibility would spring up; intelligent comprehension of views and interests common to all men, and to every class, would be produced and perfected; wrongs would be promptly known, and evils effectually remedied.

"All measures which would serve to bind in a closer bond of union the Law, the Queen, and the People, would have unflinching support. We would denounce the injustice of interference in the internal affairs of any country, and dwell upon the responsibilities of England as a member of the great family of nations; indeed, the fundamental idea of this journal would be that of duty,—duty to ourselves, our neighbours, and our God. We would cultivate a friendly feeling with the various religious bodies, and would keep the administration of endowed charities prominently before the public. We would introduce articles on the condition of the people in the manufacturing towns and agricultural districts. Convinced that the woefully degraded state of a large portion of our female

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population is mainly attributable to the fact of women being shut out from various occupations in which they might earn a decent livelihood, we would labour to open to them remunerative employments. The subject of education, the education most needed — that of the habits and the feelings-would receive the most earnest consideration and support. Into the glorious movement for the reformation of the erring we would throw ourselves heart and soul; large space would be devoted to the subject of Reformatories, more especially to those set apart for girls; and ample opportunities would be afforded to the managers of Reformatories all over the country for comparing their systems, so that improvements might be suggested in the methods adopted.

"It is unquestionable that, to most people, this latter subject has hitherto been made to wear a most repulsive aspect. To make thoroughly known the objects of the reformatory movement, there is wanted, not merely two or three papers devoted to reformatory matters exclusively, but an organ in the press which, while advocating this question, would possess attractions for the readers of ordinary newspapers, who would imperceptibly be drawn from what first interested them, into the columns treating of crime and its prevention. The projected paper would be a Journal of General News, arranged after a peculiar plan, and a record of the progress of Science and the Fine Arts. For writings of an elevating character we would do our best to secure public approval; for those of a noxious tendency, public condemnation. Careful estimates would be formed of the influence of our light Literature, especial reference being made to such productions as the so-called Comic Histories of England and Rome, by which our ideas of the beautiful and the sublime are vulgarised; to works like that of Gordon Cumming, the sea-cow torturer, by which the spirit of cruelty is fostered; to such fictions as the novels of Reynolds, which, by prematurely developing the passions of our uncultured juvenile population, augment so considerably our fearful annual crop of vice

and crime.

6

A main feature in the proposed periodical would be sketches of our most eminent philanthropists. Notices of Miss Florence Nighingale, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Stanley, Mr. Joseph Sturge, Mr. Commissioner Hill, Lord Brougham, Hon. and Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, Mr. Justice Talfourd, Mr. Samuel Gurney, Mrs. Fry, Lord George Hill, &c., &c., would appear in early numbers.

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Amongst the contributors would be many of the most noteworthy writers on the Reformatory Question, including Mr. W. Morgan, Miss Mary Carpenter, Captain Bengough, Rev. Ishmael Fish, Mr. Thomas Wright, of Manchester, and probably the Rev. John Clay. Two of the ablest writers for Household Words would exert for it their facile and vigorous pens. It would also be contributed to by Mrs. Mary Howitt, Mr. L. Falkland, Mr. J. Passmore Edwards, Mr. Moy Thomas, and other remarkable authors.

This Journal, being neither sectarian in religion, nor partisan

in politics, would be the fit organ of a movement comprising men of all shades of religious and political opinions. Birmingham, from its central position, offers facilities for advancing the Reformatory movement, not to be found elsewhere, and to promote this object the office of this Journal would be made a repository for the sale of the works of such writers as have devoted themselves to the godlike task of showing how the fallen might be raised, and the outcast drawn again within the pale of society."

EDUCATIONAL PROPOSALS.

DURING the parliamentary recess, this important question has not been suffered to die out. Sir John Packington, at Manchester, has spoken three columns of" The Times," but we search in vain for any solution of this intricate problem. He desired three changes as indicative of improvement. First, the adoption of the half-time system in all manufacturing towns; next, more complete organization on the part of the Government; and, thirdly, a larger and more certain supply of funds, to be procured by local rates. In the first proposal we heartily concur: it is absolutely essential to the promotion of the welfare of the young in Birmingham, Manchester, and the clothing and cotton districts. Perhaps the appointment of a Vice-President of the Privy Council Committee on Education, may go far towards accomplishing the second end in view: while the third will continue to remain

a quæstio vexata for years to come. Let Sir John Pakington grapple with his first proposal manfully, and carry it through the House of Commons, and we shall then be prepared to rejoice in his success. He will receive help in many quarters, especially in Birmingham. That busy town is by no means inactive or unconcerned in the matter. Three pam

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phlets have lately been addressed to leading laymen of that populous borough. Their titles are as follows:-" The School and the Workshop: why should they not combine. A letter to J. T. Chance, Esq. By the Hon. and Rev. G. M. Yorke." Crime; its Prevention and Cure. A letter to the Mayor of Birmingham. By the Rev. G. S. Bull." "Birmingham; its Educational Condition, and Educational Requirements. A letter to R. W. Winfield, Esq.. By the Rev. Nash Stephenson.'

The writers all aim at the same object-the adoption of some measures by which the alarming deficiency of education in Birmingham can be remedied. They unite in ascribing the evil to one cause-the too early employment of children in factories; but they suggest different modes of dealing with

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the case. At present it appears that about eight months is the average term spent at school by the children of the artisan class, a period manifestly insufficient to ensure their acquirement of even rudimentary training. They are not sent to school very early in life, and no sooner is their attention fixed than they are snatched away, and sent into the factory to help in maintaining the family. We thus get a race of children forced prematurely into the condition of men and women, not infrequently doing the work, and supporting the responsibilities, of adults. Their education, in its generally accepted sense, is over; the labour of the day unfits them for evening schools; the week's work renders them indisposed towards Sunday schools: for it is well known that the Sunday scholars in Birmingham are in number far below those of other large towns. This class of persons become the parents of the next generation: undervaluing education themselves, they also undervalue it for their children; and, unless something is done to check this progression of indifference, there seems to be no hope of forming an educated artisan class.

Three ways of attaining this object have been proposed. As we understand Mr. Bull, he argues in favour of a modified Factory Act, prohibiting masters from employing children under a certain age. Such an Act would not effect all that is required; the children, debarred from work, would, as Mr. Bull says, be "sent to school in the streets ;" and he proposes to meet this difficulty by rendering education compulsory on those parents who can afford to pay for it; by providing schools for the destitute in the cases where payment is impossible; and by empowering police officers to convey to Reformatory Schools "such children as are found in our streets at late hours of the night." To the objection, that a Factory Act would not work in Birmingham, Mr. Bull replies, that it has worked well for twenty years elsewhere, while he fully admits, that Birmingham trades are carried under conditions differing widely from those attending the manufactures of Manchester and Leeds. If no other effectual means can be devised, then let us have a Factory Act, because compulsory education would be better than the present state of things.

Mr. Yorke's plan is based on a very different principle. He proposes to make parents and children feel an interest in education, by imparting to education a really tangible value. The Committee of Council issue certificates of attendance and proficiency at school. These certificates are