first that makes any mention of the education of paupers. In pursuance of its provisions the Poor-law Commissioners ordered, that for three working hours at least of every day the boys and girls who are inmates of a workhouse shall receive instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the principles of the Christian religion; and such other instruction shall be imparted to them as may train them in habits of usefulness, industry, and virtue.' But the quality of the instruction provided by the ratepaying guardians was such as to neutralize this well-meant regulation. In 1846,' says Mr. Senior, Government seems to have despaired of persuading the guardians to pay adequate salaries to schoolmasters, and to have been afraid to compel them. It granted 30,000l. a year, to be applied in payment of teachers, and the Privy Council engaged to inspect the schools.'-(P. 91.) The tuition in the workhouse schools was accordingly much improved. The testimony of the Report on this point is remarkable, and suggests an inference to which we shall advert presently; at present, we adduce it here only to prove that improved tuition is no antidote to the moral poison of the work house. The contaminating intercourse of the adults is so fatal that, even of the orphans, who have no parents to misguide them, and who accordingly are observed to form, as a class, the best conducted portion of the schools, scarcely one in three, according to the most favourable calculations, does tolerably well in after-life. No love of independence, no self-relying energy, no decent self-respect, can spring to life in this chilling atmosphere. The young grow up with few to respect and none to love-unsoftened by kindness, uncheered by hope. Having never known anything better than the dreary monotony of the workhouse, they can entertain no dread of that with which from their earliest days they have been familiar; they cannot attach the idea of disgrace to an abode which represents all they have ever known of home; they are ever drawn back to it, in after life, by some irresistible attraction, unless they rather gravitate to the gaol. The girls, more especially, return to it as to their only assured asylum, bringing with them, for the most part, fatherless children to perpetuate the race of hereditary paupers. We need not enlarge on this painful subject. The evidence on this point is overwhelming :-To the modern workhouse school attaches the curse which was inherent in the old Poor-law system altogether. It was not only an evil in itself, but it was so carried out as to perpetuate the evil it was designed to prevent.' Moreover, a considerable percentage of the children are the orphans of honest and industrious parents who have deserved of the community that their children should be taught to earn and not to beg their bread.

And

And these too form an annual increment to the increasing mass of pauperism and vice.

'Servitus crescit nova, nec priores

. . tectum. . . relinquunt.'

The Commissioners have cited the following passages from Dr. Temple's Report :—

"The workhouses are such as to ruin the effect of most of their teaching. "I think," writes one of the teachers, "the boys in this union will never be dispauperised; they have to mix with the men, most of whom are 'gaol birds.' I have found them talking to the boys about the gaol, and of bright fellows finding their way to the gaol." Another says, "I really can do nothing of any good in this place; the guardians will not give any land to be cultivated, and the dull, deadening wool-picking goes on, and I have to sit sucking my fingers. What shall I do, Sir? I cannot train the children. It appears to me to be absurd to tell these boys to be industrious, and to cultivate a proper spirit of independence; and then, after they have done schooling, to turn them adrift, with no chance whatever of being able to earn an honest living. I should be glad, Sir, if you could place me in some station where there is some real work to be done, I do not care of how rough a character." 'Nothing can be done while the boys are in the union," says another. "The common topic of conversation among the children is the arrival of the women of the town to be confined here," says another. Another, writing from a union where the boys work in the field with the men, remarks, "My work of three weeks is ruined in as many minutes." (p. 354.)

Miss Twining says,—

66

'A good schoolmistress was asked why she seemed so depressed and spiritless about her work in a workhouse school; and she said it was because she felt she was training up the girls for a life of vice and depravity; it was impossible under existing circumstances that it should be otherwise; one after another went out to carry on the lessons she had learnt from the adults, and she returned like them, ruined and degraded, to be a life-long pauper.'-(p. 355.)

Mr. Cumin says,—

'It seems impossible to exaggerate the spirit of lying, low cunning, laziness, insubordination, and profligacy which characterize the pauper class in workhouses; and this spirit naturally infects the mass of poor children who are born and bred up in so pestilential an atmosphere. The master of the Bedminster union, where old and young work together in the garden, told me that he could observe a marked deterioration in them after they come away from such out-door work. Moreover, I had a list furnished to me by the master and the mistress of the Plymouth workhouse of boys and girls who had left the union. This return, as far as possible, showed what had become of each individual child. Of 74 girls, I found that no fewer than 37 had returned to the workhouse; and of 56 boys, 10 or 12 had returned, many of them

several

several times. Lastly, I find upon looking over the list furnished, that out of the 74 girls, only 13 are known to be doing well, and of the 56 boys, only 18. It may be observed in passing, that this confirms the general evidence, which goes to prove that the condition of the girls is worse than that of the boys.'-(pp. 355, 6.)

It is true that by a more careful classification, a better enforcement of discipline, and more discriminating regulations, much may be done, and ought to be done, to soften the rigour of the workhouse to the deserving poor. The leading idea of its founders was to make it a place of penance and degradation to scare away the sturdy vagrant. But a large proportion of its inmates are there without fault, or at least by no choice of their own. We rejoice that the improvement of Workhouses has attracted the attention of the humane, and we earnestly recommend to the notice of the reader Mrs. Sheppard's charming little volume, equally distinguished for its good sense and good feeling, entitled Sunshine in the Workhouse.' We may perhaps return to the subject on some future occasion; we advert to it now only to protest against the notion that any change which has hitherto been effected, or can be contemplated as possible in future, can purify the workhouse school so long as it is held within the baleful precincts of the workhouse.

What, then, is to be done with those whom the poverty or the vice, the civil or the actual death of their parents, has thrown, in the age of helplessness, on the wide world? Private charity, the mainspring of all our social ameliorations, has done much to mitigate the evil. The benevolent authoress of The Workhouse Orphan' seems to think that by further exertions private charity may obviate it altogether. And in truth she would lay on others no heavier burden than she has shown herself willing to take upon herself. At the 'Brockham Home and Industrial Training School,' where fifteen children, rescued from the workhouse, are brought up to be useful members of society, may be seen an example of what judicious kindness and careful teaching can do to resuscitate the sparks of human feeling and human intelligence in the chilled heart and stupified head of the little pauper. Many similar institutions have been established in different parts of the kingdom, and all the evidence which is contained in the volumes before us, as well as that which we have been able to collect from other sources, attests their complete success. Many of these are certified as industrial schools under Mr. Adderley's Act: but instead of receiving, as they ought, every encouragement from the Legislature, they have encountered what might be called persecution, if it did not arise from haste and inadvertence rather than intention. After several alterations of the Act, it remains doubtful

doubtful whether guardians are empowered to pay for the maintenance and education of the pauper children received at these Homes; and in 1860, schools which came within the intention of this Act were transferred from the Privy Council to the Home Office, on the ground that 'free schools are of a penal and reformatory nature.' This sweeping generalization may suit official convenience, but it is at variance with fact. The Brockham Home and many others are not of a reformatory, and still less of penal, character, and no schools to which guardians are empowered to send paupers should be contaminated by the admission of criminals. Poverty is indeed too closely connected with crime, but it is the interest of society to distinguish and not to confound them. What is wanted is a short Act to the effect that pauper industrial schools may be certified simply as such, and that Poor-law Guardians may be empowered to pay for the maintenance and education of pauper children in such Homes and Schools as are free from the liability to receive criminal children.

But admirable as are the results of these charitable efforts, the evil is of a magnitude which cannot adequately be met by private charity. There are on an average between fifty and sixty children in every union workhouse in England and Wales, and to afford a sufficient supply of Homes' for indoor paupers alone, we must suppose that in every union district there are three or four persons who have the heart to engage in this self-sacrificing labour, the head to conduct the work wisely, and the means and the time to do it thoroughly. And before we tax private charity to this enormous amount, we must consider whether this duty falls within charity's legitimate province. We must first ascertain what the law can do. It is unfair, it is impolitic to exhaust the resources of the benevolent few by laying on them alone the burdens which belong to them in common with the careless many. Charity should be called in only as an auxiliary to remove or palliate the ills which the Legislature cannot reach.

The New Poor-law Amendment Act ventured as far in providing education as would have been permitted at the time, and as far as seemed necessary. The failure of workhouse schools was a discovery which could be made only by experience. But it was made soon. As early as 1837, a committee which was appointed to consider the working of the Poor-law, recommended that the Poor-law Commissioners be empowered, with the consent of Guardians, to combine parishes or unions for the support and management of district schools, and to regulate the distribution of the expenses of such establishments.

In 1841 the Poor-law Commissioners published a Report on the training of pauper children, in which the same recommendation

was

was forcibly urged; and finally, in 1845, an Act was passed which gave them the necessary powers to make a combination of such Unions as should desire it for the purpose of making a district school common to them all, to which might be sent the orphans and deserted children, and those whose parents or guardians are consenting to the placing of such children in the school of such district.' The Act at first contained limitations as to distance and as to the expense of buildings, which had been introduced to disarm opposition, but which were subsequently found to be unnecessary and inexpedient, and were removed. The clause which makes the parent's consent necessary is still in force, and the Act is permissive only, and not imperative. This was no oversight or miscalculation on the part of the framers of the Bill. In no other form could it have been passed. The plan was an experiment of doubtful issue, involving a considerable expense, and highly unpopular with the guardians generally and with that large portion of the public who had given the subject no attention. In consequence of this want of coercive power, the Act has remained practically inoperative; only six district schools up to the present time have been established in England and Wales, and thus far it may be said to have failed. But in another point of view the success has been complete. The experiment has been conducted with a degree of prudence and caution which would not have been called into action if it had been enforced by authority. Individuals of earnest convictions and untiring zeal have exerted themselves to overcome the objections of guardians, to diminish expense, and by their personal superintendence to promote in every detail the welfare and efficiency of the infant establishments. The evidence collected by the Commissioners, as to the success of these schools in withdrawing their pupils from the class of paupers and turning them into useful and respectable members of society, is full and convincing. Instead of loading our pages with quotations from the Report, which the reader may more satisfactorily consult for himself, we will draw his attention to a single specimen which has more especially been brought within our notice.

These schools, in their details and their management, vary, of course, as they are situated in thickly or thinly peopled, in manufacturing or rural neighbourhoods. The school in question belongs to a district where, on the whole, the agricultural character predominates. It was established, about twelve years ago, by Mr. Wolryche Whitmore,* now, alas! no more, whose unwearied

exertions,

Whatever merit may be claimed for opposition to the corn laws, that merit is due to Mr. Whitmore beyond all others. More than twenty years before their

repeal