can attend no other school, they have been greatly elevated in the social scale, as we who have long worked in these schools can testify; for we have seen our ragged children grow into respectable sailors, labourers, soldiers, and even tradesmen, themselves being now the parents of children whom they take care to have well educated. These schools elevate, instead of degrading.

With respect to the other accusation, that they are "bad schools," we sorrowfully admit their inefficiency, both in number and in condition; for there never have existed funds (except when they are under the immediate patronage of so distinguished a personage as Lord Shaftesbury), to conduct them as they should be conducted; these schools are necessarily very expensive, if they are good. This is not a reason for refusing help, which has been acted on by the Government in other cases. Some thirty years ago, when the educational condition of the labouring population was very low, the schools inefficient and the teachers uneducated, the Government did not on that account leave the labouring population to suffer an evil which they could not themselves remedy, but applied the public money to stimulate and aid voluntary effort in such ways as then appeared most judicious, in order to raise the educational status of the country. Great success attended their efforts then. We only ask that a similar course should be pursued now towards schools which are needed, but which they now consider inefficient. Such a plea that Ragged Schools are bad or inefficient, by no means affects the general argument. I do not here plead for Ragged Schools as now generally conducted-indeed I should prefer dropping that name and adopting another; I would only urge that the neglected and destitute children ought to be educated; that the education given them should be adapted to their wants; and that effective pecuniary aid should be given from Government funds, with suitable inspection, to enable voluntary benevolent effort to cope with the gigantic ignorance which now exists.

Other objections which have been urged against giving Government educational aid in the education of neglected and destitute children, spring from misapprehensions, which it is hoped have been removed by the facts which have been advanced in this paper. But it is necessary to notice one other, which involves an important principle. When failing to impress on the Educational Council the claim of this portion of the population to a fair share of the parliamentary grant, and the great evil of leaving the most ignorant in utter degradation, while abundant aid is given to those who can help themselves, we have frequently been told that those of our children who are destitute, can go to workhouse schools, and that if we require schools for the others, we can certify the schools under the Industrial Schools' Act, and thus obtain sufficient aid to carry on both a ragged school and a school for children sentenced by the magistrate. Now, were such a course as the last proposed expedient or practicable, it would not produce the effect suggested, of raising funds for the ragged schools; because the Government allowance for each child sentenced

under the Industrial Schools' Act is 5s. a week, which is now found insufficient for the expenses of educating, maintaining, and clothing each child, and requires to be supplemented from other sources. A Ragged School could not, therefore, be properly supported by help derived from the Government allowance for some sentenced children received into it, without withdrawing from them what ought in justice to be devoted to them. But the Ragged Schools, or free schools for neglected and destitute children, are for those who come voluntarily, and wish to be improved: and such children ought not to be associated with those who are placed under legal sentence. Besides this, the two schools are of a totally different character-the one being a simple day-school, and the other a boarding-school. The system adopted in each is unfit for the other, and even the localities and premises adapted to each differ in toto. The proposal to apply the Certified Industrial Schools' Act to the tens of thousands of children who exist in dense ignorance in our country, is simply impossible, because the children do not necessarily commit acts which would bring them under the provisions of that law; and if they did it is absurd to suppose that the magistrates of Bristol, Manchester, or any large town, could or would sentence thousands of children annually to such schools, or that the Government would allow the continuance of an Act which clothed and fed children from the public treasury, at an expense of £13 per annum, simply because they required education which might be provided them at a cost of £1 per annum. Equally untenable is the suggestion that destitute children should be sent to a workhouse school. If they are not actually paupers they cannot be relieved, even in the matter of education, by the parish funds, and surely we ought not to desire that they should be pauperised. But even if their parents are actually receiving out-door relief, it by no means follows that their children will receive education; on the contrary, as the law now stands, it is most probable that they will not. Providing education for children whose parents receive out-door relief, or who, being orphans, receive it themselves, is not compulsory on guardians, and therefore is seldom given by them. This proposal is therefore untenable. The tens of thousands of our neglected and destitute children remain untaught and ignorant. Voluntary Christian effort has done its utmost, but cannot unaided grapple with the enormous evil. Let the Government efficiently help this as it has done other departments of education, and abundance of voluntary effort will support it. One pound given annually for the education of each of these children, in a school where they would receive a true and useful education, adapted to their requirements, would save the country £13 per annum for education in a certified industrial school; £16 in a reformatory; and from £30 to £40 per annum in a convict prison.

I earnestly entreat the Educational Section to solicit the attention of the Government to this most important subject, and to request that a full investigation of the extent and nature of the ignorance which pervades our land may be made in the Educational Committee,

which has not yet completed its sittings, and a proper provision made for these children.

We have "bided our time" in this matter of the neglected and destitute children. The consequence has been, what has often been predicted, "beggary, filth, and crime" have seized the children, and established themselves in our midst. Let us all strive to rescue from them these children, and have them educated! Each one of these has powers within him, given him by the Creator, and he is cruelly injured if, in a Christian and civilised country, he is left to grow up to maturity without the power of unfolding his higher nature. Let us all feel the sacred duty of helping those neglected ones. All have immortal souls, and are the children of the same Heavenly Father! All are born free and equal in our land; all may become useful members of the community if properly educated! Let the State no longer leave untouched the plague-spot in our midst, or neglect the thousands who cannot rise unaided, if they would, from the slough of despondency and ignorance which pollutes our country.

Government Treatment of Ragged Schools. By HENRY CARTWRIGHT, F.S.A., Barrister-at-Law.

Of all the momentous questions which have persistently claimed the attention of the English people of late years none has involved more interests, social and political, than that of public education. Thinking men have made this the theme of their consideration, both in and out of Parliament. Some have made it a stepping-stone to power and popularity, whilst others have used it as a peg to hang new-fangled notions and crotchety theories upon. Unlike reform and other purely political questions this has been considered as one both admitting of and calling for an eminently practical treatment, and the results have been various. Among others we have had a Public School Commission and a new Minute of the Board of Education, to which we may add a formal inquiry into the subject of education, not in its once-accepted sense as the method of imparting a certain amount of book-knowledge on sacred and secular subjects, but in its modern interpretation as including the whole process of training the young, physical, moral, intellectual, industrial, and religious, so that in maturer years they shall form honest, industrious, law-worthy citisens, robust healthy men, and sound christians. The results of the inquiry were in many respects startling, and have in numerous instances led to several experiments with a view to amelioration.

The first great point in the inquiry was to find an adequate test or standard by which to measure the amount of education in a given instance. The examination system was naturally proposed to be

extended for this purpose, and was as naturally adopted. For, at first sight, not only did this appear to be the true test, but there seemed to be a difficulty in suggesting any other which should have any claim to being practical. The examination system had worked well in the universities and public schools, as well as elsewhere. It only had to be extended, it appeared, to provide a sound practical gauge of education. It was discovered incidentally that the Civil Service harboured all sorts of know-nothings and do-nothings, and the general intellectual attainments of the servants of the Crown were found to be not worth speaking of. A Civil Service Commission was, therefore, constituted and provided to administer the infal lible test of examination to all future candidates for government employment. The results were, errors excepted, eminently satis factory. Oxford and Cambridge middle-class examinations were thereupon instituted, and the examinations in general of everybody, everywhere, in and for everything, became the rage. Where was it to stop? Should candidates for the premiership compete, and should he who was best posted up in Hallam, Russell, Blackstone, and modern languages be at once elected? It was too absurd. There is evidently a superior limit beyond which examinations become farcical-that limit is far beneath the premiership. As far as Civil Servants are concerned the line has been drawn between subordinates and heads or superiors in any department. Indeed, last year we had proof that even the subordinates of one whole department that of the British Museum-had been, as it turned out, injudiciously brought under the yoke of the Civil Service Commissioners. This was shown by the resignation, on account of alleged incompetency, of the gentleman who had passed by far the best examination in that office since the introduction of the system.

Is it possible that there may be an inferior as well as a superior limit? Can it be that there is a line to be drawn, on one side of which examination would be just as absurd as cross-questioning Messrs. Disraeli and Gladstone on their financial policies, with a view to awarding the Chancellorship of the Exchequer to the one whose answers were most satisfactory? Is there a class to whom an examination, even of the most elementary character, would be not only absurd but unfair, even to cruelty? It seems that there is, and that this class of the population consists of the numerous attendants of the Ragged Schools of Great Britain. It follows, then, that either the education given in these schools is worthless, or that the examination test is not infallible. We shall see that the latter allegation is true, and the former false.

The examination system proceeds on the now exploded assumption that the acquisition of a certain number of scholastic attainments is the end and essence of education. Certainly where, as at our best public and private schools, physical, moral, and religious training follow as a matter of course, being the rest of what goes to make up the schoolboy's life, the intellectual calibre manifested is undoubtedly a fair criterion of education, for we may assume the remainder to

be pretty equal in all. But as we descend the scale, the relations between the physical, moral, religious, and intellectual, vary considerably and uniformly. On arriving at the National Schools, for instance, we at once see that a great change has taken place in the relative values of intellectual on the one hand, and moral and religious training on the other. We find that so far from these latter being considered as what a logician would call inseparable accidents to the former, that they have to be sedulously and primarily inculcated to the prejudice, if need be, of the merely secular attainments. Before proceeding to teach pupils even the fundamental arts of reading and writing, they must first of all have attained to a certain condition of physical, moral, and religious excellence, which, in pupils of a higher social grade, belong to their status in life. They must be decently dressed, personally clean, exhibit the rudiments of good manners, be tolerably well fed, baptised as Christians, and be grounded in some measure in the principal articles of their faith, and so on. Now suppose, always descending, we arrive at a class of urchins who possess none of these essential preliminaries, or at the most combine but two or three of them. Suppose they are ragged even to partial nudity, filthily dirty even to exciting disgust, noisy, pugnacious, obstinate irreverent young blackguards, picking up their food how they can, living almost in the streets, and frequently even suffering the pangs of hunger; though not actually dishonest, yet knowing and acting under no fixed principles of right or wrong, baptised or not, as the case may be, and thoroughly heathen. Imagine the labour, the patience, the kindness, the tact requisite on the part of the teacher merely to bring these young vagrants to the physical, moral, and religious standard, which is the normal condition of pupils of higher schools on commencing their book-work. Imagine all this, and we have an approximate idea of the Ragged Schools, the classes received therein, and the nature of the education required to be bestowed upon the scholars. When we come to add the necessarily partial attendance of the pupils, caused by the irregularities inseparable from the nomadic life of their parents and themselves, we may conceive the absurdity of subjecting these little reclaimed castaways to an ordinary examination test of scholarship of however simple and elementary a character.

We have shown where the line for the superior limit of the examination system is drawn, and we now see that the line for the inferior limit may be safely drawn under the National Schools and above the Ragged Schools. But although the examination system. here fails to give any appreciable results, is the education bestowed therefore worthless? Heaven forbid! Is it nothing to go into the streets, and alleys, and courts, and hedges, and high roads, and reclaim these little children, banned by all, whose training is looked upon as desirable, mayhap, in the abstract, but as no one's business in practice, to take, as it were, these embryonic cells of future sin and crime, and by careful, loving teaching develope in them industrious. habits, self-reliance, independence, and jealousy of charity, feelings