Third Plea

The nineteen til century, though little more than half run out, will prove one of the most remarkable in the history of the world. As distance grows, many of what are now considered its great events shall, like mountains afar off, fade on the eye, and at length sink out of view. Time will fill up the letters which the sword has carved; new revolutions will throw down the barriers of existing empires; and, some centuries hence, the world will retain no trace of many who are now playing the chief parts on its stage. The men who have immortalized themselves and their times are those who, amid the din of machinery, or in retreats remote from the bustle of camps, the intrigues of court, and the noisy combats of public assemblies, have studied the arts, not of war, but of peace. When the world has lost almost all of Wellington but his name, James Watt shall live in his inventions. His genius

(143) shall continue through untold generations to subdue the soil, and triumph over the sea; to employ the hands and fill the mouths of millions.

Among many peculiar features of our age, one of the most remarkable is the expansive and the comprehensive character of its benevolence. Our grandfathers or great grandfathers, though good people, were content to live for themselves. Their religion was contemplative rather than active. To live a holy life, to rear a virtuous and pious family, was the height of their ambition. Their sympathies were confined to a circle so narrow that they remind one of the story told of an honest countryman, who, away from home, attended worship in the church of the parish where he chanced to be. The preacher was a great orator. The audience were moved to tears; not so the rustic. He sat hard and stolid as the bench beneath him; and replied, when asked how he could possibly sit unmoved by such a flood of pathos, “Oh, you see I don’t belong to the parish I”

PLEAS FOR T,.U1(1E1) SCHOOLS. 14f

In olden time, what did not belong to the parish, the neighborhood, or the family, excited little intere^t. With exceptions hardly worth mentioning, the churches of Christ did nothing for the conversion of the heathen, either abroad or at home. Though there are now five vessels belonging to missionary societies sailing about their work in the Pacific Ocean alone, formerly no ships left London, Liverpool, Glasgow, or any other port, with missionaries among their passengers, and Bibles part of their cargo. Foreign, Home, City, Medical Missions; Sabbath, Evening, Apprentice, Factory, and Ragged Schools; Bible, Tract, Pastoral Aid, and Total Abstinence Societies; — these, and many other such schemes, are the growth and glory of our own age. Thus, while science and the arts have made unparalleled progress since heads now grey were black, and grown men were boys, the church has not lagged behind. Pressing forward on her higher career, she lias kept abreast of them in the race.

Another remarkable feature of our era, is the acknowledgment and practical applica,- tion of the power of union; of cooperatioM, a? better than individual action. Separate the atoms that form a hammer, and in that state of minute division they would fall on a stone with no more effect than snow-flakes. Weld them into one solid mass, and, swung round by the quarryman’s brawny arm, they descend on the rock like a thunderbolt. Stand by the falls of Niagara, and as the waters, gathered from a hundred lakes, are rolling with the voice of a hundred thunders over the rocky precipice, fancy them divided into their individual atoms! They might gem with sparkling dew-drops vast tracts of field or forest; in clouds of gold, and amber, and purple, they might hang curtains round the gates of day; but where were the onward, overwhelming power of the majestic flood? Gone; and gone the vaunt with which a New Englander met the boast of a Neapolitan, during a brilliant eruption of Vesuvius. The poor Italian had the glory of Vesuvius, if he had nothing else, to boast of in his priest-ridden country. Directing the attention of his companion to the mountain, as it shot up showers of fiery stones, and licked the sky with long tongues of flame, and poured streams of glowing lava down its riven sides, lie exclaimed, “You have nothing like that in your country!” “No,” said the other, with nasal twang, but thrust quick and sharp as rapier’s, “Yet, I guess we have a bit of water that would put it out in two minutes.” Now, as with the combined power of matter, so is it with the combined power of men. They do in masses what they would not attempt, or, attempting, could not achieve as individual units. Bravely and gallantly as our soldiers fought at Waterloo, I doubt if there were twenty men on that field who would have stood up singly ffr seven long hours to be shot at like targets. yet, massed in solid square and column, how they stood! from morning to sundown, facing the foe, and budging not a foot, till night crowned their efibrts with victory. The wise man says, “two are better than one;” and our Lord Limself illustrated the advantages of union when he sent forth his disciples two by two.

From the expansive benevolence, and combined action, which characterize the Christianity of our own age, have sprmig up, among other holy enterprises, those Ragged Schools which I advocated years ago. The most needed, they have been the most successful of those philanthropic schemes which form at once a burden to the rich and a blessing to the poor. I remember the day when they were but a beautiful theory; in the eyes of many but the rainbow-colored dream of benevolent enthusiasts. In those days it was necessary to lay bare the bleeding wounds of humanity; to move the public by tales of misery, and raise, if we could, a flood of feeling to float us over the pecuniary difficulties that barred our way. Many were callous. People had got accustomed to the evils we sought to cure, as much as the woman to the bad water she had used from childhood; and who, on being asked what she tJiought of the supply which municipal reformers had brought to the town, declared it not worth drinking, — for “it had neither taste nor smell!” Some, like the old masters of painting, seemed to consider rags rather picturesque than otherwise: and in the great mass of men and women familiarity with the evil had bred indifference, if not contempt. Others there were who ridiculed the idea of reforming society, o far as in any perceptible degree to lessen the amount of crime. They deemed us fanatics, if not fools; and, buttoning up their pockets, settled the question with this sage aphorism, as long as there are pockets to pick there will be pickpockets. They did not seem to see that their mode of treating the subject might be applied to other things besides Ragged Schools. It might be said, Why attempt to prevent murder? as long as there are throats to cut there will be cut-throats. Away with light-houses! as long as there are ships there will be shipwrecks. Away with drugs and doctors! as long as there are diseases there will be deaths. Away with our national defences! as long as the French remember Waterloo there will be danger of an invasion.

A more serious ol)jection to Ragged Schools seemed to lie in the averment, that by feeding 13* and educating the children of the abandoned, we were bestowing a premium on crime. It was based on the same mistake as the fault some find with the comfortable temperature, the cleanliness, and the good diet of our prisons. These, it is said, act as inducements to crime; they tempt honest men to become rogues, since rogues find themselves better ofi” in jail than honest, hard-working men at home. This is a mere fallacy. I know how rogues weary for the end of their sentence, — counting the months, and days, and hours; aye, and the minutes. Put it to the proof; and it will be found that the most destitute wretch thinks clean walls, and warmth, and substantial diet a poor set-off against wild joys, and the sweets of liberty. Withdraw the warders; throw open the prison gates; and how many of the tenants, for love of the comfortable lodgings, will remain? Not one. They would swarm out like bees in summer day from the door of a hive. Not one of them but holds it better, in the words of the old moss-trooper,” to Jwar the loverocJc sing than the mouse cheeps And he

Who faucies it would be otherwise, is not more ianoraiitof hu.nan nature than such as fear that decent parents will give themselves up to dissipation, because they know that their children will find a refuge within the walls ot a Ragged School. Children are indeed pledges for good conduct, hostages which men give the State; and, like a vessel which owes her safety to her moorings, many parents owe thengoodness, and some have owed even thengreatness, to the affections that bind them to their offspring. In humbler spheres than his many have felt the power which introduced Lord Erskine to fortune. When a briefless barrister, with a wife and children to support, he got engaged in a great cause; he plead it before the assembled rank, and power, and genius of England; and won it. Asked how he unaccustomed to public speaking, was able to speak so fluently, boldly, and brilliantly before such an audience, he replied that ho thought, as he rose to his feet, that he felt his children pulling at his gown, and crying, “Father, father, now is the time to make our bread.” I admit this influence, and indeed recognize in it the beneficent arrangement of Providence; yet what sober, industrious, afi’ectionate father ever became an idle, drunken profligate, from expecting his children to find parents in the patrons of a Ragged School. I never met with or heard of such a case. Fallen as man is, he is not sunk so low as that. By other paths, and through other doors, men descend the easy steps to perdition. Irreligion, and ignorance, beer and dram-shops, not Ragged Schools, make drunken parents and destitute children. These schools have no more tendency to produce ragged children, than paper-mills the rags which they manufacture. Converting the ofi’spring of the thief and drunkard into valuable members of society, they may be justly likened to those beautiful macliines, which out of foulest rags bring sheets of a snow-white fabric, to receive from pen or types the tenderest sentiments or the noblest truths, and carry them to the ends of the world.

Commenced fifteen years ago, Ragged Schools have now had a full trial; and their benefits, to use the words of Dr. Chalmers, are matter not experiment, but of experience. The tree, saith the Lord, is known by its fruit; and by that unerring test we are willing, and indeed anxious that they should be tried. For this purpose, I might crowd these pages with statistics drawn from the provincial towns, as well as from the largest cities of the kingdom; and all demonstrating their entire success. These institutions are everywhere: and the best proof of their value lies, perhaps, in the fact that no Ragged School, once opened, has ever been shut up; while other schemes, from French republics downward, have burst like soap bubbles.

The poor cobbler, John Pounds of Portsmouth, the great paper-maker, the late Mr. Cowan of Edinburgh, and other less known but not less benevolent individuals, gathering together some poor children, and bridging the gulf between ignorance and education with a loaf of bread, initiated our system many years ago. But to Mr. Watson, sheriff of Aberdeen, belongs the honor of raising the Ragged School to the status of a public institution. The scheme, as it came from his hand, was but “an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains.” Yet, more fortunate than many philanthropists, he has lived to see it shake, and scatter, and spread itself, till now harvests of saved ones are gathered year by year from every corner of the land. Its birth, like that of Him on whose bosom it seeks to lay these children, was obscure. It had no solemn or brilliant inauguration; yet that which began some fifteen years ago in a loft in a mean street in Aberdeen, has now grown into a national institution, at whose meetings nobles deem it an honor to preside; to whicl the churches lend their countenance, and the State its support.

To attempt to collect all the facts from the wide field occupied by Ragged Schools, would lay this plea open to the critique pronounced on an English Dictionary, which a wag had handed to a witling in search of something to while away an hour. “A very good book,” he

Baid, after having travelled over pages on “and,” “apple,” “at;” and “bee,” “bone,” “but;” “calf,” “cat,” and “cow;” “but it say a amazing little on each subject.” Such were this plea, should I attempt a history of all the Ragged Schools that lie between St. George’s Channel and Pentland Firth. Besides, it would present little else * than tables of dry statistics. This I shall avoid: because, though jj:ood in measure, and, like those solid parts of the frame which support the flesh, very necessary to sustain an argument, statistics, like a dish of bones, are dry eating; hard to chew, difiicult of digestion.

The most interesting and instructive way of dealing with the matter, will be to choose a sample of the stock. For that purpose, I take the Original Ragged School of Edinburgh. I select that, not because it is better than others, but because it is the school at whose birth I presided, and with whose history, growth, and progress, I am best acquainted. Now, taking that as a fair specimen of Ragged Schools, I state, —

I. That these Schools have put down the great evil of juvenile mendicancy.

Twelve years ago, before our Schools were opened, the streets of Edinburgh swarmed with boys and girls whose trade was begging, and whose end was the jail. They rose every morning from the lower districts, like a cloud of mosquitoes from a marsh, to disperse themselves over the city and its suburbs. Defiant of the police, they pursued their calling with a perseverance that amounted to persecution. People were glad to give money to get rid of them. These beggars, when force failed, had recourse to fraud; the motto of old and young being Arte vel Marte. For instance, a humane friend of mine, and a clever woman besides, had often assisted a widow and her child. Well, the girl one day presented herself with eyes streaming in tears, and her little heart like to break with sobs — her mother was dead. Ever ready to weep with them that weep, my friend gave linen for a shroud, and money for a coffin. By and by, such a genial day as brings out the first flowers and songs of spring, tempted her, for she was delicate, out of doors. Something in the street recalled to her memory the poor orphan and its dead mother. At that moment she turned a corner, and suddenly found herself face to face with the corpse. It is impossible to fancy her astonishment. Had she met this awful object in the gloaming, or under the pale moonlight, she might have dropped down, struck with fear; but to meet the dead walking about in broad day, and in busy streets, was contrary to all precedent. She was speechless; and before she had time to solve the mystery, the opportunity vanished, — and the apparition also; for that, equally surprised, took to its heels, and made off apace in the form of a sturdy beggar. The very children of this caste were great actors and remarkably ingenious. I one day witnessed an instance of this in a boy, who, when typhus fever was raging in town, performed that difiScult operation vulgarly called skinninq a flint. The patient was a sour, meagre, vinegar-looking old lady; the operator a little fellow, without shoe on his foot, cap 14 on his head, or shirt on his back; but with a pair of bright eyes gleaming out of hollow sockets. Having observed him fix his regards on the old woman, I watched the proceedings. He approached her with a most pitiful look and whine. He might as well have spoken to a stone. To use the slang of his class, it was no go. Her response was a snarl and poke of her umbrella. Seeing at a glance how the land lay, he put up his helm, and went off on another tack. Addressing himself to her selfishness, in an instant he rolled up the sleeve of a tattered jacket, and sticking his yellow, skinny arm in her face, he edged close up to the old body, saying, “Out o’ the Infirmary, ma’am, with typhus.” It was a 7’use got up foi the occasion; but the acting was perfect — th( effect sudden, electric. The poor creature started as if she had received a shock. At one dive her hand was deep in her pocket. Seizing the first coin, she dropped it into his palm, and hobbled away; glad to get the little rogue ft*om between the wind and her nobility. We had no Ragged School then; and T did not commit this urchin to the police. Why should I? I knew that lie would be in their hands too soon, — caged like a captive bird; and I had not the heart to shut up that free denizen of the streets within four stone walls, and rob him of his liberty, wild though it was. So long as society stood by, careless what became of him, nor stretching out a hand to keep his head above water, she, the greater sinner of the two, had no right to assume virtuous airs.

Besides, what good could come of locking him up in a prison? Did my reader ever visit a jail? Did you ever look in at the eyelet of a cell-door, and within those naked walls see a little boy — immured in that living coffin? He should be playing with laughing mates on the village green, or chasing the butterfly over llowery mead, or nutting in the bosky glen, or fishing some crystal stream, or conning his lesson amid the hum of the busy school, or sitting with brothers and sisters in the ruddy gleam of the fireside at home; but there he pines; lonely; weary; spirit crushed; the lustre quenched in his eye; rosy health faded from his cheek; and all vigor gone out of his, unknit frame. I have seen that; and if you could look on that without a touch of pity, and without hating prisons as schools for childhood, I would throw down my pen in despair. What effect have prisons had in deterring from crime, or in reforming criminals? Weighed in the balance, they have been found wanting. How could it be otherwise? J ust as the caterpillar leaves its chrysalis case a perfect insect, the young delinquent emerges from his cell a fully developed criminal. Besides bearing the brand of a prison, he is lost. After that, as one poor fellow said to me, “We have not a chance, sir.” What tradesman will take them into his shop, or what mistress into her kitchen? They are shut out from all honest employment. They will not starve; they must steal. Society, having first neglected, now shakes off the drowning wretches: they sink, and no wonder! Self-respect — next to the fear of God, man’s best bower anchor — gone, they drift on, a wreck without mast or helm, to

PLEAS FOR RAOrxED SCHOOLS. 1()1

certain ruin. Don’t blame them for throwing themselves into the arms of their ohl associates; none others are open to receive them. They have neither choice nor chance in this Christian land.

It is not to be supposed that no means were tried before the institution of Ragged Schools to suppress street begging. The most strenuoiLS and persevering efforts were made. The police did their utmost, but these urchins were as ill to catch and to hold as eels. The Magistrates, pregnant with great things, issued proclamations against begging or giving charity in the streets. What cared these city Arabs for proclamations? not a straw. They could not read them. They went for nothing with others as well as with them. For, so long as hunger stretched ont its skinny hands for bread, so long as poverty shivering in squalid rags appealed to human pity, and childhood’s sad face, looking as if it had never been lighted with a smile, looked up implorkigly into ours, kind hearts were not to be drilled into withholding charity. If, listening to what men call prudence, we ever refused our pittance, how did their ghastly faces seem to stare on us as we sat at our comfortable table — marring its enjoyment? They haunted busy fancy in the darkness of night; we saw the creature returning wet, and weary, and hungry, to be beaten by a brutal father or drunken mother; or cowering cold and sleepless, like a houseless dog, in open stair or beneath some shed or archway.

Let me illustrate what, ere our schools were opened, was the condition of many among these children, by a case which occurred last year. Returning in one of the fiercest storms I have faced, from the opposite end of the town, it was with difficulty I made good my way round the base of the crags on the south side of the Castle Rock. Entering our picturesque High Street, where I kept the “cantle o’ the causey” to avoid smashing chimney-cans, and passing homeward along some of our busiest thoroughfares, I found them all but cleared, as by rounds of grape shot. Though a dav on which a man would not have sent out

PLEAS FOR HAGGEl) SCHOOLS. 16^

a dog, I saw a child seven years old in one of the streets. Poor wretch! he stood in the flooded gutter, his rags glazed with the rain, and the storm pelting on his l)are h-ead; it was pitiful to see him emaciated and shivering, and hear his attempts to sing. Of course, I was stirred with indignation against the brutal parent who could turn out an infant in such weather; and use its misery to plunder the humane of money — to be spent, no doubt, m damning drink. On giving a little charity, and bidding the creature go home immediately, I heard one saw, “That’s right, sir, send him to Dr. Guthrie’s Ragged School.” On turning round, I found the speaker, buttoned close up to the throat, with a cap pulled over his brows; he had the appearance of a decent, sober, well-conditioned mechanic. A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind: and, pleased with his humanity, I could not but introduce myself. How luminous, though begrimed with smoke, his face became! He thrust out a paw, black as the back of his forge, to shake hands. I accepted the compliment as from a duchess.

All honor to the moral worth and honest kindliness that glowed in the man’s look, and were felt in a grip like a squeeze of his own vice. That, by-the-by, set down here to the credit of humble life. Resolved to be at the bottom of the case, I put myself in communication with the police, and learned this child’s history. His father had become a drunkard; afterwards a thief; and was at that time undergoing a sentence of banishment. His mother, perhaps first broken-hearted, was a dissipated woman. Beside this, and another boy still younger, she had a daughter twelve years of age — -just ripening for ruin. Heedless of that, their mother hounded them out in all weathers, and at all hours of the night as well as day. She would have drink, though she were damned herself and damned them too.

Save that case, I have not seen one of the kind in our streets for years. But before the Ragged Schools were opened our city swarmed with many hundreds in a condition as helpless and as hopeless. Now the juvenile beggars are all gone. The race is extinct. What has

PLEAS FOR RACGEl) SCHOOLS. 165

become of them? They are not mouldering in the grave, the last refuge of wretchedness; nor are they pining in prison cells, turning the weary crank, and cursing those who have dealt them out nothing but neglect and punishment. They are off the streets, and in our schools. Once no care was taken of them, and no provision made for them; therefore a humane public, supplying them with money, fostered a system much more ruinous to those that got, than costly to those that gave. Their vocation is gone. If any now solicit charity, the answer is not money, or a rough repulse, or a curse, but — “Go to the Ragged School.” There is no excuse left either for begging or giving. And the consequence is, that we have done what neither police nor magistrate could do. We have succeeded in thoroughly putting a stop to juvenile mendicancy. The magistrate, now in circumstances to pass on these anfortunates the happy sentence of daily bread, kind training, and a Christian education, sits with comfort on the bench — dispensing not law only, but justice. The wretched are happy; the lost are saved. Training up for useful occupations, they are on the way to hocome respectable men and women. Their little feet, turned from the prison door, are treading the pathway to heaven. A loving Saviour has his wish, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And in our school, where they are all busy as bees, sharp as needles, bright as the morning, happy as the day is long, I never hear them sweetly singing their little hymns, but I seem to listen to the voice of angels and the song of Bethlehem, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”

II. By means of Ragged Schools the numl)er of juvenile criminals in our jails has been greatly reduced.

•’ The one half of mankind does not know how the other half live,” is a remark that applies with special truth to our criminal population. Every newspaper, indeed, has details of crime j but some read only the list of births, younger people only the list of marriages, and

PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOOLS. li)7

hangers-on for patronage, posts, and livings, only the list of deaths; politicians con leading articles, and merchants study prices current, Sound IntelUgence, shipping lists, the state of stocks — whether they are up or down. Though a few dip into the police reports, and a scandalous trial is perused by many with avidity, and such monstrous cases as Palmer’s in England and Miss Smith’s in Scotland draw all eyes for a while, and people have a vague floating notion that there is a great deal of wickedness in the country, yet the amount of crime and the number of criminals are subjects of which almost all novel, and most news readers are profoundly ignorant.

It is not possible to give the exact numbers of those that infest society, and live by plunder; whose existence is a curse to us, and also to themselves. But we know the number of commitments; and taking the average from 1841 to 1850. for instance, the yearly number of convictions in England, both summary and at sessions and assizes, stands thus: —

Convicted summarily, males, 56.055

Do. at sessions and assizes, females, 17,201

73,256

Males, 22,439

Females, 5,299

27,738

100,994 Add to these convictions in Scotland, 3,994

104,988

That these numbers pretty fairly represent the state of crime, is evident from their correspondence with those given by Captain Williams in the following* table, as the average of eight years preceding 1850: —

Convicted summarily, 73,582

Do. at sessions and assizes, 28,101

101,683

According to other calculations, our criminal population numbers not less than 150,000. What a formidable evil! Here is a host of criniiuals, equal in number to the British army proper; and, strange to say, many who compkiin loudly of the expense of a standing army of soldiers have not a word to say against this standing army of thieves. Adding two per-PLEAS FOR RAGGED SCHOC>LS. 169

Bons, as on an average, dependent upon each of these criminals, we have 300,000 of the worst characters, maintained, or, after a costly fashion maintaining themselves, at the public expense.

Thieving is a regular business; a trade which some conduct with the regularity of a bank or of a mercantile establishment. In illustration of this, let me tell what was told to me by one of the heads of a large publishing and bookselling house in London. Their premises consist of a shop facing the street; behind that a spacious room filled with valuable books; and beyond that again a reading-room, supplied with newspapers and magazines. From the shelves of the middle room, they had from time to time missed many volumes. Unable to detect the depredator, their suspicions began reluctantly to rest on some of the young men in their employment. My friend, however, as he was one day ruminating on the matter, recollected the visits of a person who came frequently, and always passed on to the inner rooms; but never bought anything. 15

This looked suspicious. Attired in black, wearing a white neckcloth, and presenting a venerable appearance, he looked not unlike a dignitary, at the very least, a dean of the church. Could he be the rogue? My friend dismissed the unworthy thought. However, it recurred, and fixed itself in his mind. He resolved to watch. So next day when the old gentleman entered, and making, as usual, some remark on the weather, glided into the inner room, the publisher stationed himself by a small pane of glass which, from an outer passage, commanded a view of the interior. The visitor, looking very innocent, appears to be reading the titles of the books; but the mystery is soon solved. The poor wretch, thinking as little of the eye that watched him as sinners do of the eye of God, after looking round to see that the coast is clear, pulls a volume from the shelf to drop it into a capacious pocket; the process is repeated and repeated, till the pockets are full. And now, when the craft is loaded and about to sail, my informant comes forth. He arrests him. The thief pro-PLEAS FOR RAGCrED SCHOOLS. lU

tests, but in vain. He is committed to a police-officer; bis address is taken, and in bis house — a good one — among a great deal of stolen property, they find a regularly kept day-book. Here they see the books be bas purloined all duly entered. Each day bas a page or more for its own transactions; on such a day, for example, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Drelincourt on Deatb,” “Tbe Newgate Calendar,” “Law’s Serious Call,” “Gulliver’s Travels,”” Tbe Pilgrim’s Progress •/’ in one column the ordinary selling-price appears, in another the price be got; it is, in fact, as regular a journal as Rotbschild’s, or any in the Bank of

England.

I know not wbetber this person bad received

a professional education; but, as there are medical scbools for doctors, and commercial academies for mercbants, tbieving is systematically taught in some of our large towns. One boy, for instance, gives this account of himself: “His father was a soldier, and died when be was very young, leaving bis mother unprovided for. Tbe only means of ber support was obtained by begging in the streets. She died about nine years ago. James, consequently, was left very young without any one to look after him; he soon fell among thieves, and was taken to Wentworth street, in Whitechapel, to a house where he was boarded and lodged for six months, when he was taught to pick pockets. He says that there were twenty more boys kept, beside himself, for the same purpose, by a man and woman who lived by their plunder. Daily the woman dressed herself, put a bell in her pocket, also a purse containing 6d.; any of the pupils who could take the purse from her pocket without causing the bell to tinkle, got the 6d. as a reward for his dexterity. He remained until he was a proficient pickpocket.”

The extent to which this education is carried may be judged of by the details furnished by one who was engaged in this shocking occupation. He said “He had been twenty years living a criminal life, and had been twenty times in prison. He resided in a low lodging-house, where he carried on his craft of training voung lads to steal. The best hands amoag them were sent into the streets, and they brought home the plunder, on which the criminal school lived. He was too well known to the police to dare to go out himself. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I never can keep the young ’uns long, for as soon as I have made them clever at their profession, if they are not taken by the police they leave me and start for themselves; so that I am obliged to look out for new hands.’ Being asked how many lads he supposed he had trained to be thieves during the twenty years, he replied that he had kept no account, and he could not exactly tell; but of this he was sure, that it was not less than five hundred J* What an argument these cases furnish foi Ragged Schools! Are we to leave these unhappy children to be regularly trained to crime, and then imprison, banish, and hang them when they commit it? Their blood is on our heads if we do; nor will it excuse us to say, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It ought to make us ashamed of ourselves, that while this hoary ruffian had trained five hundred 1.5* children to a life of crime, we, perhaps, never took the trouble to save one.

This business often has enormous success. Three or four hundred pounds is not an uncommon income; and yet, though that is a handsome living, paying no Income Tax, the annual gains of some are far greater — one family of coiners in England having cleared in a few years not less than twenty thousand pounds. The money which our criminal population spend on their vices proves indeed that, as a class, their gains far exceed the wages of our honest workmen. The amount of which they plunder others, without enriching themselves, may be conjectured from an astounding fact, stated by a committee of the inhabitants of Liverpool to the first Birmingham Association. According to their report, the annual depredations of all kinds in Liverpool alone amounted in value to £700,000. If the plunder in that one city amounts to nearly one million of money, how many millions does the whole country lose by crimes it has never taken the proper way to cure?

PLEAS FOR RA(JGEr) SCHOOLS. 175

Whether it be better to establish Ragged Schools, and thereby cut off a great source of crime, or to have thieves levying such enormous revenues as appear in the following tables, let the public judge. Here are some specimens of the incomes which thieves make, and the loss which the community suffers; —

1. Richard Clarke, during a career of 6 years, £2820

2. John Clarke,
it
3. Edward Clarke,
it
4. Ellen Clarke, (O’Neill)

(t
5. John O’Neill,

(t
ti
6. Thomas O’Gar,
7. James O’Brien,
8. Thomas M’Giverin,

it
II

9. Thomas Kelty,

t(
10. John Flanagan,
II

11. John Thompson,

(C
12. John Bohanna,

II

ti
13. J. Shawe,
t(
14. W. Buckley,
II

15. Sarah Dickenson,
II

£32,000

But let us fix our attention on one individual of this group; let it be Flanagan. He was seventeen times in prison, and caught fifteen times besides, but discharged for want of evidence. In 1850 lie got to the end of his tether and was at length transported. Here are his transactions during three years; and the tables, be it observed, do not include any sums under £10, although he stated that these considerably exceeded those above that sum: —

1838 and 1839. Value. Where robbery committed. From whom. £20 Concert Liverpool.. A gentleman. 15 Theatre, Liverpool.. A gentleman. 11 Zoological Gardens.. A lady. 30 Coach-office. Liverpool. Proprietors. 46 Auction, Broughton Road A lady. 30 Auction, Cheetham Hill A lady. 15 Auction, Pendleton 21 Manchester.. 50 Manchester..

1 1 Leek, Strafford.
85 Hanley Races
49 Northallerton Fair

12 Liverpool Packet
18 Liverpool Packet
30 Liverpool Packet
45 Ilorncastle Fair.
17 Leeds Fair •..

A lady.

A till from a liquor-vault.

A till from a public-house.

A shopkeeper.

A gentleman.

A drunken farmer.

A passenger.

A passenger.

A passenger.

A lady.

A butcher.

1840 and 184L

10 Lincoln Fair .... A gentleman.

14 Lincoln Fair... Captain of a boat

10 Spalding Fair .... A farmer.

11 Horncastlo Fai... A maltster.

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Value. Where robbery committed. From whom.

£10 Liverpool Races ... A gentleman.

16 Liverpool Races ... A farmer.

1 7 Chester Races .... A lady.

11 Manchester Races.. A lady.

1841 and 1842.

10 Manchester Theatre.. A lady.

70 Bury Fair A cattle-dealer.

250 In the street at Manchester An officer. 15 Knutsford Races ... A jockey. 30 Doucaster Races ... A publican.

18 Nottingham Races.. A butcher.
14 Derby Races .... Unknown.

1 3 Crowle, Lincoln ... A publican’s wife.

12 Caister. Lincoln ... A farmer.

11 Market Raisin... A gentleman’s servant. 60 Brigg Fair A farmer’s wife.

21 Louth, Lincolnshire.. A coachman. &c. &c. &c

How cheap it were to prevent crime, compared with the cost either of maintaining or of punishing it! It is hard to say whether our folly or extravagance has been most conspicuous. Committed to jail, and maintained there in a state of comparative ease and idleness, the felon lives in some respects like a gentleman. Why, such a sum of money was spent in building York Jail that the lodging alone for each prisoner there is equal to an annual houF« rent of £40. Every criminal in jail costs the country, at an average, £30 or £40 a year; and while honest men have to eat their bread in the sweat of their Ijrow, these, as if the most meritorious members of society, are found in coal, candles, food, clothes, and lodging. With what advantage? The system has proved a greater waste than pouring water on a sandbed — the culprit has gone in a bad man, and comes out a worse.

Contrast with this system that which, in old times, obtained among the Jews. Apart from its divine character, how wise the legislatioK of Moses! A Hebrew, for example, stole at ox; what then? They did not throw him into jail to herd with congenial rogues; or to pine in idle solitude; or to fret at the weary crank — a wretched device, which, turning nothing but an index, is enough to turn the sweetest temper into gall and bitterness. Still less, by the execution of a sentence out of all proportion to the offence, did they commit murder in the name of law, and hang him up like a dog

PLEAS FOR RAvJfJKD SCHOOLS. 179

that worries sheep. In this case paying the penalty was no figure of speech. By way of punishment he was required to pay four times the value of the ox; thus the injured person was amply compensated, while none were tempted to suffer wrong rather than convict the wrong-doer; for most people will feel that the loss to them of a few pounds is only made the greater by knowing that the man who took them is to be hanged. But what if the culprit had not the wherewithal to meet his punishment, the money to pay the price of four oxen? Mosaic law provided for this, condemning him to work as a temporary slave till he had earned the full amount. Now, look at the results! In the first place, the injured party suffered in the end no wrong, having the full value of what he had lost repaid; secondly, the country had to bear no burden, the criminal having to maintain himself during the time of his punishment; thirdly, the thief himself, if idle and useless prior to his offence, became, ere he had atoned for it, a skilled, industrious workman. If we read our Bibles to better purpose, we would neither treat our decent poor so harshly, nor manage our criminals so foolishly.

We have thousands of the latter class, though not as in former days, rioting, or rotting in jails, lying there in comparative idleness. Why are they not turned out to build harbors of refuge; to make roads; to drain the land? Enclosed within a cordon militaire and employed on such works, we would get some good out of them; and better still, they themselves brought into a healthy condition both of body and mind, and trained to regular habits of industry, might become, so soon as the term of their sentence was fulfilled, useful citizens either at home or in the colonies. We would thus relieve ourselves of a great burden, and bestow on them a greater boon.

But prevention is better than cure; and so we now ask, Why should not Ragged Schools be applied like the salt of Elisha to the fountains of crime — the springs of the cursed and bitter waters? Three hundred pounds is the average cost for each criminal before the country has done with them, and that is usually when they are dead; how much better at the cost of merely thirty pounds — all that is needed for the full education and maintenance of a child at a Ragged School — to save them from ever entering on a life of crime? The numbers required year by year to recruit the ranks of criminals gives unspeakable importance to that question. The average period of their career is short, not extending beyond five or six years; and it is calculated that not fewer than twenty thousand annually are enlisted into this deviFs regiment. The greater part of these are children.

This opens up a dreadful view; and I should fail in my duty if I did not state broadly that most of those children owe their ruin to drink — to the dissipated habits of their parents, intemperance is the horrid Moloch, the ugly olood-stained idol to which so many young victims are annually sacrificed. Drunkenness, directly or indirectly, supplies our Ragged Schools with scholars, our jails with prisoners, and our poor-houses with by much the largest number of their tenants. In England, the 16 portals to these are gin palaces and beer-shops ) in Scotland, are whisky and dram-shops. But for this vice, we should have no rags, nor Ragged Schools, in our cities; few paupers to lodge in poor-houses; and many of our prisons, like one I found in an old burgh in Fife, sounding merrily to the music of feet and fiddle, might be turned into dancing-schools. Talk of oui weakness as a nation! The foreigner put hih finger on it who said. It is a blessed thing that you Anglo-Saxons are a drunken race; y ou had otherwise conquered the whole world. Talk of our burdens as a nation! The people yroan under no taxes to be compared with those which, by the consumption of wine beer, and whisky, they impose upon themselves The voice of our prisons is, that drinking is th(’ chief cau>“je of crime; our judges have arrived at the same conclusion, and repeatedly expressed it from the seat of justice; and, however much they differ on points of theology, on this subject ministers and city missionaries of all denomincdons are of the same opinion. And it is inst/uctive to observe that drinking is the great spring of crime in those parts of the continent where the habits of the people approach our own. It was stated the other day for example, by Lord Brougham, on the authority of Obermeyer, the well-known and enlightened governor of the prison in Munich, that there and in Baden almost every crime was traceable to intemperance — to the use, or as some would say, the abuse of beer and wine. I will not enter on the question whether Scotland is a more drunken country than England. With all its drunkenness, I will not deny my country. I would find that perhaps asj useless as did an Irishman of my acquaintance He had a touch of the brogue, yet so boldly claimed to be an ‘Englishman, as to silence if not convince us. Unfortunately for him, an Irifih lady who lived in our pension in Paris, had not forgotten, though she had resided long in France, the habits of her country. Fixing her keen grey eyes on him one day at dinner, she said,” I know you, sir, to be an Irishman’* — choking the lie in his throat by this characteristic, and to the English and Scotch part of the company, most diverting reason, “I know it, sir, by the way you peel your potato I” I could not if I would deny my country; and I would not if I could deny its crimes, since the way to cure evil is to expose it. Still, as late Government returns demonstrate, the amount of drinking in Scotland has been grossly exaggerated; and it would not be difficult to prove that drunkenness is as great a curse on the south as on the north side of the Border. It is but fair to both countries, however, to remark that a large proportion of what appear to be our crimes, is due to Irish Roman Catholics — their presence among us making us appear much lower in the scale of morality than we would otherwise do. L*’5ok, for example, at this extract from the Police Tables of Liverpool, from Sept., 1858, to Sept., 1859. Its Irish inhabitants are, of course, far fewer than its English population, yet observe how the following offences committed by them are almost equal in number to those committed by the whole English inhabitants of that great English town: —

By English. By Irislu Assaults on women and children, .... Ill 86

“‘* on peace officers, 5G2 494

” common 824 661

Drunkenness, and drunk and disorderly 4912 4080

Larceny under value of 5s., 784 836

I consider it as one of the most promising signs of our age, that the public are now coming to regard intemperance as a gigantic evil. Should they not? It can be proved to demonstration, that every shop opened for the mere purpose of drinking, whether wine, beer, or spirits, is injurious to the ivell-heing of society; is not only a public-house but a public nui-Bance. The wonder is, that our country has so long tolerated a system whereby a few build up fortunes out of the wreck and utter ruin of many. Indeed, I am surprised at good, excellent, pious Christians continuing to lend the influence of their example to the use of such stimulants; knowing as they do, that these ruin, have ruined, and will continue to ruin, not once for all, but year by year, the happiness, and homes, and bodies, and souls of thousands. They destroy the peace of so many IG* families, and doom so many children to starvation and rags; they drive so many poor girls to the streets, and so often blight the fairest blossoms of youth; they break so many loving hearts, and bring so many grey heads with sorrow to the grave, that I have felt constrained to say, I will drink none of them while the world standeth, lest I make a brother to offend. It is due to the cause of Total Abstinence to add, that while in joining its ranks, I sought only the public good, I hav« found my own in four personal advantages — stronger health, a clearer head, a lighter heart, and a heavier purse.

While the dissipated habits of many create that supply of juvenile delinquents which keeps the number of our criminals, these, trained by their parents, or forced by circumstances into a life of crime, are far more deserving of pity than of austere punishment. One of our annual reports thus describes their condition: —

Found homeless, and provided with lodgings, 72 Children with both parents dead, 33 With the father dead, 140

Mother dead,

Deserted by parents,

With one or both parents transported, 9

Fatherless, with drunken mothers, 77

Motherless, with drunken fathers, 68

With both parents worthless, 84

Who have been beggars ^’ l

Who have been in the Police Office, 75

Who have been in Prison, 20

Known as children of Thieves, 76

Believed to be so, including the preceding, 148

I’Ms is a modern edition of the prophet’3 re II, written within and without, with “lamentation, and mourning, and woe.” Though a lady had once the politeness to ask me whether I invented my stories, these, be assured, are facts, not fancies. How do they appeal to your pity, and recommend our schools, — the only hope they have, that are ready to perish? formerly all these children found their way to the jail. No man cared for their souls, or commiserated their condition. Banishing what it did not hang, the country shipped off thousands to rot and fester in our colonies, till these, rising as one man, declared that they would have no more of our refuse and waste; that, if we would grow criminals, we should keep them. Many seemed born for the gallows, and coolly calculated on being hanged, — as sailors do on being drowned, or soldiers, in time of war, on being shot. I happened once to find them at their rehearsals. They had a ragged urchin suspended by a rope thrown over the door-lintel of an old house. The noose was dexterously placed under his arm-pits; but the way he hung his head, and mimicked the dying spasms, drew up his legs, and kicked, was perfect. So thought his companions. The young savages danced round him in wildest glee, and greeted each kick with roars of laughter. They were familiar with hanging; nor much wonder, since New gate, for instance, used to show ten or a dozea old ruffians with boys, strung up like vermin, and slowly turning round in the morning air, with their white caps, — waiting to be cut down. Horrible sight!

Before showing how Ragged Schools — better every way than hanging, banishing, or imprisoning — have met the evils of society, let

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US glance at the statistics of juvenile criminals in England. They are very appalling. The number of juvenile offenders committed in one year was not less than 15,507; and in another year 11,420. Of these, one only had received a superior education; and of the whole 11,420 there were only 196 who could read and write well; and since such a smattering of education as leaves a man unable to read with ease is, for all practical purposes, no better, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, than no education whatever, out of 11,410 juvenile delinquents, there were in fact 11,223 who may be said not to have been educated at all. What a disgrace to the nation! And what right had society to come down with its vengeance on those it had so shamefully neglected?

Now, to show how Ragged Schools meet this evil, and furnish the best cure for crime — the cheapest, most humane, and holiest remedy — look at the effect of our school on the prison I It is very remarkable. As the rooms of the school filled, the cells of the prison emptied. Our increase was their decrease. The stream flowing into the jail grew less and less, and it was plain to everybody that we had struck one great spring — and were drainiu,o- it off. Here are the returns furnished by Mr. Smith, the excellent governor of our jail. Our school was opened in the summer of 1847, but could not tell much, of course, on the returns of that year.

In 1847 the centesimal proportion of children under 14 years of age in prison was

1848 3.7

1849 2.9

1850 1.3

1851 9

1858 1.7

1859 1.2

There has been also a remarkable decrease in the commitments of prisoners from 14 to 16 years of age.

The number of prisoners between 14 and 16 years of age was, in

1848 653

1849 440

1850 361

1851 ....... 227

1858 138

1859 130

These returns demonstrate the success of ouv

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schools; since, in the short space of four years, we reduced the commitments of juveniles to one-tenth part of what they were before the schools were opened: and what variation appears in these returns down to the present time, only proves the necessity of a more extended application of our system. It may be regarded as a work of supererogation, yet I add the testimony borne by the head of our police. He says,” I cannot too strongly express my sense of the value and importance of the Ragged Schools, as one of the principal means of ameliorating the condition of destitute and outcast children, and rescuing them from those evil influences, which, if unchecked, nmst necessarily tend to make them hardened criminals. Being fully persuaded that the extended operation of such a system is the most likely agency for arresting the alarming progress of crime in our large towns, I cannot but state my earnest conviction that on grounds both of humanity and expediency the Ragged Schools have the highest possible claim on the public for continued and increased support.

It is very satisfactory to know that all the Ragged Schools in Scotland show corresponding results. And though the system of Ragged, Feeding, and Industrial Schools has not been so fully applied in England, yet there also the effect of these, or of kindred institutions, has attracted the attention of the public authorities. In a speech, for instance, delivered lately by the Chairman of the Sessions for the West Riding of Yorkshire, he noticed the marked decrease of crime, and attributed it to the fact, that “a large number of little boys, instead of being now available as assistants to bigger thieves, are lodged within the walls of Reformatories or Ragged Schools.”

Like the Hebrew High-Priest, arrayed in sacred vestments, and holding aloft the smoking censer, we have stood between the living and the dead, and have stayed the plague. We have arrested the waters that were descending headlong into that Dead Sea, on whose arid shore no green thing grows, in whose waters no creature lives, to whose dark bosom the stream runs in but not a drop runs out; not

PLEAS FOR RAPaiRD SCHOOLS. Kt6

only so, but we have turned them aside to bless and fertilize the land. We have stayed the progress of crime. Leaving others to wear blood-stained laurels, and boast of thousands slain in battle, we esteem ourselves happier; we point to thousands plucked from the jaws of ruin and saved for society — not a few of them, we trust, for God and heaven. For these schools, therefore, as a means of checking the course of crime, of turning wretchedness into happiness, vice into virtue, a nation’s weakness into a nation’s strength, and public burdens into public blessings, I claim the eulogium of Holy Writ: “Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.”

III. By means of Ragged Schools, thousands of miserable children have been turned into happy and valuable members of society.

“Understandest what thou readest?” the question which Philip put to the Ethiopian is one I keep in view on occasional visits to the Ragged School. The words, “l)ed of down,” occurred one day in the lesson. I asked their meaning. The children knew little of “down;’ to soft beds, soft words, soft endearments, they had been strangers till we took them into our arms. They were fairly puzzled; though sharp as needles, and very precocious — a well-marked feature of creatures whose wits are sharpened at a too early age, on the hard grindstone of necessity. At length a bright idea struck one little fellow. His eye gleamed with triumph, and, sure of vaulting to the top of the class, he blurted out, in case any one should anticipate him, “Bed of down, sir, bed of down is a bed on the floor!” Poor child! it was all h€ knew of it. There was more of real misery than Irish wit in that answer.

Would that all mothers, when they bless and kiss their little ones snugly wrapt in cosy cot, thought of those who are more familiar with blows than blessings; never knew a mother’s love; get more curses than caresses; and lie down, many a night, shivering and hungry on the naked floor.

How much human misery is unveiled, and what a touching appeal is made to our kind compassions, for instance, by this fact! Some years, measles broke out in our school. Domiciliary visits were paid to the sufferers; and of fifty-five cases there were but three where we found even the vestige of a bed. Of these little sufferers, fifty-two had no bed-clothes but their body rags, nor couch but the bare hard boards of the floor. Our dogs and cats have comforts which Christian men and women withhold from their fellow-creatures. And how peopl’e, not flint-hearted, who hear of such facts, and see these children prowling haggard, hungry, and wolf-like about the streets, can bend their way home to “eat the fat and drink the sweet,” nor give a sigh to this misery, or a sixpence to these wants, is to me a mystery. Calling tlicmselves followers of Jesus, in the sympathies of his nature they are not so. Kind and blessed Lord! he had tears for all human suffering. He made himself poor that he might make others rich — withholding neither his love nor his life-blood. Surely many forget that Self-Denial, not Self-indulgence, is the motto of our faith. Since the days when, helmed for battle with men or monsters, brave knights rode forth from castle gates to right the wrongs of the oppressed, sharing their loaf and dividing their cloak in winter among miserable wretches, more than chivalry seems gone. One would sometimes think that Christianity herself was dead, and mute the voice which said, “Is not this the fast which I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry; and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house; when thou seest the naked that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?”

Our schools are nothing else than a practical application of these rules — the rules of a Book which teaches you that by the very test to which we are submitting them, you shall yourselves be tried. And woe to the man who, on trial for his life at the bar of a righteous God, shall have to face as accusers one, and another, and another, that joint to him, saying, “I was an hungered, and he gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and he took me not in; naked, and he clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and lie visited me not.” Then shall Jesus say, “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”

God forbid that I should judge any! Only I cannot comprehend the humanity of the man who stands on a stormy beach with a wre<;k before him, drowning wretches hanging in its shrouds, their pitiful cries wafted to his ears, their imploring hands stretched out for help, and who does not, I don’t say leap into the life-boat when gallant men are calling for another hand, but who does not regard this dreadful scene otherwise than with cold indifference. Nor do I understand the religion of the man or woman who does nothing to save poor boys from a fate worse than shipwreck, and young girls from one worse than twenty deaths. Death! The life of crime befo re them, should they survive the cold, and hunger, and neglect, under which they sink by thousands into an early grave, is such that I have been thankful to see them dead; lying in tlicir rude coffins; safe in God’s arms; away from the brutal father, whose staggering step and 17* boisterous voice, that poor, pale, peaceful form no more trembles to hear. It was an awful thing to see a mother who hung over her sick boy’s couch, and fondly kissed him, drop on her knees and passionately pray to God that he might never rise from that bed, but die — die there. No wonder. Eleven summers had gone over that young head, yet life had been all bitter winter to him. He had been starved by a drunken father; driven on the street, forced into crime. None of all who went to church wrapped up in comforts, Bible or Prayer-book in hand, had cared for him, poor wretch! He had to steal, or starve; do wrong, or die. He has been thrice in jail. And seeing no prospect for him but the cold hands of the hangman working about that young neck, no great wonder his mother wished him dead — willing rather to trust him to the mercy of her God than to what they call the justice of men. Think of the miseries that wring such prayers from a mother’s lips! and hasten to our help — to the help of the Lord against the mighty!

Now, of all means. Ragged Schools offer the surest, shortest way to an end devoutly to be wished for. Prisons and punishment are acknowledged failures; so are street alms, so is casual charity, whatever shape it assumes. In too many instances it feeds, not the children, but the vices which are their ruin; and thus exasperates the misery which benevolence seeks to relieve.

Here is the way we treat the case. These children, as I have already stated in my Second Plea, come to our school in the morning, and do not leave us till evening. Those whose homes are so cruel or so vicious that they would certainly suffer from passing the night there, sleep within our walls. In the words of Count de Metz, the founder of the celebrated school of Mettray, “We go to the work with the gospel in our hands;” our highest object being to train them in the knowledge of divine truth — in the fear and love of God. They receive a good secular education, and are brought up also to industrial occupations. The girls learn to sew, to knit, to wash, to cook; while the boys are trained up as tailors, shoemakers, and boxmakers, or carpenters. In our country establishment, within a mile of Edinburgh, we teach them to handle the axe, the hoe, and the spade, fitting them for emigration or rural labors. So much time, each day, is allotted for play. Every morning they go through their ablutions with Eastern precision; and to ensure regular attendance, as well as meet the necessities of their poverty, they receive three substantial meals each day. Punishments are rare. We work by love and kindness; and, though on entering our school they were foul as the gutter out of which they had been plucked, unbroken as the wild Arab or wild ass of the desert, ignorant of everything that is good, rags on their backs and misery in their looks; such change comes over them that better-behaved scholars, sharper intellects, happier faces, you will see nowhere.

Talk of Rarey, the celebrated horse breaker! we accomplish feats that outshine his. I remember one day seeing a child just brought in from the Police Office. It was a little lean, withered, old looking creature; lost in a gown made for a grown-up woman; her head buried in a large, faded, coal scuttle-shaped bonnet, the relic of a by-gone fashion, at the far end of which one could see a wild, woe-begone face. Poor soul, it was plain that she had never been at school before; she sat amazed, still as a post, as if her queer, stunted figure had been cut out of stone; nothing about her looked alive, but the two grey eyes which went rolling round and round in blank amaze. She had all the look of a newly-caught hare, seized in her form. In three weeks you would not have recognized that child. What a marvellous change do the allied powers of patience and porridge work! These creatures gradually lose their savage air; the sharp angularities of starvation get beautifully rounded off in fat and flesh; health blooms on the rosy check; and the hangdog, cunning, low, suspicious look gives place to an honest bearing, and an open, cheerful countenance. There are not a few very pretty children in our school; and as to the girls, with their industrial training, they are more fit to be skilful, frugal wives, to mend their man’s coat, to darn his stockings, to dress his linen, to cook his food, and keep a tidy house and clean fireside, than lasses with gay ribbons and more pretensions. Such are the children within our school.

But what of the fruits of the system as brought out in their future career? Since our doors were opened in 1847, besides many who received a partial education, and not a few whose parents, rising into better circumstances, removed thorn to higher schools, not less than five hundred children have left our walls to play their part in life. They are playing it well. Considering the great disadvantages of their outset in life, we have to state as a marvellous, as well as most gratifying result, that as large a proportion of them have proved honest, industrious, useful members of society as any other class can show. This more than rewards all our anxieties and labors; and cannot be contemplated by any right-minded persons without their heart warming to Ragged Schools. Yon gallant boat that plies between the wreck and the shore,

PLEAS FOH UACfJED SCHOOLS. 203

and on which, as she rises to the swell of the sea, all eyes are intently fixed, is but an image of our schools. If our work has not the splendor that surrounds brave deeds, it has a better and more enduring glory. It has saved the perishing from a wreck worse than the stranded ship’s — from a fate far worse than the bubbling groan and brief struggle of men whelmed in the deep. It is preeminently a Saviour-like work. We go to seek the lost. And these five hundred children show how Heaven has smiled on our efforts, and what a promising field Ragged Schools open up for Christian benevolence! Nowhere can labor and money count with such certainty on meeting with a sure reward.

It seems like lowering a noble cause to introduce the consideration of money, and plead for it on the score of economy. It is a great stoop from the lofty heights of Religion, Pity, Humanity, Justice, and Mercy, to come down to pounds, shillings, and pence. Yet I can demonstrate that ours, the kindest and holiest, is the cheapest policy. It has been, as I have already stated, calculated that every child left to grow up a criminal, costs the country, on an average, not less than three hundred pounds. Let us suppose then that but one half of these five hundred, whom this single school has saved, had run a career of crime; they would have involved the State in an outlay of seventy-five thousand pounds. Now, during the twelve years of its existence, our school has cost some £24,000; the amount, therefore, saved to the country is just the difference between that sum and £75,000 — that is, £51,000. But make the much more probable supposition that at least two-thirds of these children would, but for our school, have developed into full-blown criminals, then, besides rescuing them from a life of crime and misery, we have saved the State in actual money, a sum, in round figures, equal to the difference between £24,000 and £96,000. With that fact before them, a saving in twelve years of £72,000 effected by this one benevolent institution, were our Governments and Parliaments wise, and not, to use a common proverb, penny wise and pound foolish. Ragged Schools would be regarded as having the foremost claim on the public funds. They would be made to cover, as a network, all the wretched districts of the large cities of our land.

Seventy-two thousand golden sovereigns, fresh from the Mint, piled up in a glittering heap, on the floor of our school, represents the money gain accruing to the country from the operation of our school. A sight this enough to dazzle the eyes and win the patronage of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; yet some three years ago, I saw its golden harvests gathered on that floor after a nobler fashion.

Many of our children, on completing their education, have gone forth to the ends of the earth. Some are in Canada, felling the forest; some in New Zealand and Australia are tending flocks: some have fought in the Crimea, and some in battles on the deep. Besides those who had gone abroad as emigrants. or entered the army or navy, we knew that a goodly number of them were, with erect and honest bearing, walking the streets where they 18 once prowled — outcasts and beggars. So, about three years ago, when constituents were giving banquets to their members, and joyous cities were feasting the heroes of the Russian war, we resolved to pay some honor to those who, in their own field, had had as hard a fight and as difficult a part to play. Cards of invitation were accordingly issued to such of our old scholars as we could find in town. The fete came off about Christmas time. We did the thing handsomely. Our largest room was brilliantly lighted; ivy, branches of laurel, and blooming flowers festooned the walls; while long tables groaned under ample stores of coffee, tea, cookies, buns, and cakes of all sorts. It fell to me, as a kind of head of the house, to do the honors. The hour of reception arrived. The tread and shuffling of many feet rose on the stairs. The living stream set in — a constant succession of sober, well-to-do like young men and women, with all of whom, of course, I heartily shook hands; wives, once Ragged School girls, were there, with blushes and honest pride, introducing their husbands to me; and husbands, once Ragged School boys, their wives. A.11 were well, and some even genteelly dressed; without a rag on their backs, or trace of wretchedness in their bright and happy faces; self-supporting; upright; earning by honest industry wages that ranged from the three or four shillings a week of the apprentice boy to the thirty or forty shillings of the skilled workman, shopman, or clerk. It was a marvellous sight.

Old neighbors were astounded at the sad change time had wrought upon Naomi. On seeing the widow bend her steps along the streets of Bethlehem, grey with age, poorly clad, and stooping beneath a load of grief and poverty, they could hardly believe their eyes; but held up their hands to cry, “Is this Naomi?” I was ready, for opposite reasons, to ask, “Are these my Kagged School children? The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.” They were a hundred and fifty in all. What happy faces they wore! How joyous to meet again within those walls? With nothing stronger than tea and coifee, how their spirits rose to the highest pitch; and what a merry ring was in their laugh. What heartiness in their fun; and also in their feeding I How some of them did enjoy themselves! One of my daughters, who presided at a table, told me of a boy who drank an ocean of tea, ten cups at the least. The evening flew away on lightsome wings — songs were sung; good counsels given; prayers were offered and blessings asked. We lingered over the scene. Nor could I look on that gathering of young men and women — so respectably clad, and wearing such an air of decency — and think what, but for the Ragged School, they would have been, without tears of joy — gratitude to God, full to overflowing. It was a sight worth living for. It was our harvest home. “Our joy was according to the joy of harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” Such are Ragged Schools. Trees of life, let them be planted in every city — their leaves are for the healing of the people.

In drawing this appeal to a close, let me remark that while there is no machinery so well fitted ultimately to raise the lowest classes, (lie classes dangereuses of our large cities, there are few even of our small towns that do not need a Ragged, Feeding, Industrial School. Nor should benevolent people wait until the school, with its rooms, and staff of teachers, and board of directors, is set up. There is a quiet way of reaching our object, of saving the lost, in which many might engage who are idly wasting their time and .talents. None of us liveth to himself; no man or woman should. Yet, in this country, what an immense amount of female power is latent — lost to God and to the world! I know a person in a humble position — she is a blacksmith’s wife — who, sparing some hours each day for the work, has educated not a few of the neglected children of the village where she resides. Her name, though unknown to fame, is known in heaven, and, better than on gold or marble, is graven on loving hearts. How many ladies there are, who, treading in her humble footsteps, could change a languid into a bright, happy, blessed life I In this world of sin and misery time 18* ought not to be wasted on trifles; and need hang heavy on no one’s hands. What i? to hinder many in circumstances of ease and comparative affluence, to collect some half-dozen neglected children into a room, and, spreading before them one plain meal, devote three hours each day to their education? These well-spent hours, like drops of oil spreading on the waters, would diffuse themselves in blessings and pleasure over all the day. Our island has one Miss Nightingale and one Miss Marsh, and others of kindred spirit though less known to fame; it might have thousands from their modest shades filling the land with music, and winning for their names the honor of household words in the abodes of woe and wretchedness. If these ladies, by God’s blessing, have subdued and softened man in his roughest state, what might others accomplish with plastic childhood in gentle hands?

I address myself once more to the public — to people with heads to understand and hearts to feel. We went to the Government for aid; and notwithstanding the sympathy of the min-PLEAS FOR llAGGEJ) SCHOOLS. 211

isters of state, somehow or other, by the interference probably of officials, it was like going down to Egypt for help. We have leaned upon a broken reed. The public purse which supples an affluent stream to those schools that educate the children of the reputable and well-doing part of the community, strange to say, yields to our Ragged Schools nothing but the merest dribble. Those that should be first are put last, and the last are first. While the child of the artisan, the shopkeeper, the manufacturer, the merchant, is, to a considerable extent, educated from the public funds of the country, this wretched creature, with pinching hunger in its face, foul rags on its back, its naked, red, ulcerated feet on the icy street, and in the damp cellar or cold garret where it lives, neither bed nor Bible, comfort nor kindness, gets nothing from our public funds V)ut a niggardly pittance. It is cruel injustice. Talk of class legislation! What class legislation so bad as this? For a l)rief period, in answer to importunity like the widow’s, we got fifty shillings a year for very child of the abandoned classes trained within our school — only one third of the cost. But now, and all in a day, this fifty shillings has been reduced to five. Five shillings in the year comes to about half a farthing in the day; and so half a farthing a day is the encouragement and help we get toward saving a hapless, helpless creature from crime, the prison, the hangman. Munificent donation! Incredible mockery as this seems, such is the fact. I am not aware that there is anything to match it in any department of public affairs. Its injustice and folly are still more plainly brought out by the contrast between the liberality shown to those institutions which attempt to reform the child who has committed crime, and the niggardliness dealt out to such institutions as ours, that reckoning prevention better than cure, seek to destroy crime in the very bud. As if cure were better than prevention; as if physic w ere better than food; as if it were an advantage to a boy or a girl to bear the jail brand; as if the prison were an admirable school of spotless virtue, true honor, honest industry, and Christian piety,

they allow seven or eight shillings a week for every child whom the public leaves to grow up into a criminal, and to find its way into a prison. To the man who, like a fool, postpones education till the child falls into crime, and is brought out of the jail to school, the Government gives one shilling per day; and to the far wiser man who, catching the child, so to speak, on its way to the prison, by education destroys crime in the bud and germ, the Government grants but one half-farthing per day. What a monstrous state of matters! It is high time that it were put an end to. We hope that the heads of Government will see to it — and that the country will instruct its representatives to see to it!

We have sinned in time past against these children, punishing innocence; and in worthless, wicked parents we have allowed guilt go free. We have punished those whom we should have pitied ) and committed those to prison whom we should have sent to school. I hold it to be a primary duty of the State to see that every child within its bounds is educated, and that none be allowed to bring up their children in savage, dangerous ignorance. If parents are willing but not able to educate them, let that be done at the public expense. If they are able but not willing, let the law compel them to do their duty. No man is at liberty in this land to starve his child’s body, and the interests of society imperatively require that he should not be left at liberty to starve its mind, and bring up his family so as to make them a burden, a danger, and a curse to the community. It is a great wrong to leave a child uneducated, and a still greater wrong to punish it for crimes which are not its guilt but ours — the infallible consequence of our criminal neglect.

The day was when they shut up such children in prison with hardened ruffians, or immured them in lonely cells to pine away the sweet spring-time of life where they heard no birds sing, nor saw the Ijlue sky, nor the blessed sunshine. In the last century they did worse. From the grim door of a prison they brought out two children to the scaffold — a boy of twelve, and a girl of eleven years of age. Pitiful sight! two shivering creatures, beneath the black gallows, and the hoary executioner putting aside their flowing locks, and ])aring their young necks for the rope. Calling it justice, they hanged those infants up before the astonished sun! This shocking murder was done in England in the reign of George II. That was the old system: ours is the new. Our motto, “Prevention is better than cure,” and vastly better than punishment.

We gladly hail the dawn of a day, when trusting more to schools and less to prisons, the otate shall recognize its duty in this matter. Three hundred years ago, John Knox, our great Scottish Reformer, long one of the most misunderstood and best abused of men, laid it down as the duty of the Government to take care that every child withiji its bounds received a useful education: and one of England’s most liberal-minded and profoundest thinkers has lent his high name to the same principle. John Foster advocates notpnly” friendly but rngfid dealing with all the people of inferior condi

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tion relatively to the necessity of their practical accordance to plans of education.” He treats “with contempt any hypocritical protest against so much interference with the discretion, the liberty of parents — the discretion, the liberty, forsooth, of bringing up their children a nuisance on the face of the earth.”

Meanwhile, however, and until the happy day when, without encroaching on the domain of conscience, the State shall secure for every child within its borders a useful education, Ragged Schools offer the only remedy for most claimant evils. Without them thousands are doomed to perish. They were an experiment; they are a success — a glorious success. May they never cease to flourish, till these lines cease to apply to this great, but guilty land: —

“ITie land has groaned beneath the guilt of blood Spilt wantonly; for every death-doomed man Who, in his boyhood, has been left untaught That Wisdom’s wys are ways of pleasantness, And all her path? are peace, unjustly dies. But ah 1 how many are thus left untaught I”