profound social questions. Shall we see criminal children taken care of,
and treated kindly, while many of the children of the honest poor are so
ill off? Shall we not, by taking these children under our care, and so
relieving parents and others of their responsibility towards them, sap
the principles of the industrious poor, leading them to desert or cast
off their children, whom they will now be sure of seeing cared for by
others? We must admit that there is much force in these queries; but it
would be wrong to allow them altogether to deter us, where the reasons
on the other side are so urgent. It may be possible, by keeping to such
individual efforts as those of Mr Nash, or to those of little
unobtrusive societies, to prevent much of the evil apprehended. And it
may also be practicable, as we find is proposed, to arrange that there
shall be a legal claim upon parents for the expenses incurred in
reforming their criminal offspring. Thus none who are not themselves
destitute, could safely leave their children to the chances of a
criminal life. It is also most desirable, that the state should limit
its interference to grants of money in proportion to the sums advanced
by private or local effort, and to the enforcing of a law for the
detention of vagrant and criminal children where it may be necessary.
Under such precautions, we think most of the advantages might be
obtained, with a much less admixture of evil than many would now be
disposed to expect.[1]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] The reader will find excellent matter on this subject in Mary
Carpenter's recent volume on Reformatory Schools, and in a 'Report of
the Proceedings of a Conference on the Subject of Preventive and
Reformatory Schools, held at Birmingham on the 9th and 10th of December