and it may even be that the parents evade the law as far as possible for
fear of seeing their children acquire a distaste for the life in which
they have been brought up. But the Government, having taken one step in
the matter, cannot afford to go back, and it must also have definite
satisfactory results to show for its legislation. The tentative measure of
temporary schools along the canals has not leavened the illiteracy of the
canal population. It will, therefore, become necessary at no great
interval to devise some fresh and drastic regulations. Compulsory
attendance at school for nine months of the year, which now applies to
children in normal circumstances, may not be the lot of the barge children
for some time, but when it comes, as it inevitably will one day, it will
of necessity mean the break-up of the home life on the canals, for the
children will have to be left behind during the almost unceasing voyages,
and a place of residence will have to be provided on land. Where the
children are the women will soon be, and gradually this place of residence
will become the home, displacing the barge in the associations and
affections of the canal population. Whether these changes will benefit
those most affected by them cannot be guaranteed, but at least they will
put an end to the separate existence of the canal population.

When this result has been compassed by the inexorable progress of
education and knowledge, the gradual disappearance of the canal
population, the class of hereditary bargees as we have known it, and as it
still exists, may be expected to follow at no remote date, for it was
based on the enforcement of the family principle, and on the devotion of a
whole community, from its youngest to its eldest member, to its
maintenance. As it is the tow-barge is something of an anachronism, but
the withdrawal of the youthful recruits, whose up-bringing alone rendered
it possible, will entail its inevitable extinction. The decay and break-up
of the guild of tjalk owners will be hastened by the introduction of steam