sanctioned by the visitors, any boy shall be received in the Institution, on payment by an individual contributor, or group of contributors, of 30l. or of 40l. per annum, or 4s. per week for three years, a satisfactory engagement in writing being entered into in each case for the continuance of such payments. 3. That, in case of the death of any boy, or if he should leave the school, a fair proportion of the sum paid in advance should be returned. The Committee are of opinion that, under this arrangement, the Institution will be warmly supported by those who may feel personally interested in particular cases; but they also appeal to the philanthropic inhabitants of Birmingham and its neighbourhood for a general subscription list to meet the first cost of furniture and tools, and to give an opportunity for occasionally introducing applicants who may be unable to obtain nominations. With this view the Committee recommend, that whenever the state of the Institution will permit, a ballot shall take place amongst subscribers for the right of nomination, subject to the approval of the Committee as before."

The following Resolutions were unanimously adopted :

:

1. Moved by Captain Tindal, R.N., "That the Report now read be received, and that this Meeting offers its grateful acknowledgments to the Noblemen and Gentlemen who formed the Committee of Inspection, for the attention they have devoted to the subject of the proposed Reformatory Institution; and for their delineation of its principles, and of the means by which it is shown to be practicable."

2. Moved by Rt. Hon. Lord Lyttleton, "That in the opinion of this Meeting, some effort ought to be made to reclaim youthful criminals, and that in order to their rescue from demoralizing influences, it is desirable to provide for them a home, to afford them the benefits of education, and to train them to habits of regular industry, thus giving them the means and opportunity of reformation."

3. Moved by William Scholefield, Esq., M.P., "That in accordance with the recommendation of the Committee, a Society be now formed to establish an industrial institution for the care, employment, and education, of criminal boys, to be called the Birmingham Reformatory School."

DORCHESTER PLACE REFUGE FOR GIRLS.

THE Third Annual Report of the "Training Refuge for Orphans and Destitute Girls from Ragged Schools, 5, Dorchester Place, Blandford Square," has been received, and is encouraging as to this branch of our work. The need for such institutions is obvious to all who are acquainted with the destitute condition of the "ragged girls;" but the expensive nature of the experiment has been objected, as girls take longer than boys to tame if they have once run wild! and the outlets for employing them are more scarce. Although these considerations made the ladies who conduct this Institution aware of the arduous nature of their undertaking, they did not appear sufficient to induce them to give up the attempt to prevent so large a portion of their sex from growing up as pests to society. It is justly observed in the article in our January Magazine, "On Juvenile Delinquency in Newcastle," that "Female crime is even more dangerous, inasmuch as it is more corrupting, than male crime. There is no doubt that demoralization begins earlier, and is more destructive in its consequences, in females than in males; that in them vice precedes crime, and both terminate in misery. We have no hesitation in saying some remedial measures are most urgently required with regard to outcast and neglected female children."

Most heartily responding to the above sentiment, we hail any such "remedial measure,” on however small a scale, and only wish we could rouse the public to the urgency of the demand, that such institutions may be increased manifold.

The girls received are those destitute of any means of earning an honest livelihood, and whose attention at the Ragged Schools give promise of improvement if they had the opportunity-the ages from eleven to eighteen. The ladies have found their difficulties not over-stated, either as regards the length of time required to tame their charge, or the difficulty of disposing of

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them afterwards. Still they persevere, hoping, when the subject is more known to the public, they will be more generally assisted. Their friends as yet have been few, but generous. The cleaning of door-steps has been very useful in giving the girls the first feeling of being able to earn something by their own honest labour, and their delight in their own earned pennies is encouraging, as tending to a feeling of self-respect utterly new to them, To make the Refuge "self-supporting" has been found impossible. They have everything to learn, and a little needlework to help is the most that can be accomplished. One other suggestion, often made, we wish to notice. It is asked "Why not send them to the workhouse?" We answer, They would be supported there, or passed on to their parishes, but not trained or reclaimed. Those who have read in our Magazine the histories of some of this outcast population, know how some of them live by going from union to union, and how little they are thus fitted to be useful or even harmless members of society. We conclude our notice of this Report in the words of a gentleman who addressed a meeting in its behalf, "Think of all that is implied in the words destitute girls!'

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Ragged School Union Magazine.

"One-half of the world does not know what the other half suffers."

WHILE the scene is vividly before me, and the words almost ringing in my ears, I would tell your readers what I heard and saw a few nights since in a visit to one of my Ragged Schools.

The master and mistress of an excellent endowed school, with which I am officially connected, have been endeavouring to impress the children of that school with the sense of their own many blessings, and the state of poverty, neglect, and filth in which so many poor little ones of their own age are living-if living it may be called-in this great city. They have persuaded many of these dear children to contribute, not indeed out of their abundance, but out of their small means, a farthing a week each. With these small subscriptions they have bought materials, and cut out garments and made them for their poor ragged brothers and sisters. Some of these they wished to be given to the children of our Ragged Schools; and to impress their minds with the contrast between their own condition and that of the dear children for whom they have saved their money and given their time and work so cheerfully, their kind teachers wished that a deputation (to use a very favourite modern word) of the children should visit the Ragged Schools, which they accordingly did last Friday evening. At one of the schools which they first called on, 140 little ones were having a treat of tea and cake. At the next, they reached the school as the children were singing their opening hymn, and in time to join with them in the opening prayer. When this was over, I walked to the other end of the school, and singling out three boys requested them to come up to me, while the little group of nicely dressed girls, with their fresh, clean, straw bonnets, and white aprons, and nice respectable frocks, and the boys in English blue gathered round us.

The first of the three boys to whom I spoke was a little black-eyed fellow, with a thick, shock head of hair, on the top of which could be clearly seen the marks of the prison scissors. His clothes were literally a bundle of rags, fastened together by sundry strings and knots; for when once in them they would probably never be taken off till they dropped off. The poor child had a bright, quick, intelligent look, that gave me the idea that, with all the crushing and pressing power of poverty and want,

there was still a large amount of spring in his spirit. "How long, my boy, is it since you have been in a bed ?" “Oh! sir, more than a year." "Where did you sleep last night?" "In a sugar-tub." One of those large hogsheads, in which the raw sugar is brought to our great sugar houses to be refined, and which are then rolled outside the house, on the pavement, in one of the side streets. "Where do you generally sleep?" In a sugar tub, or in a cupboard." "How in a cupboard?" "They put a mattress there, sir, inside the cupboard, and let me sleep there. Sometimes, sir, they fire little guns at me in the morning, and throw water over me." "What did you do last night?" His drunken mother had come to the school, taken him away with her, dragged him to London Bridge, then told him that she meant to throw him over and drown him. She tried to do this more than once, but the boy got from her, and running to Whitechapel, at last took refuge in a sugar-tub.

"Well, my boy," said I to the next, "what is your father?" "I have none--he is dead." "Where is your mother?" "She is dead, too." "Have you any brothers or sisters ?" "I have one brother, but he went to sea, and I have never seen him since." This boy was a rather fine lad of fifteen, his features were cast in a superior mould, delicately formed, and their outline decided, and yet almost refined. But the pale face had a dragged look, and the dark circle under the eye as he looked down, told of nights of cold, broken, unrefreshing sleep, and days of fatigue and hunger. "Where did you sleep last night, my poor boy?" "I slept in a sugar-tub, sir, till a man came and turned me out, and then I walked the streets the rest of the night." "I found him, sir," said the man who lives on the school premises, "hanging about our door early in the morning; he looked starved and cold. I took him in, and gave him some bread and butter and a cup of tea." "What were your parents when alive?" 'They were respectable people, sir; they sold vegetables in ; but when they

died all went." "And how have you lived since ? " "As I could, sir." And how can a poor child live who is thus circumstanced. He is almost too young to workperhaps he has never been taught to work-perhaps he does not know how or where to get work; and then what does he do? He either begs, and is put in prison for it, as the first of these two poor boys, for it was for cadging, as he said, (begging,) that he had been in prison-his hair bore the prison marks- —or else he steals to satisfy his craving hunger.

What a history would the lives of ragged children make if put together, when even the brief sketch of two poor children, drawn out by a few questions, presents a picture of so much want and suffering!

My little visitors listened to all this with open ears, surprised looks, and, I trust, with pitying hearts for their little suffering brethren, and grateful hearts for their own mercies, so vividly and strongly brought out by contrast. I hope that when they stepped into their warm bed, and drew the clothes over them, they thought of their ragged brother's hard, cold, uncomfortable, and not undisturbed bed and bed-room, an empty sugar-tub. When they put on their nice clean, warm clothing I hope they thought of his bundle of rags. When they took their comfortable breakfast, they thought of their poor, pale, weary, foot-worn brother, walking the cold London streets at dawn, hungry, and without food; and that the feeling of the Christian poet was in their hearts, if the words were not on their lips :

"Are these Thy mercies day by day,

To me above the rest?

Then let me love Thee more than they,

And try to serve Thee best."

W. W. CHAMPNEYS.

An effort will be made to provide a small dormitory, with a rug for each poor child, and a penny roll in the morning and evening, just to keep them from starving.

Notices of Meetings, etc.

Other notices deferred for want of space.

Papers, Original and Selected.

AN IMPORTANT INQUIRY;

OR, OUR PROSPECTS BRIGHTENING.

THE question of the abolition of the punishment of transportation has lately received much attention. This has largely arisen from the reclamations of the Cape colonists, as well as of the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land, who have long bitterly complained of the introduction of convicts among them, and who, by the last accounts, have threatened "to stop the supplies" should the Government not give way. The demoralizing and dangerous results are increasingly apparent since the discovery of gold in South Australia, as to that region, besides the refuse of English society, convicts of the most atrocious character have repaired, either escaping from their assigned limits, or else their term of transportation having expired. The Government authorities have at length been obliged to yield to the threats and remonstrances of the colonists, and seeing that to those felons already under sentence "another and another yet succeeds," it has been gravely asked, "Whether it would not be expedient to abolish transportation altogether, and substitute for it a lengthened term of imprisonment and hard labour at home?" It is argued in favour of an affirmative answer to this inquiry, that in these days "transportation beyond the seas," even for the term of a man's "natural life," has lost most of its terrors, inasmuch as the "ticket of leave system" is in the main largely consistent with personal liberty, and that even good conduct persevered in for a time may lead to complete liberation from bondage, and a settlement with golden prospects in one of the richest domains and finest climates in the world. But, putting aside the plausibility of such a mode of argument, and setting off against it the dark reality as recorded by condemned and transported convicts themselves, we believe that the secondary punishments proposed would be altogether inefficient in their results. Most heartily, therefore, do we assent to the opinions expressed on this vexed question by Mr. Serjeant Adams, Assistant Judge, at the March General Sessions for Middlesex. After referring to the Lord Chief Justice Campbell, as being also opposed to the abolition of transportation, he declared that "he did not think that those who supported such abolition were aware of the practical evils which would result from its being done away with. Four or five years ago a Committee of the House of Lords was appointed to examine certain subjects connected with criminal law, embracing an investigation into the condition of juvenile offenders, and extending also to the subject of transportation. Every class of men was examined before that Committee-judges of the supreme courts, and of criminal courts, magistrates, practical men, were in the habit of visiting prisons, chaplains of jails, philanthropists, enthusiasts, convicts, and jailers; and their opinion was unani

NO. LII.-VOL. V.

who