If the next generation of thieves, pickpockets, and other pests of society is to be diminished, let us have moral training schools. They will prove to be the cheapest police.* If the degraded condition of colliers and miners is to be elevated, what can we so effectually establish among them as training schools? If we desire that our orchards be kept from depredation, our railings and cope-stones preserved unbroken, and our statues and public monuments undefaced, let us establish training schools. If cleanliness is to be promoted in the persons, families, and habitations of the poor of our city-lanes, we know of nothing that would be so thoroughly influential for its establishment as well as permanence, as the universal plantation of moral training schools. If the mass of our working population is to be morally elevated, what machine can we so effectually apply as the training school? If the church is to be supplied with intelligent members, can the philanthropist present a more suitable instrument than the school for early training? We stand on the sure footing of absolute certainty and proved experience in times past, that no other instrument has been equally efficient. It is now a matter of fact and history, that an almost universal improvement takes place in every school in which the training system has been faithfully established. Good has no doubt followed even the ordinary school, particularly those held on the Sabbath, and of course the preaching of the word from the pulpit; but this last fails of three-fourths of its legitimate power, from the untrained understanding of the hearers. What is more, the church is robbed of tens of thousands who ought to form its members, nay, whole masses of the community, who have been trained to any and every thing but a reverence for God, his sanctuary, or his holy day. The country is possessed of sufficient.

*The master of police, in one of the suburbs of Glasgow, reported to one of the teachers that since the establishment of the Moral Training day school and Sabbath schools in that locality, the commitments of juvenile offenders had been diminished two-thirds.

materials for conducting the moral training of the whole population, but the status of the schoolmaster must be raised by being better paid, and they must be trained to the art. Money and time alone are wanting to prepare a host of Christian men for this noble and patriotic work. We speak soberly, we have made the calculation, and are satisfied that, without an effort, and that in the early training of the young, our population will continue to sink in the scale of morals. Should we continue to skim the mere surface of things, and expend our energies on partial remedies, which never reach the source of the disease, the under-current now steadily at work in our country's economy, may break forth during some period of commercial distress, sufficiently apparent and overwhelming.

The existing means of improvement are not equal to the wants of the adult population, the amount therefore cannot be diminished, however differently in some points it may be directed. The energies of the country are too exclusively expended, however, upon the old (the least hopeful of efficient results). In the meantime, the neglected youth fill up the ranks year by year, as unimpressible and hopeless as their predecessors. Let us no longer pay such exclusive attention to the criminal or the juvenile delinquent, let us rather try to prevent than to cure, and shortly the exercise of such benevolence and humanity will be comparatively unnecessary. Let us watch the opening buds of wayward and sinful development-direct the tender twigs of thought, and affection, and habit-pluck up the weeds, and prudently nourish the roots of all that is amiable and virtuous-infusing into the juvenile population, and into their lives, Christian habits; and then may we hope that houses of refuge for those youths of at least one crime, prisons for the more hardened and abandoned, and night asylums for the wanderer, may be unnecessary. The results of the training system in the model schools of our Seminary, fully bear us out in these anticipa

tions. Were the Legislature only convinced of this fact, the moral machinery might soon be in operation. The will has been repeatedly exhibited of late years-Government unquestionably has the means.

Nothing short, indeed, of a public grant for the establishment of training schools, fully equal in extent to that given for the emancipation of the West India slaves, will ever emancipate the mass of the population of Great Britain from the operative causes of their present and progressive moral degradation. Jails, bridewells, penitentiaries, and houses of refuge are all very useful in their way, and absolutely necessary in present circumstances; but they go not to the root of the evil--they are at best correctives or restoratives, not preventatives. Training schools alone, on Christian principles, and commencing early, by the blessing of God, can accomplish the work. Taking the lowest estimate of the advantages to be gained, twenty millions sterling advanced by the State would be amply repaid by the reduction of crime, and the additional peace and security of the whole community.

This amount would certainly be required for the mere purchase of school training ground-of course high-priced in suitable situations for the mass of the people-the erection of buildings and a partial endowment, so as to bring the fees within the reach of the poor and working classes.

This sum may startle those who are unaccustomed to view education in its real character and bearings, and the opposing principles of apathy and vice with which it has to contend in the wide-spread rural districts of our country, but especially in large towns, which are at present the hot-beds of crime, ignorance, and insubordination. And to those who have formed their notions exclusively from the aspect of calm seclusion in the study, the parlour, or the nursery, the necessity for so mighty an expenditure, in providing moral machinery, may appear strange. But to any one who has been accustomed for twenty or thirty years to visit the abodes

CHAPTER IV.

EDUCATIONAL AND MORAL STATISTICS.

It would be more in accordance with our feelings to approve than to disapprove, to applaud the existing systems of education, and to term them perfect and efficient, than to state, as we have already done, that, with a very few exceptions, even to this day, they are neither complete in their arrangements for the great end in view, nor so natural as they ought to be for the training of the child. This is felt by some to be an offensive statement, especially from one who is not professional, and who only ranks as an amateur in education, although a practical one. In common with professional men, however, we claim the privilege of making observations, expressing our own experience in these matters, and of proposing such additions and amendments as we know to be necessary for the public weal.

THE SCOTTISH PAROCHIAL SCHOOL SYSTEM.-So much has been said about this system (the most ancient in Europe) as to the moral and intellectual benefits that have accrued from it, that it is now a generally received opinion throughout the world, that education such as it represents is all that is necessary to elevate a nation to the height that Scotland is understood to have attained. We shall therefore devote a few sentences to this subject, and present a very few facts that have come more immediately under our own observation, from which the reader may judge.

The commonly received opinion, that Scotland owes her