There were some objections made to the resolution, principally, as it appeared, because the preliminary imprisonment presented difficulties in the way of boys being received into the army or navy. As it was known, on the authority of Mr. Baker, of Hardwicke Court, Gloucester, and other experienced managers of Reformatory Schools, that no difficulty was found in obtaining employment in the general labour market for the liberated boys; and that with regard to the naval and military services, they were freely open to boys from Industrial Schools, as evidenced some time since by General Radcliffe, the Deputy Adjutant-General of Artillery, who had made minute inquiries as to their welldoing, the objections were overruled.

A letter was read from Sir Stafford Northcote in which he stated it as his opinion, that a previous imprisonment, or some other punishment, ought always to precede a committal to a Reformatory, and that he infinitely preferred imprisonment in a well-ordered prison. The chairman (Mr. Glossop) stated that letters had been received from managers of twenty-eight Reformatories and two Industrial Schools, bearing upon this subject.* Twentytwo of them approve of the preliminary imprisonment, and eight, including the two Industrial Schools, are against its retention.

This resolution appears to be in accord with many opinions given by the Quarter Sessions, and as the minimum age at which children can be sent to Reformatory Schools will, it is to be hoped, be fixed at twelve years, it is probable that the terms of the resolution will ultimately be very generally approved.

I now sum up the suggestions which appear to me to be of the greatest importance.

1. That the principal lever of improvement should be the strict enforcement of parental responsibility by means of fines and securities; that greater pains must be taken than heretofore to ascertain the condition of the parents, and their neglect as regards their children, bringing the details of each case under the special notice of the magistrates, who should, so far as possible, be selected for the purpose. It is certain that the constant and minute inquiries made by State agency would beneficially operate in improving the home training of the children.

• In addition to the late Rev. Sydney Turner and Sir S. Northcote, Mr. B. Baker, Mr. Latham, the Rev. C. Walters, of Redhill School, and other most experienced managers, have expressed themselves in favour of preliminary imprison

ment.

2. That it is undesirable to send children under twelve years of age to either prisons or Reformatory Schools, that age being defined under the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879,

as the one at which childhood ceases.

3. Should the above minimum age be fixed, it will probably be found to be unnecessary to abolish preliminary imprisonment or some efficient substitute in the cases of juveniles committed to Reformatory Schools, for the reason that only those with habitual bad conduct, and of an age involving responsibility, will be so sentenced.

It will be stated, and with truth, that notwithstanding an increased enforcement of parental responsibility, there will still arise some requirement in the way of detention and training for short periods in many cases.

It is certain that many objections would. be made by the managers of ordinary Reformatory and Industrial Schools to the reception of juveniles for short periods of time, as it would be destructive of the principle on which they work. But by the extension of day Industrial Schools, and the encouragement of schools conducted on the principle of Truant Schools, which, as illustrated at Sheffield (see Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools' Report for 1880, p. 205) show the advantage of deterrent discipline for short periods, it is probable that the requirement will be sufficiently met, and at a small cost.

In conclusion, I must point out that the substitutes which have been named for the prisons in cases of remands and preliminary detention in sentences to Reformatory Schools -viz. work-houses and police cells, do not appear to offer any advantages.

There are now but few advocates for the former, and too many opponents to admit of its being carried out; and with regard to the latter, it would be difficult to any person conversant with police cells, to realise them as in any way comparable to those provided in prisons, with the attendant well-regulated supervision on the part of the chaplains and officers.

It is, however, held by many persons that the mere fact of being sent to prison inflicts a brand which is not the result of being incarcerated in police cells. But it would be quite possible in prisons to have special wards for "juveniles on probation," and thereby get rid of what has been so frequently termed a sentimental grievance.

Y DEAR

MY

My narrative is ended. I have told you what I can personally remember of the origin and course of the Tractarian movement. I have now to add a few more words about the remarkable man whose name has been so often mentioned in these letters. I said that I thought he had been possessed with a particular idea. His own words will explain what I conceive that idea to have been. Cardinal Newman is the one thinker of commanding intellect, who has advised us. to seek shelter from the distractions of this present age in the Roman Catholic Church. A passage in the "Apologia " is a photograph of his inmost heart, and explains the premises of which this is the conclusion. It is long, but it is so beautiful that the reader who has never seen it before will wish that it was longer. I will say afterwards, in my poor language, why I for one could not go with him, but preferred to steer away into the open ocean. I believed that it was a Siren's song, and that the shore from which it came had been strewn for centuries with the bones of the lost mariners who were betrayed by its enchanting music.

66

Starting with the being of God (which is as certain to me as the certainty of my own existence, though when I try to put the grounds of that certainty into logical shape, I find a difficulty in doing so, in mood and figure, to my satisfaction), I look out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to give the lie to that great truth of which my whole being is so full; and the effect upon me is in consequence, as a matter of necessity, as confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. If I looked into a mirror and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when I look into this living busy world and see no reflex of its Creator. This is to me one of the great difficulties of this absolute primary truth to which I referred just how. Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an Atheist, or a Pantheist, or a Polytheist, when I looked into the world. I

am speaking for myself only, and I am far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society; but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full of lamentations, and mourning, and woe.

"To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity; the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, Having no hope, and without God in this world; all this is a vision to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound mystery which is absolutely beyond. human solution.

"What shall be said of this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is, in a true sense, discarded from his presence. Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the token on him of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision, unable to say whence he came, his birth-place or his family connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that he was one of whom, for one cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and condition of his being. And so I

argue about the world; if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.

"And now, supposing it were the blessed and loving will of the Creator to interfere in this anarchical condition of things, what are the methods which might be necessarily or naturally involved in his object of mercy? Since the world is in so abnormal a state, surely it would be no surprise to me if the interposition were of necessity equally extraordinary, or what is called miraculous. But that subject does not directly come into the scope of my present remarks. Miracles as evidence involve an argument; and I, of course, am thinking of some means which does not immediately run into argument. I am rather asking what must be the antagonist by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion, and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries. I have no intention at all to deny that truth is the real object of our reason ; and that if it does not attain to truth, either the premiss or the process is in fault; but I am not speaking of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact and concretely in fallen man. I know that even the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution. But I am considering it actually and historically, and in this point of view I do not think I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards a simple unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand against it in the long run; and hence it is that in the Pagan world when our Lord came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of former times was all but disappearing from those portions of the world in which the intellect had been active, and had had a career.

"And in these latter days in like manner, outside the Catholic Church, things are tending with far greater rapidity than in that old time, from the circumstances of the age, to Atheism in one shape or another. What a scene, what a prospect does the whole of Europe present at this day! And not only Europe, but every government and every civilisation through the world which is under the influence of the European mind. Specially, for it most concerns us, how sorrowful,

in the view of religion, even taken in its most elementary, most attenuated form, is the spectacle presented to us by the educated intellect of England, France, and Germany! Lovers of their country and of their race, religious men external to the Catholic Church, have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce human nature in its onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity has been generally acknowledged; but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, which would have the force and the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against the Deluge?

"Three centuries ago, the establishment of religion-material, legal, and social-was generally adopted as the true expedient for the purpose in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church, and for a long time it was successful; but now the crevices of those establishments are admitting the enemy. Thirty years ago* education was relied upon. Ten years ago there was a hope that wars would cease for ever, under the influence of commercial enterprise and the reign of the useful and fine arts. But will any one venture to say there is anything anywhere on this earth which will afford a fulcrum for us whereby to keep the earth from moving onwards?

"The judgment which experience passes on establishments, on education, as a means of maintaining religious truth in this anarchical world, must be extended even to Scripture, though Scripture be divine. Experience proves surely that the Bible does not answer a purpose for which it was never intended. It may be accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals; but a book, after all, cannot make a stand against the wild, living intellect of man; and in this it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents, to the power of that universal solvent which is so successfully acting upon religious establishments.

"Supposing, then, it to be the will of the Creator to interfere in human affairs, and to make provision for retaining in this world a knowledge of Himself, so definite and distinct as to be proof against the energy of human scepticism; in such a case-I am far from saying that there was no other way

but there is nothing to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to introduce a power into the world invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters. Such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and prompt means of withstanding the

* This was written in 1865.

It has been said that reason is the faculty which finds reasons for what we wish to believe, and the saying is true in so far as it implies that there are in every human being emotional and mental tendencies which suggest the premisses of arguments, dispose the lights and shadows in which external facts shall appear, and make conclusions appear to one person to be satisfactorily made out when to another they shall seem resting upon air. I believe that the passage which you have just read explains Newman's history. When he came to see the condition of the world into which he was thrown the aspect of it was unspeakably distressing. His whole efforts have been spent in finding a solution of the problem which would make existence on such terms less intolerable.

On the same broad ground on which Cardinal Newman places himself, I will shift the lights, and let the shadows fall the other way. Following his own analogy of the outcast boy, I will suppose a reasonable being with faculties limited like ours, with a belief in God like ours, but with no more immediate knowledge, suddenly introduced from another planet into our own earth, confronted with the phenomena which Cardinal Newman describes, and asked for an explanation of them, consistent with his religious conviction; would such a being infer that the race which he was

studying was implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity? I do not see how the inference would help him. I think if he was wise he would feel his inability to give any explanation at all. But I suppose that before attempting the problem he would look into the past history of the earth, and into the various races of animated beings by which it was occupied. He would see that man is only the highest of many varieties; that he is made in the same type as a large class of other animals; that as their bodies are a clumsy likeness of man's body, so their minds are a clumsy likeness of his mind. he looked into the habits of these animals he would find no law among them but violence, no right but strength; no sign of disinterested affection, no object save the gratification of hunger or lust, the will and appetite of each creature only held in check by the will and appetite of other creatures more powerful; one generation exactly like another, with no capacity for looking forward, or accumulating knowledge and expression.

If

Turning next to man, he would observe, too, that he had the same animal nature. In many countries he would see that the habits of man were scarcely superior to those of the beings below him, that he was savage and ignorant as they, and that his progenitors from immemorial time had lived in the same way. Going back to the earliest traces of human life, the rude flint instruments, the cave-dwellings, and such other memorials as survive, he would infer that the primitive men everywhere had been as the savages are now, the nature which they shared with other animals entirely predominating; that not a vestige was to be found of any higher civilisation which had once existed and had decayed; that the lower animals had come into being for many ages before man; that man himself had risen slowly from the animal's level to the position which he now occupies. Supposing then Cardinal Newman to have drawn a fair picture of the world as it stands at present, would the inquirer be likely to think that the human race was like a boy of whom its parents were ashamed? He would be unable to form the slightest idea why or how such a race had been created; but he would see that in addition to the qualities of other creatures they had capacities of memory, of moral sense and reason; that having been furnished with these capacities, they had been left to raise themselves by their own exertions; and that by fits and starts, sometimes springing forward, sometimes even seeming to recede,