to rise against his oppressor. We believe that it is because Mencius sowed these seeds of truth two thousand years ago that China has preserved, amidst countless changes and revolutions, certain forms and safeguards of liberty. Because the sage never flattered in asserting the prerogative of wisdom to lecture and to rebuke power, we find the Board of Censors making its voice heard to this day when injustice and violence are detected; and because he affirmed so distinctly that Heaven sees according as the people see, and hears according as the people hear, we have never had the idea of a Divine Right to the sovereignty by birth intruding for any length of time into the constitution. That his ethics have not been so productive of good as his politics we are free to confess, but in the field of moral speculation he exhibited extraordinary originality and vigour of understanding. His English translator and editor says with truth that he need not hide a diminished head before any of his Western contemporaries, though there are numbered amongst them Aristotle, Plato, Zeno, Epicurus, and Demosthenes; and the new Calendar of Saints' Days which the Religion of Humanity would introduce, would assuredly contain an imperfect list of the world's intellectual benefactors if it omitted the venerable name of MENCIUS.

The reader who, in glancing over these pages, has gathered a few of the leading propositions of the Eastern sage, may almost suspect us of the design to satirise under this disguise the political and ethical systems of modern Europe, and to present to him the Hegelism, Benthamism, and Positivism of the nineteenth century in a Chinese masquerade. But this is only a fresh proof that there is nothing new under the sun. These theories of morals and philosophy have been taught in China for more than 2,000 years. They still retain the authority of classics in the schools of the Flowery Land; and the intellectual and moral condition of that most remarkable people is precisely that which we should have anticipated in a community governed by these principles of philosophy.

ART. IV.-1. Children of the State: the Training of Juvenile Paupers. By FLORENCE HILL. London: 1868. 2. Report of Mrs. Nassau Senior as to the Effect on Girls of the System of Education at Pauper Schools. Third Annual Report of the Local Government Board. London: 1874. 3. Copy of Observations on the Report of Mrs. Senior to the Local Government Board as to the Effect on Girls of the System of Education at Pauper Schools. By EDWARD CARLETON TUFNELL, Esq., late Inspector of Poor Law Schools in the Metropolitan District. Return to an Order of the House of Commons, dated February 8, 1875.

4. Copy of a Letter addressed to the President of the Local Government Board by Mrs. Nassau Senior, lately an Inspector of the Board; being A Reply to the Observations of Mr. Tufnell, also a former Inspector, upon her Report upon Pauper Schools.

No

o one whom business or curiosity has ever led to visit any of the large Metropolitan District Schools for pauper children can have failed to be impressed by the sight. The picture presented by several hundred children drilled into the most perfect order, dressed all alike in a simple neat costume, obeying the word of command with military precision, has always a striking effect on the beholder. Then, the spacious building, the extent of the grounds, the neatness and order reigning everywhere, the completeness of the appliances, all tend to enhance the effect, and to favour the belief that the problem of pauper education has here been successfully solved. Everything seems as delightful as heart could wish. • The 'State spares no expense for its children,' the visitor exclaims; 'with these advantages, how well they must turn out.' And if he hear them in class, he will be still more struck with the admirable results of their training; he will be astonished at the knowledge they show, answering questions which he would be puzzled to answer. No wonder, then, if he comes away charmed with the system, and in the full belief that things are what they seem.'

But however much we may admire the order and discipline which have been evolved out of such discordant elements as are here brought together, we must on reflection feel grave doubts whether all this elaborate machinery be really suited to the needs for which it is intended; whether, in effect, the artificial routine incidental to a great school be a suitable prepara

tion for the future life of children who from the age of sixteen must stand alone in the world; and whether children brought up under such a system--more especially girls-may be reasonably expected to make their own way, and to gain an honest and independent livelihood. And as this is the end which it is now universally recognised that the State is bound to aim at for the children committed to its care, it is of the greatest importance that we should not rest content with any system which cannot be shown to fulfil these conditions. The question of expense must also be considered: there can be no doubt that District Schools are costly; but we believe that the system which is the most efficacious in training pauper children to become useful members of the community, and so cutting off the entail of pauperism,' will, however expensive at first, in the long run be found the cheapest. We should not therefore be disposed to quarrel with the expense of these great district schools, if it could be proved that the results were commensurate with their cost. But if it should be shown-paradoxical and unlikely as this would beforehand seem to be that they are not only a costly but an inefficient system of education, as far at any rate as the girls are concerned, it will be difficult to resist the conclusion that District Schools are not the perfect solution of the problem of pauper education which they have so fondly been supposed to be.

Mr. Stansfeld, when President of the Local Government Board, had misgivings as to the effect of this system of education in large schools on girls; and thinking it right to have a woman's opinion in what is peculiarly a woman's province, female education, he determined on the novel step of appointing a Lady Inspector, choosing Mrs. Nassau Senior for the post. Mrs. Nassau Senior has amply vindicated the wisdom of the appointment. The Report in which she has embodied the result of her inquiries, and which is printed in the Appendix to the Local Government Board's Annual Report for 1873-74, is an admirable paper, concise in style, lucid in arrangement, full of hearty sympathy both with the children and the hardworked officials, yet free from all rhetorical artifice, and brimful of suggestions. Indeed, so closely packed are the thoughts and the suggestions that it is not until we have read it two or three times that we fully realise the amount of matter it contains. Upon this Report, Mr. Tufnell, who was for upwards of thirty years one of the inspectors of Poor Law Schools, and who has been the great upholder and defender of the system of District Schools, has made his Observations,' denouncing, in

no measured terms, both Mrs. Senior's method and her conclusions. Her Reply' to his strictures is before us, as is also that of Miss Smedley, one of the ladies who assisted Mrs. Senior in her investigations, and who has collected together into one volume, entitled Boarding-out and District Schools,' Mrs. Senior's and the chief other reports on the subject contained in the Local Government Board's Blue Book for 1874.

But before we proceed any further, it may be well first to get a general notion of the aspect of affairs. According to the last Census, there were in England and Wales alone more than 48,000 children on our hands in the different pauper schools. About one-half of these, roughly speaking, were orphans and permanently-deserted children to whom the State stands in loco parentis, and whom it has to educate and provide for up to the age of sixteen. The other half may be termed casuals,' many of whom pass in and out of the schools with their parents many times in the course of the year, and towards whom, considering that over their ingoing and their outgoing it has no control, the State cannot be regarded as having by any means the same duties as it owes to the children who are permanently in the schools, and who form the real children of the State.' There are three kinds of pauper schools: The old Workhouse School, which has been abolished in the Metropolis and in many of the large unions throughout the country, and which was a building forming part of, or attached to, the workhouse itself; the Separate School, a school detached from the workhouse, and to which the children from one union only are sent; and the District School, which is a separate school on a larger scale, intended for the reception of the children from several unions.

In all three kinds of school we find the children classified as boys, girls, and infants. We thus have one set of children being trained, often from very tender years, in a school which is their home, seeing hardly anything of the outer world, brought into daily contact with the children of the most abandoned parents; and many of these latter children frequently going away, to unlearn each time the little they have learnt during their sojourn in the school, and coming back more and more versed in sin.' Difficult as the task must be of bringing up the permanent children satisfactorily, it must of necessity be doubled by the perpetual filtering through the schools of the 'casuals.' And bad as the effect of this running stream of foulness must be in the small schools, where the staff is large enough to admit of thorough supervision, it must be still

worse in the big schools where such effective supervision cannot be maintained. True it is, no doubt, that outward decency and order reign in these establishments; that the casuals are rapidly awed' into proper behaviour, and into not using bad language at inappropriate moments. But too often there is reason to fear that a seething mass of iniquity exists under this crust which no inspector or superficial observer is likely even to suspect. A striking illustration of the deceptiveness of outward appearances is furnished by the case of the Eton Workhouse School, cited by Miss Hill in her admirable book, The Children of the State,' and by Colonel Grant, R.E., in a pamphlet on the Advantages of the Board'ing-out System.' Seven years ago,' the latter says, writing in 1869, the Poor Law and Diocesan Inspectors alike re'ported most favourably of the Eton Workhouse School, which 'was to all appearance admirably conducted. Some chance circumstance, however, revealed most unexpectedly such an amount of evil existing beneath this apparently satisfactory 'surface as to cause the Guardians to break up the school at once; and an investigation they instituted into the fate of the 'children sent thence between January 1858 and December 1861 revealed the dismal fact that 40 per cent. had turned out ill!' This, however, was a workhouse school and not a district school at all.

6

One of the chief arguments employed in favour of the separation of pauper schools from the workhouse buildings was the contamination of the minds of the young produced by intermixture with the adult inmates. This point has been repeatedly urged by Mr. Tufnell. It is perfectly well known to all who have had experience in Poor Law matters,' he says in his evidence before the Poor Law Commissioners in 1841, that a very large proportion of the adult inmates are 'persons of the worst character, the very refuse of the popu• Îation. . . . . That this class, morally infected as it is, should be kept separate from the children is of course of primary importance; and in every union workhouse means are taken to provide for this end, by building separate wards and yards for each class. I am confident, however, that architectural arrangements can never effectually secure per'fect classification in a workhouse. Conversation, sometimes of the obscenest description, is carried on over walls and through windows. . . . . The atmosphere of a workhouse is tainted with vice; no one who regards the future happiness of the children would ever wish them to be educated within its precincts.' In so far as the Separate and District