ABSTRACT
IN the preceding chapter some account has been given of the two classes of Schools which are especially directed to the elevation of children utterly unprovided for by other institutions. u And yet," says Mr. Fletcher, "when both classes of Ragged Schools have done their utmost, it will be 'evident to all men,' in the words of the Citizens' Memorial to Edward VI., 'that beggary and thieving do abound;' since there will still be a vagrant class selfishly raising up their children merely as the companions and instruments of their vagabondage; ' for there is as great a difference,' says the First Ordinances of Bridewell, in 1557, in terms which three centuries have not the least invalidated, 'between a poor man and a beggar, as between a true man and a thief. The poor man is he whom sickness and age oppresseth, or by losses, or otherwise, is driven to the ground with necessity; which doth labour willingly to gain that which may be gotten, so long as power and strength will serve. The beggar is the contrary; one who never yieldeth himself to any good exercise,
but continually travaileth in idleness, training such youth as cometh to his or their custody to the same wickedness of life!' For these Bridewell was instituted, and our gaols must still provide ; but for 'the youth which cometh to their custody ' no sufficient provision ever was, nor is yet made ; for though the Ragged Schools make a direct movement at this class, its very vagrancy eludes their influence. They will raise up the widows' children, and those of the poor, 'beaten down with necessity ' to the lowest depths of physical privation and moral depression ; but will not reclaim the ' outer barbarians,' perpetually hanging and preying upon the lower frontiers of civilized society, to the injury of the honestly poor, quite as much as to the annoyance of the luxuriously rich. These will reject no help but that which the honest man often seeks in vain-education, to enable his child to do without help. And it is the children of this class whom society ~s inevitably doomed to sttpport, while it slowly grinds them down, by its gigantic and indiscriminating agency for the supposed suppression of crime. This, obviously, is a subject of police, but not of police only; and it becomes a question, which the Ragged School approaches only on one side, whether it would not ba more economical, and infinitely more beneficial to society at large, to take all the children from 10 to 15 years of age found repeatedly begging or stealing, give them a brief training in ' some house of occupations,' on the plans of the Philanthropic Society,
and then deport them to some of our colonies ; thus simply assuming the duty of parentage whe1·e natural parents showed their incompetency to its discharge. If this privation of their children prove not to be punishment enough for them, while it is the salvation of the young people themselves, it will be time enough then to impose some fine upon them, in part defrayal of their children's maintenance, or imp1·isonment on neglect of its payment, especially if there should be any symptom of the plan encouraging vagabondage for the express purpose of getting rid of the children, which is not very likely, because at this age they are ceasing to be burdensome, and beginning to be useful for honest as well as for dishonest purposes. * * Your lordships' co-operation with the Home Office, (superintending the departments of justice and police) under a sufficient legislative sanction, could alone accomplish such a work ; and I have ventured upon its suggestion merely because I am quite convinced that neither Ragged Schools nor courts of justice, alone and severally, can grapple with the rising flood of this disorder ; but that jointly they may accomplish a great and a saving work, with sufficient moral security against mischief to the general economy of society, and in a manner consistent with the humanity of the age. It would be easy to enlarge upon this plan, to show the numbers to which it would apply, to disprove the force of its economical objections, and to show the gain to the poor, as well as to the rich, by 'Ragged Schools' on
such a plan and scale ; but this is not the place to do so without express permission." *
The children, then, whom the Free Day School fails to influence, are now to be the subject of our consideration Of these there are some who have for a time come within its sphere of operation ; but the strong counteracting agencies of the home and the streets present temptations to evil and opposition to everything good, which no mere teaching, however excellent, can effectually oppose ;-others, again, cannot, either through the actual poverty of their parents, or the vicious tendencies they have already acquired, be in any way induced to attend School at all. All of these society is inevitably doomed to support expensively as paupers, the progenitors of a race of paupers ; or as criminals at large, luxuriously living on the spoil of the industrious ; or felons, carefully nurtured in gaols, and then provided with the means of free emigration to the penal colonies !
