judgment there is hardly any limit to the good which might be done by promoting the emigration movement among Poor Law children, and by opening the training given by the Exmouth' to Poor Law unions all over the country. The figures which were given by Mr. Chaplin in June 1898, in answer to a question in the House of Commons, deserve a far wider and more careful notice than they seem to have obtained in view of the everincreasing need of British sailors for British ships. According to that answer, the number of boys admitted to the training-ship since its establishment is 6,528, and there were then 550 boys remaining on the establishment. There were therefore 5,978 boys who had passed through the training of the 'Exmouth,' and of these 5,065 had gone either into the mercantile marine, the navy, or the army, in the following proportions-mercantile marine, 2,212; navy, 2,036; army, 817. It may be added that the report of the training-ship shows that those who have passed through the ship have almost invariably done her credit. The encouragement given by the present Government to such institutions, coupled with the order issued for improving the condition of the poor in workhouses, will be by no means the least important item to their credit. But the question to which we now turn-the treatment of the children of vagrants-is one of those which will require an alteration in the law in the direction indicated by a Bill introduced last year by Mr. Drage, Lord Percy, and Mr. John Burns.

The evil is one which is notorious. Every one is familiar with the sight of the tramp's family on our great high roads. The problem of dealing with the children is a far more important task, and, it may be added, its solution is far more hopeful, than that of reclaiming the parent. We believe that the children are generally, though not in all cases, the offspring of those whom they accompany; but if not, the case for the intervention of the Legislature would only be strengthened. It has been estimated by Colonel Carter Hayward, chairman of the Vagrancy Committee of the Gloucestershire County Council-who has made a special study of the subject-that the number of homeless children tramping the roads is 4,410, excluding gipsy and van children. The Parliamentary returns do not account for one tenth of this number in the casual wards, so that there is a large number with whom the Poor Law has little to do. It must further be recollected that the tramp children are distinct from another class—the ins and outs'-in so far as the latter remain long enough in one district to be sent to school. But the two classes melt insensibly the one into the other; and the terrible evidence

given before the Metropolitan Schools Committee with regard to the atmosphere of vice, disease, and crime in which the ins and outs' are brought up applies with equal force to vagrant children. The Vagrancy Act of 1824 has no provision applying to such cases, but the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act of 1894 enacts that persons over sixteen, having charge of any child under sixteen, may be arrested and summarily convicted for neglecting and exposing it, or for causing it to be neglected or exposed, in a manner likely to cause it unnecessary suffering or injury to health; and such persons are subject to fine or imprisonment for six months, or both. When any such person has been convicted, committed for trial, or bound over to keep the peace towards the child, the Court may order the child to be taken out of the custody of such person and commit it to the care of a relation or other fit person willing to receive it until it attains the age of sixteen years. The Board of Guardians are to provide for the reception of a child during the detention of its parents, either while under remand or during punishment. The Act provides rather for the punishment of cruelty on the part of the persons in charge of a child than for its removal from them; and although Boards of Guardians have the power to adopt the children of parents who have been convicted of cruelty towards them, yet few Boards are inclined to do this with regard to children not belonging to their district. The result is that, unless there is some relation or other person prepared to take charge of the child, the parents when released are not only able to resume control of it, but they are legally bound to do so. We must add to this the fact that the cost of such a prosecution is considerable according to Colonel G. C. Clark-from whose excellent paper on the subject before the Poor Law Conference we quote-it often amounts to as much as 704; and although much good has been done by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in connexion with the Act, it seems, as Colonel Clark observes, a waste to spend so much money when the result might be reached at less cost. Finally, it should be remembered that it will be long before even this procedure would clear the roads of tramp children.

A more practical Act of Parliament, regarded from this point of view, is the Industrial Schools Act of 1866, under which any person may bring before two justices or a magistrate any child apparently under the age of fourteen years that is found wandering and not having any home or place of abode or proper guardianship or visible means of subsistence; and such a child may be committed to an industrial school. Under this section-thanks to the Children's Aid Society-a vagrant child

was in November 1896 brought before the magistrates at Bow Street; but, as he was too young for an industrial school, he was entrusted to the care of a lady, under section 9 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act. Since then a considerable number of vagrant children have been sent by stipendiary magistrates to industrial schools, on the charge of being found wandering without any home or settled place of abode or proper guardianship or visible means of subsistence. There are, however, as Colonel Clark points out, certain defects in this Act. In the first place, it requires some individual, or the officer of some society, to set it in motion. In the second place, under its provisions children are often left idling about the remand ward of workhouses for weeks together. This last difficulty will soon be remedied, so far as London is concerned, by the action of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. Thirdly, magistrates hesitate to send merely vagrant children to schools which, from their point of view, are somewhat penal. Lastly, there is no punishment for the persons in charge of vagrant children under the Act, however cruelly they may have acted towards them. The Bill which was introduced last year goes far to remedy some of these evils, and rightly, as we think, places the administration of the law on these matters in the hands of the police, though the power given to the police might with advantage be enlarged. But in any case the matter is one of sufficient importance for us to hope that the Government will adopt the Bill in question, and thus secure for it a fair prospect of becoming law. If some such measure could be passed, a step would have been taken in the direction of diminishing the supply not only of vagrants but also of the unemployed.

The Select Committee on the Unemployed was appointed in February 1895 to consider and report as to (a) the extent to which distress arising from want of employment prevails; (b) the powers at present possessed by Local or Central Authorities in relation to such cases; (c) any steps which may be taken, whether by changes in legislation or administration, to deal with the evils arising therefrom; and (d) to make an interim report to the House, at the earliest possible date, on what steps should be taken either by Parliament, the Departments of State, or Local Authorities to meet the distress this winter.'

The Committee issued three reports, dated March 11th, May 7th, and July 2nd, respectively. In the first of these they give a brief account of their proceedings, and explain the reasons which rendered them unable to make any recommendation applicable to the present juncture.' Such recommendation

must, they considered, satisfy two conditions, viz., (a) it must be immediately applicable during the remaining weeks of the winter season; (b) it must be such that Parliament might be reasonably expected to accept it, or at least to take it into serious consideration, without further enquiry into the facts upon which it is based or the principles which it embodies. The Committee found that no plan which had been laid before them satisfied these conditions. The second report merely submitted the returns received from the local authorities in England and Wales in reply to a circular of enquiry sent to them. The third report was issued in consequence of the sudden dissolution of Parliament and did not profess to be complete. In it the Committee gave a brief account of their proceedings and made the following recommendations:

1. That the Local Government Board should make rules for the use of Boards of Guardians under which they might set poor persons to work at wages. Sir Hugh Owen stated afterwards that the Local Government Board could not understand this recommendation.

It is to be remembered,' he observes, in the first place, that any rules that the Board might make would be rules not conferring powers upon the Guardians, but regulating and restricting the exercise of those powers. Apart from that question, there is the fact that, until we know what the proposal is, we find it extremely difficult to suggest what rules should regulate the carrying out of the scheme. In the opinion of the Department the absence of rules does not in any way affect the carrying out by the Guardians of any scheme that they can carry out under that statute. The rules, as I say, would be for the purpose of diminishing rather than conferring additional powers; and further than that, until we know what the circumstances are which require rules to be made, we are not in a position to determine what those rules should be.'

2. That in case of exceptional distress deserving men who are compelled to seek for public assistance should not be disfranchised thereby.

3. That public bodies should, so far as is consistent with efficiency of execution and reasonable economy, give out orders for indoor repair work and new work during the slack months, generally January and February.

4. That the Guardians of any Metropolitan Union should be empowered, with the sanction of the London County Council, to agree with any Sanitary Authority within their Union that, in consideration of the latter employing such number of persons and during such period as may be agreed upon, the Guardians will make a contribution to the Sanitary Authority of an

amount not exceeding one-half of the cost incurred in the employment of such persons; such a contribution to be a charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund.

In none of these reports was any attempt made to distinguish between the different causes which give rise to want of employment, or to classify or summarise the evidence in any way.

In the following year, 1896, after the General Election, a Select Committee was again appointed with the same terms of reference, with the exception of (d), for which was substituted a direction that the Committee should enquire and report as to the means of discriminating, in cases of exceptional distress, between the deserving man forced to become dependent upon public aid and the ordinary claimants for parish relief, in accordance with the second recommendation in the last report of the former Committee.

The new Committee sat and took further evidence, and reported in the month of July. Considering the amount of really valuable evidence which had been given, it is somewhat to be regretted that the Committee did not take pains to have some digest of it prepared and embodied in its final report. As it is, it is left embedded in many large volumes, and we shall no doubt have to wait until some careful German student or professor has analysed them before we can form any idea of the value of the materials which it cost so much time and expense to collect.

But we are not here concerned with the contents of the Blue-book, as a whole, so much as with the practical results of the work of the Committee as embodied in the final report. These, it must be confessed, are meagre. We will take the points in the order of the reference; and first, the extent to which distress arising from want of employment was found to prevail. The Committee could only say that it may be doubted whether the requisite materials for forming a judgment are forthcoming, and they recommended that more accurate information on the point should be collected in future through the Labour Correspondents of the Board of Trade, acting in concert with the local Poor Law and other authorities, the local charitable associations, local trade unions, friendly societies, and labour registries. The keynote of the whole report is co-operation of the central and local authorities with organised thrift and charity. The estimate of the unemployed ranged from that of Mr. Keir Hardie, who put the number at the time of the enquiry at 1,750,000, and in normal times at 1,000,000, apart from those dependent on them, down to that of the Rev. W. Tozer, who reckoned that in normal times there were 280,000 persons of