94 REPORT—1843, 
should be of a nature to be carried on individually, so that the social element of family 
life should continue undisturbed among them, and the infant population should be 
preserved as long as possible from the infection of factories. Jnstruction is much less 
than education the object of these infant asylums; these are made as much as possi- 
ble conducive to moral training, and this by the most simple and gentle means of a 
maternal guidance. In the school-room the children pass through a series of exer- 
cises calculated to develope their mental and bodily faculties without tiring them. 
They are never kept sitting for more than a quarter of an hour ata time, ‘The re- 
ligious instruction of the children is directed by the curate of the parish in which the 
asylum is established. The mistresses of the asylums keep a journal, in which the 
moral history of the institution can be said to be contained, and from which a number 
of most interesting facts have been extracted, elucidating the workings of human in- 
telligence and human affection, at an age which has not until now been sufficiently 
studied by the moral philosopher. Though the Tuscan infant asylums are of so recent 
a date, yet their effects are already, and in a remarkable degree, perceptible. The 
improvement in the health of the children received in the Tustan asylums is a most 
striking fact. The study of this fact on the part of our medical committees has led to 
most important observations, not only with respect to the infants themselves, but 
extended to their families, and indeed to the whole of the poor population of our 
towns, and to the various districts of the towns themselves, The cases of death in our 
asylums is between two and three per cent., whilst the general mortality of children 
between two and six is in Florence sixteen per cent. The same results have been 
observed in Lombardy, where infant asylums are more numerous than in Tuscany. 
A thorough reform of every system of education, going through every species of 
schools, will be necessary, in order to put them on a par with the high educational 
character of our infant schools. The moral results likewise are not confined to the 
infants themselves, but are extended to their families. A great proportion of the 
children received at the infant asylums in Florence are found to come from the 
Foundling Hospital ; indeed out of 600 children, four hundred belong to that class. 
They are children whose parents were forced by extreme destitution to abandon them ; 
but as soon as our infant asylums were known to exist, parental affection resumed its 
rights in the hearts of those hundreds of parents, and a dishonouring brand was wiped 
away from the head of those hundreds of children, who found again the joy of their 
family, and were restored to their name and their civil condition. In the three years 
anterior to the opening of the infant asylums, the average number of children taken 
out of the Foundling Hospital was 176; but in 1833, when the asylums were first 
established, the number withdrawn was 214, and in 1837 it increased to 404. Few 
facts more pregnant than this with important consequences have ever been brought 
to light in the moral statisties of any country. The author, in conclusion, pointed out 
the superior efficacy of the elevating and kindly treatment of men above the harsh 
and repressive. ‘‘ Who,” he observed, * has not seen in the bad direction of public 
instruction or in the mismanagement of public charities a necessity for the increase of 
coercive institutions, which yet prove insufficient for the repression of crime ; and has 
not learned to conclude that there may be a system of instruction which teaches no 
virtue, a system of charity which relieves no misery, and a system of punishment 
which puts a stop to no crime?” 
On the progress of the Willingdon Agricultural School. By Mrs. Girzert. 

On the connexion between Statistics and Politieal Economy. 
By Professor Lawson. 
The Professor began with remarking, that statisties present nothing but a dull and 
barren show of figures, until united with the principles which belong to political 
economy. The former study bears to the latter the same relation which experimental 
philosophy bears to mathematics. Political economy, though a mixed science, yet 
has its abstract part, and the application of the principles thence derived to facts leads 
us on to new truths. Statistics afford at once the materials and the test of political 
economy. The Professor then adduced an example of the way in which statisties 
frequently correct political economy, In Edinburgh, the proportion of marriages to 

