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food, then society came clown on them with a heavy hand ; the only 

 notice taken by the State of those who were neglected by their natural 

 guardians being to punish them when they did that which was the 

 necessary consequence of the conditions under which they were per- 

 mitted to live. It was not till 1870 that the principle was recognised 

 that parents were bound to give their children elementary education, 

 and that when they were too poor to do so a child's future was not to 

 be sacrificed to the desire of its parents for the services of the child in 

 attending on them, or even on their babies ; and when the obligation 

 was made a legal one, every sort of obstacle was thrown in the way of 

 those who had to enforce it. It was not until five years later that an 

 Industrial School was established in Sussex, to which children 

 neglected by their parents, but unconvicted of crime, could be sent. 

 Can it be wondered at that, in such a state of society, the classes tliat 

 held a position affording them comfort and refinement, lived in a state 

 of chronic apprehension of those below them in the social scale, and — 

 more especially in some foreign countries, where the circle of enlighten- 

 ment was a smaller one than in this country, looked on them with a 

 shuddering alarm such as that with which the luxurious inhabitants of 

 the Roman Empire regarded the barbarians whom they knew only as 

 savages and enemies ? 



I can remember, and not so long ago, when there were certain 

 districts in all our large towns which seemed abandoned to vice, and 

 which no decent man or woman would traverse without necessity, and 

 when you could not pass an assemblage of young fellows belonging to 

 the class of ordinary labourers without the chance of having your ears 

 assailed by some of the worse words known to our language, used 

 without reference to the subject matter, and as if it was a positive 

 pleasure to say what was coarse and ribald. It is scarcely to be 

 wondered at that the great aim of persons belonging to the classes so 

 unfortunately situated was to get out of them. This was even thought 

 a very meritorious object of ambition, and it was no uncommon thing 

 to hear those who were seeking to make themselves agreeable to an 

 audience of working men point to a shop counter in the first genera- 

 tion, a seat in Parliament in the second, and a peerage in the third, as 

 successive stages in the upward path of virtue. We do not discourage 

 such efforts to rise in the present day, but certainly reserve our highest 

 admiration for those who, instead of seeking to escape from evil, pursue 

 and destroy it. 



