A REJOINDER 123 



therefore wrote to the Clerk of the Glasgow Parish 

 Council, and asked if he was to be compelled to send his 

 children to the same institution as pauper children. 

 The reply he received was that the school was not an 

 institution, and that he must educate his children. 

 That is all the care and sympathy which a respectable 

 rnember of the community, desiring to preserve his 

 children from contact with foul language, rough 

 behaviour, and dirty habits, receives from a public 

 official ! Nowadays, it seems, we have only pity 

 and help and money for the undesirables. And this 

 remarkable sentiment, which believes in the influence 

 of the environment, and which sends the scourings 

 of the Glasgow slums to this island for improvement, 

 swamps the place by an importation so great that 

 seventy to eighty per cent, of the school population is 

 made up of the imported element ! In a word, the old 

 and good environment is swamped by the new and 

 imported vicious one ! And this by the people who 

 believe in the influence of the environment ! Was 

 there ever such a reductio ad absurdum of any doctrine 

 before ? 



I will not now pursue this matter further, except 

 to say, that the remarkable social sentiment which I 

 have been criticising, in so far as it has been operating 

 in the island, has resulted in sowing there the seeds of 

 potential tragedies. I think it right to take this oppor- 

 tunity of uttering a serious warning. I should neglect 

 an obvious duty if I did not, for the circumstances of 

 the situation are fraught with the gravest danger. 

 We are all aware of the power which mere suggestion 

 can exercise over unbalanced and weakly minds ; 



