50 REPORT 1859. 



exposed to all these evil influences ? Is it by shutting them up for a certain 

 number of years from the knowledge of such things, and then sending them 

 out at once into the midst of them? or is it by teaching them, so far as man 

 can do it, to know and hate sin, and to flee from it? 



It is a dangerous step to break up a family, and to tear asunder the ties 

 which bind parents and children together. Few, indeed, are the parents in 

 whose hearts love for their children is wholly extinguished : it survives the 

 . destruction of almost every other right feeling in the heart, and it is through 

 this that other good feelings may possibly be rekindled and brought into 

 beneficial operation. It is marvellous to witness the good which flows from 

 the influence of one right feeling beginning to work in a heart which seemed 

 to be seared and dead to every good impression. 



Few are the parents who will deliberately teach their children vice and 

 crime; on the contrary, the majority carefully conceal their own wickedness 

 from them. There are few human beings in whom conscience is wholly dead, 

 who do not feel something of the burden of guilt on their own heads, and 

 who would not, if they could, deliver their offspring from it. The principal 

 exception to this is when reason, and every other faculty, is overpowered by 

 strong drink ; but even in this case there is the sad, the melancholy advan- 

 tage, that the children get many a practical lesson of its fearful consequences, 

 and while we deplore the fact, we need not therefore shut our eyes to this 

 part of its results. 



While this matter was under consideration the further question occurred, 

 What effect will be produced on the wicked parents by the return of the 

 children from the school to their homes ? Will it do any good to the 

 parents ? More than one case soon became known where unmistakeable 

 benefit arose to the family from the school-children. The parents were in- 

 terested in hearing what was done at this new school ; they saw that at all 

 events their children were well fed for the day, made tolerably clean, and 

 kept out of harm's way. Verses of hymns or texts of Scripture were re- 

 peated and listened to ; in short, it appeared that the daily return of the child 

 from the Industrial School introduced the first feeble glimmering of improve- 

 ment at home ; it might be only a little sweeping of the floor, or a little 

 arranging of the miscellaneous articles in the room, as they were accustomed 

 to do or to see done at school, but still it was a step in the right direction, 

 an introduction of ameliorating influences. Subsequent experience has 

 shown that some of the children have acted, and are now acting, as little 

 Home Missionaries, conveying the saving truths of the Gospel to parents and 

 brothers and sisters. 



It was also discovered that some of the children occasionally denied them- 

 selves a portion of their bread and carried it home to supply, so far, the wants 

 of a starving little brother or sister ; and here was another humanizing influ- 

 ence brought to bear on the family. 



Altogether, the question was under consideration for years, and the ulti- 

 mate decision \va3, not to attempt to lodge the children as part of the system, 

 but, in exceptional cases such as orphans, to provide that children should be 

 boarded in a family, and even then only one or two children in one family, 

 unless they were brothers and sisters. 



Few such cases have occurred, and they are provided for without encroach- 

 ing on the general funds. 



The decision was no doubt greatly promoted by the managers seeing that 

 they could carry on their work if they did not attempt to lodge, but that, if 

 they did, their funds were wholly inadequate to the expense. 



