APPLICABILITY OP OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 435 



jail during tlie past five years, is 226, viz. : 191 boys and 35 girls. 

 Mr. Grurnett, the Police Magistrate, writes me to say, tliat this 

 number comprises scarcely two thirds of the whole who were brought 

 to the Police Court on charges which could have been sustained 

 against them, the residue being discharged — many because of the 

 unwillingness of complainants to prosecute them on account of their 

 youth, and many others being discharged, with admonition by the 

 Court, rather than subject them to the contaminating influence" of 

 associating with hardened criminals in the jail, from whom, in the 

 present condition of that establishment, they could not be separated. 

 Mr. Grurnett adds that the total number of such juvenile ofienders 

 may have been about 340 or 350. Most of them were the offspring 

 of the lowest and most vicious part of our city population, from whom 

 both by example and precept, they have learned nothing but vice and 

 crime. The greater proportion of them could neither read nor write, 

 and of those who were examined on the subject, few, even of the 

 oldest of them had any knowledge of the obligation or even meaning 

 of an oath. Most of them were charged with petty thefts or pilfering, 

 and in too many cases it was evident that they had been stimulated 

 to commit the offences by their parents or other persons with whom 

 they resided. Why then do we continue to imitate the people 

 spoken of by Mr. Eoberton, and provide at a very heavy expenditure 

 " bark and ague drops," when we ought to be " draining the marsh ?" 

 This is a subject which has been brought before the public several 

 times during the last few years, and it is one which is destined to 

 occupy a still larger share of public attention in the future. Until it 

 it is provided by law that every child of school age shall attend some 

 school a certain portion of his time, the full benefits of the Pree 

 School system will not be reaped by the public. The Chief Superin- 

 tendent of schools has long felt this, and submitted to government 

 some three years ago a draft of a bill investing municipalities with 

 power to see that "each child should receive somewhere a certain 

 period of instruction," and in the Journal of Education for January, 

 1857, Dr. Eyerson writes : 



Schools are, of course, not responsible for the crimes and conduct of those who 

 never attend them ; nor are school laws responsible for defects in criminal laws 

 or police or municipal regulations. The Municipality that nobly provides for the 

 education of all its youth, should undoubtedly have the power of. preventing its 

 youth from growing up imeducated. 



