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FOR

The Schoolmaster.

VOL. II.-1852.

LONDON:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO

GLASGOW: HAMILTON.

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

CHELTENHAM :

PRENTED BY G. NORMAN, "EXAMINER" OFFICE.

110906

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No. 13.

PAPERS FOR THE SCHOOLMASTER.

MARCH 1, 1852.

Schools and Prisons.

Education, it is sometimes said, is a power which we should hesitate to call into action. "But why not reflect whether ignorance be not a power, and a very dreadful power? Look where we will, do we not find it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil-powerful to fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves-powerful for blind violence and prejudice and error, in all their gloomy and destructive shapes?" This was said to a large public audience by one of our most popular writers, Charles Dickens, whose labours have done much to throw light into the state of our social relations, and have helped rich and poor to know each other better. It is a serious question; and it summons into view a great social duty which has been long postponed. Do not let us put it from us with indifference or despair.

In one of the centres of our vast industrial population several intelligent and benevolent men lately met to consider the condition and treatment of the poor untaught children who roam the streets of our large towns. Members of Parliament, Gaol Chaplains and Gaol Governors, School Inspectors and Inspectors of Factories, and the representatives of our most active Ragged and Industrial Schools assembled there to point the attention of the nation to these street wanderers who pass each year, like a flood, into our workhouses and penal colonies. And amongst them were men of high judicial rank, who denounced the blind vindictive system which hurries these poor children into our criminal courts and prisons and hulks as an odious and useless cruelty, and implored their hearers to shield them from the reproach of being its agents. "For you," they said, "need not go into their quarters, which are far removed from yours; and when you meet them in the streets, you can lean back in your carriages until you have passed on. But they are brought to us face to face; we must endure to behold these little creatures-to see them on tip

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