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THE SHOE-BLACKS' DORMITORY.

THE Christmas treat of the Polishing Brigade was deferred until the occasion of the opening of their New Dormitory, on February 11th. Forty-two of these lads were regaled with the usual delicacies of cake and tea, etc., in the premises at 1, Off Alley, which are now in a state in which the friends of Ragged Schools may be invited to inspect them.

The Earl of Shaftesbury addressed the Shoe-blacks and Broomers, and kindly gave the new "Good Conduct Badges" (cloth chevrous on the arm) to the six boys selected as worthy to receive them. The yearly volume of the Band of Hope Review was presented by the worthy editor of that periodical to the same deserving boys, to whom, also, pictures were given by Mr. Macgregor, new uniforms by Mr. Fowler, and a plum pudding by Mr. Fellowes. Messrs. Warren sent a pair of socks for each boy of the whole troop; and the proceedings of the evening, which had been opened by the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie, the rector of the parish, were closed by an exhibition of the magic lantern and dissolving views by Mr. Cuthbertson, who introduced, with great effect, a slide depicting a Shoe-black at his work, with an arm moving so vigorously as to threaten the demolition of the boot submitted to the operation.

The boys have been behaving well during the last three months, during which time no serious misconduct has occurred. The connection between the Society and the Superintendents of the various schools has been drawn closer by an arrangement as to the drawing of the boys' bank savings, and the Sunday clothes of the lads are now really respectable. One little fellow even ventured to appear in a new hat, but his increased dignity subjected him to a lively persecution about it.

STEPPERS.

A NEAT little girl, in a blue frock and a straw bonnet, could carry a pail of water to the doorstep of a gentleman's house, and having washed the flagstone, she might whiten it with pipeclay. A penny would repay her, and she could earn at least sixpence in this employment every morning before breakfast. Who will start her?

PREVENTIVE AND REFORMATORY SCHOOL COMMITTEE. Ar the last meeting of this body, the following important resolutions were passed, from which it will be seen that the Government are to grant a Committee of Inquiry into the whole subject of juvenile criminals and their

treatment:

"That as this Committee have been this day informed that it is the intention of Sir John Pakington to move the House of Commons for a Committee of Inquiry with respect to the best mode of treating Juvenile Criminals, and that such motion will receive the support of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, this Committee will use every exertion to assist and promote the inquiries of such Committee, and to excite public interest upon the subject."

''

That, pending the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, this Committee is of opinion that it would be premature to prepare the heads of a Bill upon the subject; and will therefore suspend further proceedings for that nearer the time when legislation may be expected."

purpose

until

"That a Copy of the above Resolutions be submitted to Sir George Grey." The Committee having thus satisfactorily disposed of this part of their objects, will now turn their attention to the Preventive Schools, or those intended for the destitute who are not criminal.

We earnestly trust that the Committee will steadily keep in view this truthThat if we desire to prevent crime, we must seek to produce a change of heart in the youths we deal with by the saving efficacy of a Saviour's blood, applied to their souls through the agency of the Holy Spirit of God.

Temple.

J. M.

EDINBURGH ORIGINAL RAGGED SCHOOLS.

THE following extracts from the speech delivered by Dr. Guthrie, at the Annual Meeting of the above schools, will be read with much interest :—

"I have now been labouring fourteen years in Edinburgh. During six or seven of these years, I spent a very large portion of my time among that portion of the population to which the children in our Institution belong; and the longer I live, and the more experience I acquire, I grow more and more satisfied of the almost hopelessness of attempting to tell successfully, and evidently, and permanently, on the condition of the adult degraded population; and the longer I live, and see the progress and course of our Ragged School, the more thoroughly am I convinced, that almost all our efforts of a reformatory character should be brought to bear upon the young, and that the public should ever bear in mind the saying which, the longer the world rolls on, will still stand out the truer, Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? then they that have been accustomed to do evil may learn to do well.' I believe that the grace of God can do anything; but I say that that is the course of God's ordinary providence, and that the course of God's ordinary providence is equally indicated on the other hand by the maxim,—' Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.' We have received this year a large sum of money, though not adequate to meet our necessities. With the exception of a balance of £400, we have received this last year £2,239,-not all from Edinburgh, however. We have received money from the shores of the Baltic, and the Bosphorus, from America, and from Ireland. Only two days ago, we got remittances from officers in the Indian army, and last year we received from friends in Singapore a sum of no less than £70. When our schools were instituted, there were in Edinburgh no fewer than 2,000 children, in a condition most miserable to themselves, and dangerous to the public. These children, how did they live? Why, they rose every morning like a cloud of musquitoes out of the lower parts of the city, and spread themselves over the town, and swarmed in our streets, attacking the passengers with a perseverance that defied all attempts to repulse them. They came to our doors, and even when the door was opened and shut in their face, they did not beat a retreat. Often have I seen a little fellow down on his knees, and applying his mouth to the

key-hole, sending his story through it. Mr. Smith, a number of years ago, in a Report to the Governors of Heriot's Hospital, showed that the only way to check crime was to get hold of the children, and the only way to get hold of the children, was to provide them with food. He showed that the condition of these outcast children stood to crime in the relation of cause to effect. How can it be otherwise ? Just think of the homes occupied by these children; 48 were fatherless, with drunken mothers; 50 were motherless, with drunken fathers; of 51, both parents were worthless; 189 had been apprehended once or oftener; 93 were believed to be the children of thieves never apprehended. In their own homes they were taught no lesson, prayer, nor trade. They were sent to no school, and from their childhood were familiar with vice in its grossest form. What else than criminals could such children turn out? When I saw these children punished, although the Judges say they cannot help it, and the public prosecutors say they cannot help it,-and I fully sympathize with them-yet I cannot help saying that injustice is done under the form of justice. I know the Judge's heart is often melted with pity, when he is pronouncing sentence on some unhappy child. That naked, withered, stunted, starved creature, with its hollow cheeks and tangled hair, and head scarcely reaching the bars of the dock, that is not the real criminal. The real criminal stands there in the crowd,-that ruffian man who has often been within half an inch of his life,-that woman, I will not disgrace the sacred name of mother by applying it to her,―yon woman, the disgrace of her sex, who sends that weeping child to a bed of straw, while night after night she goes to the dram shop, there to spend in dissipation the gains of its painful beggary or its guilty theft. The other day I had the honour and pleasure of conducting a distinguished Member of Parliament through the Ragged School, along with Mr. Thackeray, and I was very much struck with the way in which that gentleman condensed the whole of our machinery, so to speak, into two words. Turning to Mr. Thackeray, he said, 'This is a most agreeable sight.' Mr. Thackeray declared it was the finest sight in Edinburgh, the most touching sight he ever saw. The gentleman then

remarked, 'I see where the whole power of this Ragged School lies. It lies, first, in the food, and secondly, in the twelve hours daily in the school.' In these two things you have the whole secret of our machinery. The child's own home becomes little else than a dormitory, and the streets where it used to learn crime, become little else than a passage between its dormitory and the school. I will just tell you, in one word, what we do with a child when we pick him up and bring him to our school. He is employed for four hours in acquiring moral, religious, and secular education. Four hours of the day are devoted to play, amusement, food, etc.; and the other four are devoted to the industrial part of the work. There are 10 boys employed in the tailor's shop, 5 in the shoemaker's, 4 in the carpenter's, 26 in the boxmaker's, 24 in the bracemaker's, and 43 of the younger boys are employed in hair-teasing, net-making, and other simple work. I am glad to say that our industrial department is so well conducted that, after paying the wages of those who teach the boys these different kinds of work, and after paying for the material and all other expenses, we not only educate these children to industrial habits, but we actually make money out of it, for it appears by the accounts that the profit, after paying all expenses, on the industrial department, is about £40 a year. We have at this moment about 300 children on our school roll. I was up lately, and saw a child brought in from the Police Office, a lean withered creature of a girl, who had been picked up for some petty offence, and, to the credit of the Magistrate, had been sent, not to prison, but to the Ragged School. I was much struck by her appearance. She was dressed in an old tattered gown, made for somebody a great deal bigger than herself, and it was curious to see her little withered face away deep in the hollows of a great black bonnet. She had never been in such a place before, and sat perfectly amazed, confounded, dumbfoundered, and immovable, as if she had been cut out of stone; the only things about her that seemed to have life were her eyes, and they went continually rolling round and round. An hour afterwards I found my urchin at the dinner table, driving her spoon into the soup in grand style-and I have no doubt that before three weeks were over I would not have known her again. The fact is, that under the combined power of patience and porridge, a most remarkable effect is produced. You see all the angularies of

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their system rounded off in fat and flesh; you see them gradually losing their savage looks; and in the course of two or three months they are as respectable looking children as you could cast your eyes upon. In regard to other results, we have sent forth 216 children, who have gone out to employment. Of these 216 saved and renewed creatures, as large a number of them have done well as children belonging to any other class of society would have done. So much as that we were not entitled to expect. Some of them have emigrated during the last year, no fewer than six girls having been sent abroad. I was shocked the other day by hearing of a remark made by a person of influence in the country, whom I would be sorry to name, as I hope he has repented of it before now. When the subject of Ragged Schools was brought before him, he remarked,—' As long as there are pockets to pick, I believe you will find men to pick them.' Had I been present when

the remark was made I would have shown that gentleman the table, the results of which had already been laid before the meeting by the Lord Advocate, and would have begged him to attend to the effects produced by our institution and others of a similar character in Edinburgh. I would have told him, that when we began our school there were five out of every hundred criminals in Edinburgh Jail under fourteen years of age, and that now there was not even one in the hundred of criminals belonging to this class. I take my stand upon that table and say, that it proves ours to be the cheapest, safest, and best way of all to repress crime that has yet been tried. The question is often raised,-What are we to do with our convicts ? My answer is, - Support Ragged Schools, and you wont long be troubled with them. Some may say,Why, we have teachers in our prisons already, and we spend a great deal of money in trying to improve the criminals, and it is all in vain. Perfectly true; but depend upon it, the proper place for the teacher is not within the prison, but without the prison. Talk of pockets to pick! As long as there are throats to cut, there will be people to cut them! I wish

had that gentleman in our Ragged School. I would open the Savings' Bank book, and show him the name of a boy who, if he had been left to himself, would now have been picking pockets. We found him on the street, lies on his tongue, hunger in his looks, beggarly rags upon his back. And what have we made of

him? We have converted him from a money-taker into a money-maker, and that in an honest way. In his savingsbank book we find entered £1 for a good black coat, and so many shillings for a seat in a church. There is that boy now seated in a church, decently dressed, his Bible before him, after our good Scotch fashion ruffling its pages for the text, and then fixing his calm, placid, devout face upon the preacher. When I see that boy there, I am carried back in recollection to a place where I preached some years ago. My beadle was a turnkey. Having unlocked one iron door after another, and led me through a number of dark gloomy passages, he at last took out one ponderous key, and after opening the door, and pointing me to the pulpit, again turned the key and locked me in. When I had time to look around me, a most dismal and depressing sight met my eyes. Before me were ranged in a semi-oval form a large number of cells, one rising above another, that reminded me of the dens of a menagerie on a gigantic scale. They were divided from each other by sufficient walls, the front of each being guarded and staunchioned by strong bars of iron, and there, where in another such place I had seen the hyena, the lion, the tiger, and the leopard, there, peering through the bars were the eyes of my congregation, hoary ruffians, stout felons, abandoned women, many youths, and not a few little children. I say then, that had this boy committed crime before our schools were established, I would have met him in another dress, I would have seen him in another church, I would have seen him in the old prison chapel on the Calton Hill, glaring at me like a tiger cat through the bars of one of the cells, with habits as rugged as his dress, with a heart as hard as the stonepaved floor, corrupted and corrupting, hating and hateful, a victim, I have no hesitation in saying, of his unhappy circumstances, and of his country's neglect of him. I say, therefore, that the question with the country is, Will you have the teacher within the prison, or without the prison? The cost of a criminal to the country, on an average, could not be less than £300. I will give you an illustration of it. When Mr. Duncan, Dr. Bell, Mr. Smith, and I went up to London to bring before her Majesty's Government the question of Ragged Schools, we got a most gracious reception from Lord Lansdowne. He pledged himself to nothing, but he was very kind and courteous. We had met together in the morning to consult as to the course I

should adopt in bringing our case before his Lordship. I said, I will tell him that every child, left to be a criminal, costs the country £300.' 'Now,' says Mr. Smith, with all the caution of a canny Scot, 'take care; if you cannot prove it, it is better not to state it.' However, when I got into Whitehall, and became warm with my subject, out bolted the £300 before I was aware of it. I was afraid I had done wrong, but on the following night I was re-assured, by a conversation I had in the Bow Street Police Office with Mr. Pierce, the gentleman at the head of the Bow Street Police force. He said, 'It is a waste of money and means to try to save the country otherwise than through the children, by giving them a sound education.'

'But how are you to get hold of the children and give them the education you speak of?' After some reflections, he said, 'Well, I do not see any way in which they can get that, unless you feed them.' It was worth going to London to hear, from a person so well qualified to judge, such an opinion in favour of the system pursued in our Ragged School. 'Well,' said I, 'what do you think of punishment ?''Punishment!' he replied, talking of punishment with the most sovereign contempt, I never see a boy placed at the bar of the Police Court, but I say, Well, my lad, you will cost the country £300 before we are done with you,'—echoing the very thing I had said in Whitehall a few hours before! It is a simple question of arithmetic. We have sent out 210 of our children to employment. Suppose that even 60 of these children have not done well. Then multiply the remaining 150 by £300, and you have the expense to which these would have put the country, if they had become criminals, amounting to £45,000. The expense of the whole 216 trained in the Ragged School amounts to about £4,000, showing that the difference of the cost of these children, according to the different modes of dealing with them, is about £40,000, to say nothing of souls saved, and misery and crime prevented. But that is not all. We must add all the expense of maintaining the criminal in idleness, while he earns his livelihood by theft, and what would have been the value of his labour had he been turned into a decent member of society. I stand here, therefore, prepared to prove that this Ragged School, during the five years of its existence, has saved the country nearly £100,000. But our work has not only been very profitable, it has also

been very pleasant; and I think one of the best recommendations of our Ragged School is, the character of its management. It is catholic in its management,— I do not mean Roman Catholic ;-far from it. Now, there is no place I like to go to so well as to a meeting of our Directors. Here we are,-Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Independents, Established Churchmen, Free Churchmen, United Presbyterians, New Light Seceders, and Old Light Seceders,-here we are, all met in perfect love and harmony. Connected with this, there is a point to which I would like to advert. I was asked yesterday what were our peculiar principles. I think it right the public should know that the peculiar principle in which we take most delight is, that the Bible is in our school. In one sense this can scarcely be called a peculiar principle, since it is common to every Ragged School from John O'Groat's to Land's End, save one; and that certainly must be the peculiar

school. I have but one fault to find with our building in Ramsay Lane. I would have liked to have seen above the door what I see above the door of the Baptist Church that is next neighbour to the Papists, with only a gable wall between them. I would have liked to have seen, carved in stone above the door-way, an open Bible, with this upon its open page, 'Search the Scriptures. To the principle of an open Bible we must adhere. I will never consent to let it go out of sight. I will never consent to take that flag from the mast-head, either in storm or in calm. We run up that flag to the mast-head. It was there on the day of our battle. If it be asked, What would you have done if you had been wrecked, and riddled, and ready to sink, I reply, I would have taken the flag and nailed it even to the stump of a mast, and, when we went down, the last thing seen of our Ragged Schools would have been our flag, with the Bible on it, as it dipped beneath the waves.”

THE APPROPRIATION OF THE DUNCAN TESTIMONIAL. THE inhabitants of Dundee have lately made efforts to raise a sum of money to present as a testimonial to GEORGE DUNCAN, Esq., their representative. The light in which that gentleman views this token, and the objects to which he determines to apply the same, are highly interesting to the friends of the poor. Such will be a lasting memorial of the high estimation in which he is held by his constituents, and of his noble and philanthropic spirit. We have, therefore, great pleasure in laying the following extract from the Report of the Sub-Committee before our readers :

"The Sub-Committee waited upon Mr. Duncan, and communicated to him that the Subscribers were now desirous of ascertaining his sentiments in regard to the presentation of the testimonial which the inhabitants of Dundee proposed giving to him, as a token of their sincere gratitude and esteem for his public services to the town, and of their appreciation of his private worth. They stated that the subscription at present amounted to upwards of one thousand guineas, but was still open, as numerous parties had not yet been afforded an opportunity of joining in the testimonial. That it was proposed to place the amount to be subscribed at his absolute disposal.

"Mr. Duncan expressed the deep sense of gratitude and obligation he felt to the inhabitants of Dundee for this generous and handsome expression of their confidence and esteem, and stated, that whether he looked to the large amount of the subscription, or to the spontaneous nature of the gift, he felt quite overpowered, and was wholly incapable of any adequate expression of his thanks and gratitude. The interests of Dundee had long been near to his heart, and he hoped he had spared no exertion to promote them; but this magnificent and almost unprecedented testimonial far outweighed any merits or services of his.

“Mr. Duncan then said that, to invest this large amount in any of the usual forms of testimonial which were offered to public men, would be applying it

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