airless though the dwellings be, they are better than the tenants who lodge in them. The only remedy seems to be the natural process of selection; the decent will be decently lodged, the dissipated will be crushed out. Lodged somewhere they must be; shelter they must have; common humanity demands this much. As improvements are carried on they will be driven into the worst and lowest dens. There they must be placed under stricter and sterner control, and the stringency of police supervision increased. The most merciful fate which can befall them is to be coerced by the strong arm of the law, to reform their habits and moderate their drunken violence.

In a free country, so long as people stand unconvicted, they must be left to the freedom of their will, but when men or women are convicted of drunkenness or assault, of thieving or petty robbery, or of importuning, their lives have become a peril and menace to the peace and comfort of the citizens. There is then no injustice in dealing with them sharply with a strong hand and in an uncompromising manner. Tainted lives, which propagate immorality, must be dealt with after the fashion of infectious diseases, they must be stamped out by being secluded.

The present system of short imprisonments is fatuous to a degree. Women charged with drunkenness or dissoluteness are sent to prison for ten days or sixty. When liberated they return to their old haunts and ply their old trade. They are again charged, again convicted, and again liberated, to repeat the same round indefinitely. To send men or women to prison for ten days or sixty days, indeed to send them to prison at all, does not mend their morals or their manners. The only salvation possible for them is the wholesome discipline of work. State labour reformatories are as urgently required for dissolute men and women as for neglected children. They should be founded in the country; labour colonies not prisons; women and men forced to work; in the house, at a trade, if they have one, or in the garden or farm. Persons convicted more than a certain number of times should be sent there, without remorse, for a term of years. It is the only chance left of redeeming their lives. Separated from their miserable surroundings and dissolute associates, they might learn to live clean, decent lives; and return

to the world, after a time, clothed and in their right mind. The streets, at all events, would be swept clean of noisome pests. Public opinion must be educated to demand such salutary reforms.

There is another class akin in character to those just referred to, the class of vagrants and tramps. The facts stated in the report of the Presbytery Commission with regard to it, founded on evidence submitted to them, are startling and fitted to arouse grave apprehensions. Few persons are aware of the extent to which vagrancy prevails. Mr. Edmiston, the Inspector of Poor, Rutherglen, emitted the following statement:

‘Then, in reference to vagrancy, I have a printed letter submitted by you to your Board, I think in 1888. The figures are very startling; in the year 1885 the number of vagrants was 91,567—I think there were 59,214 males and 21,513 females, and 10,840 children, that makes up the total ; then in the year 1886 the gross number had risen to 106,661. Of that number 60,755 were males, and 23,015 females, 12,892 being children. Then have you any idea how that enormous army of vagrants live ?—I think, as a rule, they live fairly well. I think the greatest number of these vagrants work none. It is simply a great army quartered upon and maintained by the industrious population of this country. How much do you think it takes to keep them in the luxurious way they live ?-- Well, I have seen them enter lodging-houses in the city with considerable sums of money in their possession, obtained in the country under the most varied falsehoods. A great deal of the money is wasted in drink. The vagrant must find sufficient means of existence, and I allowed a sum of 4s. per week for each individual, which makes the total cost £1,442,979 per annum.' (Edmiston, Evidence, p. 170.)

'The growth in the number of vagrants is alarming-in 1885, 91,567, and in 1887, 138,748.' (Edmiston, Letter.)

In winter they crowd into cities, and fill the Refuges, Shelters, and Poorhouse wards, and in summer they spread out over the country. Sordid and tattered, with women and children dragging after them, tramps are met with in every country lane. They live by plunder, and on alms often extorted by menace. The race perpetuates itself; ever bringing children into the world, neglected and unattended, trained only in the arts of the tramp and vagrant. It is a grave fact that in Scotland alone 12,892 children are at this moment growing up ignorant and uneducated.

The only lesson they learn is how to whine most pitifully for alms and how most artfully to plunder.

The Presbytery Commission are of opinion that this class ought to be resolutely dealt with. They are unfit for the occupations of city life. Labour Colonies in the country are required, where suitable occupations—such as fishing, basket-making, and other simple industries-might be provided for them in return for food. and shelter; and where their children might be cared for and trained in industrious habits. Reared to a roving life, most of them doubtless would in all likelihood refuse to enter the Shelter or Colony. But as in the case of the dissolute classes in cities, if they refused the offer made them to work for their support, the same Commission advise that they should be compelled to do so. And there can be no question as to the wisdom of the course they suggest. It is not to be tolerated that, in a civilised community, so vast a number of dissolute, lazy idlers should be permitted to overflow the country and live on alms and the fruits of plunder.

These methods of dealing with the depraved and vagrant classes would be just and reasonable, if—but only if—all the remedial proposals suggested were carried out in their entirety, including the organizing of labour centres in town and labour colonies in the country. The subject of labour colonies is much too large a one to be handled within the limits of this article. They have been organised on a small scale on the Continent, and carried on with varying measures of success. Mr. Booth's projects have brought them into prominent notice in this country. Here they are novelties and have hardly entered on the experimental stage: casual wards in Poorhouses are the nearest approach to them. The idea is excellent if it can be worked out. The advocates of labour colonies do not propose to provide permanent employment. They are designed as refuges or shelters, where workers may find the means of subsistence, till they are drafted back to the regular ranks of labour. The initial difficulty, it seems to us, is to find suitable occupations for a promiscuous class of labourers. To run factories or workshops with gangs of unskilled workmen, perpetually shifting is impracticable. If it were practicable, to do so would be mischievous. Either the workshops and factories

would be remunerative or not: if remunerative, they are simply doing what private enterprise is doing and prepared to do; if carried on at a loss, then the promoters are unfairly competing with organised labour, helped by the contributions of the generous. The result would, in the long run, be mischievous; such attempts would aggravate the evils meant to be remedied, they would lower wages or close workshops carried on on an independent footing. The difficulty of the task may prove not insuperable: temporary occupation may be found for the unemployed in ways not opposed to sound economic principles. If labour colonies were successfully organised it is more than probable that many of the class referred to would not take advantage of them, or submit to the description of work. If work is provided for all who will work, irrespective of character, and men and women sullenly refuse to work; if they continue drunken and dissolute, and are convicted again and again; no wrong is done, no injustice inflicted, if they are sent to State labour reformatories, where they will be compelled to work. If the difficulties which must necessarily beset the organizing of these free labour centres or colonies are successfully overcome by determined and capable men, then it may reasonably be demanded that the State should give effect to the measures suggested. The condition of these classes is so fraught with danger to the community, the fate of their children is so pitiful and distressing, that it is high time that these proposals were not merely discussed, but tested on a considerable scale.

The serious and complicated question presses for an answer: What are the elements which constitute the residuum class? how have they reached their present low level? Some of them, no doubt, were born into it. The saddest sign of the old warning fulfilling itself, the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children,' is to be found in the stern fact-thieves breed thieves; prostitutes, prostitutes; tramps, tramps. A most forcible argument this for dealing, if need be with relentless rigour, with those who belong to these classes, in order, if possible, to break the continuity of the miserable doom which dogs the steps of their children. The ranks of these classes, however, are constantly being recruited by others fallen from a higher estate.

Dens of infamy and pollution are filled with the wreckage of once hopeful lives. No class of men, least of all the industrial, can be classified like stratified rocks, into distinct orders; one class or section shades into the other. There is no great gulf fixed between class and class which none may cross. Strong, venturous souls sometimes cross the stream and reach in safety the farther shore, passing from a lower to a higher life. These, however, are few in number. Unfortunately a great throng are ceaselessly climbing down, day and night, from the gate of heaven to the lowest pit.

Setting aside those born to a life of shameless sorrow, what causes, if any, are at work which lure persons, born under more favourable circumstances, belonging to almost every sphere of life, as if by some fatal spell, to gravitate downwards, and end their days in so low an estate.

We have alluded, with gratification, to the fact that the upper circle of workers have in every way improved their position. Between the best educated and most intelligent of skilled workmen, and the unskilled who lodge in single rooms and ticketed houses,' there are various grades, and ranks, and classes. If the causes which in their case work evil can be detected and are preventible, then by removing them the disastrous results will, according to the measure in which they are removed, cease.

Labour is a workman's capital. If by sickness or accident his strength is crippled, he is practically bankrupt. The breadwinner struck down by death, the wife and children are destitute. Times of commercial depression occur at intervals; then labour is an unmarketable commodity, and penury and want stare the workman in the face. Then begins the downward career. The oft-told tale, familiar in the experience of workmen and those interested in them, is marked by a dreary and sorry sameness. Bit by bit their little gatherings go to the pawn shop to buy food for hungry children; then comes depression and downheartedness. Courage droops and resolution slackens, and slowly but surely they drift down and lose themselves in the great gulf—that sea of sorrow which moans restlessly day and night in the regions where dwell the submerged. Women of exceptional strength of character, and endowed with a masterful spirit, may make a bold