The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-20 00:00:00

THE REFORMATORY AND REFUGE

UNION.

The fifth industrial exhibition of the work of reformatories
and refuges was opened on Tuesday at Willis's Rooms.
In the evening, at half-past seven o'clock, a conversazietie
in connection with the industrial exhibition was held at the
same place, when the Bishop of London occupied the chair.
The rooms were crowded almost to suffocation.
The Rev. Dr. GUTHRIE, shortly after rine o'clock, Pro-
ceeded to deliver an address in favour of the schools,
observing that he would endeavour to suit his speech to the
ears of a standing, not a sitting audience, by compressing his
remarks into as small a space as possible. He had spoken
often and much upon the subject of industrial and ragged
schools, but he did not know that he could find a better
argument for them than was exhibited in the work of the
children themselves trained and educated in those establish-
ments. He considered ragged and industrial schools to be
almost the most important institutions in the country'
because they went to the root of most of the evils that
affected society. His name had been much mixed I.IP with
the subject, and he might tell them that he had at one
time left a country parish in Scotland, where every one 0f
his thousand parishioners attended public worship, andevery child could read, to undertake one of the Vl.'
parishes in Edinburgh, where not five in the hundred
of the inhabitants attended public worship, and where
the children were totally uneducated. Ho had gone from
house to house, and had seen the miserable hung,/
mothers, with their skeleton babes who had de-
voured the bread he sent them like famished beasts, And
he had witnessed scenes that had made his heart ache, ell'
had almost made him regret having left his sweet, smiling.'
pure, and loving gauntry parish for such scenes of horror'
However, he had said to himself something must be done
to turn the desert into a flourishing garden, and he thought
the best way was to begin with the children, and provide
not only spiritual but bodily food for the young scholars'
He had asked them to come to church, and they sail
they had no clothes ; the labours of the City missionarisat
although most praiseworthy, had been unable to change
the character of the district, and he found that the only
way he could effectually work was by offering the little
ones a dinner. They were told they would render all the
people paupers if they did so ; but that was quite a 11;1e-
take, as even then they could scarcely get the children
to come to the school, as their parents would send then
out to earn, beg, or steal money to supply their
own brutal desires. He thought the commission of in'
quiry into the state of education had done very great WO'
tice in their report when they said they had not done, and
could not do, any permanent good, as what they acquire``
during the three or four hours' education a week was O.
tirely obliterated from their minds during the rest of the
week. But, on the other hand, her Majesty's conrelie-
soners should not forget the noble example of J°111:1
Powndes, the benevolent cobbler of Portsmouth, Wll_,°/,'
beginning in his small room, 16 feet by 8, had at length
taught unaided upwards of 500 boys, who had thus beec,
rescued from certain misery; and he had reason to kl2°;'
that a large proportion of them turned out respectable
members of society. This was a proof that ragged seh°
were of infinite service in saving the boys who must other'
wise inevitably become thieves from falling into (ohne'
He thought that the glory of the humble cobbler far
surpassed that of the hero Nelson, for although the letter
had done deeds of fame sung of by the poets, Yet
the former had done works which had formed the theme fief
angels' songs. The acts of Nelson were written on the 001
of time, but those of the cobbler had left marks which
would be remembered in the temple of God throughout
eternity. He himself had taken more interest in viewing
the small mean place of the cobbler, ennobled by Iris grey
work of Christianising benevolence, than he had lercil
looking at the spot on board the Victory Point
el
out as that whore our great naval hero fell. He he
brought this point forward in contradiction of a state'
ment made by the commissioners in their report that ragged
schools had not diminished juvenile delinquency in ?II
mouth and other places. The system they adopted in Scott
land was not to allow any dinner to those boys who did no
attend, and the consequence was that the bigger boys might
frequently be seen carrying their little brothers to seh°°
through the rain and snow in order that they might get
their daily food. They also provided about 70 or 80 beds
for such children as were wholly destitute. The results
in Edinburgh were most satisfactory with regard to the de'
crease in juvenile delinquency, inasmuch as, instead of the
per-centage of juveniles in prison amounting, as it did 1'
merly, to 5 in the 100, it now only amounted to 1 in 2°!:
(Hear, hear.) Surely it was better to prevent crime than
cure it, and yet our Government did not appear to be of the
opinion, as, whilst they paid 7s. a week for the support of
criminal children, they only paid ss. a-year towards th:
keep of children at ragged schools—being something lea
than a farthing a-day, her Majesty not having had a CT
sufficiently small struck for the purpose. He alwaye
mired the wisdom of those persons at our public places °
recreation who stuck up in large letters "Dogs are not ad"
witted," they fully expecting the dogs would read it, elau"
would avoid entering; but it was no less absurd to send s'
little child, whose parents had forced him to steal, before
man with a big wig and a black gown, who sat in judgment
upon the poor little creature, who did not know right front
wrong, and who, instead of being marked with th e prison
brand and ruined for life, ought to be pitied, fed, clothed'
and taught. Was our prison system at all calculated to
rata,. a child ? Why, look at the picture exhibited at
Coldbath-field Prison, where 500 men were kept silent dor
ing the day, as if keeping them silent would make them ea
better. And what did they do in Scotland ? Why, they shut
up the poor little creature alone with his misery between four
stone walls, and never let him see anybody but the gaoler'
A fine method, certainly, to bring out the brighter parts of
his mind. The proper way was to take the child before it
had committed crime, whilst it was still young and irll3l‘
cent., and to form its little mind in such a way as, with
God's blessing, it would become a useful and happy member
of society. In referring to Government, he did not wish
the matter taken out of the hands of private individuals 0
place it in those of hard-hearted paid officials. On the
contrary, he thought the best thing any person of meal°
could do was to fix upon a little dirty ragged nrchin in the
street, and to make up his mind never to leave off hunting
him until he was converted into a happy, educated little
Christian. lie certainly approved of one recommendation
of the commissioners, and that was with regard to comP111:
sory education. He considered it to bo the duty of the
State to see that all its subjects were properly educated, en'
if the parent was too poor to pay for the teaching of his child
the public must. If a man objected to having his 0111 A
;
educated, and wished to bring him up a savage, why, 1:
him go to Africa or some other place where savage bees"'
were permitted to exist, but don't allow him to remain to
pollute a civilised country. In conclusion, he must entreat
his hearers not to consider they had done their duty by
giving their money to general charities, but they must re;
collect that true religion did not consist of mere giving, 1)1;r
" to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction,
and to make up their minds never to desist their Godly
efforts until they succeeded in turning the barren asset'
into a blooming garden. (The rev. gentleman's addreel
was listened to throughout with considerable attention, ai3
at the end he was loudly applauded.)