Glasgow Courier. — 1860-09-27 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

SANITARY POLICY AND GOVERNMENT MEASURES.  The Council are glad to say that Mr Scholefield has succeeded in passing his bill for repressing the adulteration of food, which it is hoped may be found useful, though not in its details entirely satisfactory. We cannot dismiss the important subject of sanitary policy without expressing the satisfaction felt at the appointment of the Indian Army Sanitary Commission, which may justly be ascribed to the able papers of Mr Hardwich, discussed at the Liverpool meeting. It is, unfortunately, impossible to express the same satisfaction with the contluot of the Government upon ..nother yet  more important question—the education of the humbler classes of the people. The subject was brought before Parliament by our colleague, Sir J. Pakington, in an admirable speech, urging the claims of Ragged Schools to a share of the Privy Council grant. The refusal to assist in preventing pauperism and crime by diligently educating and training the class of children from whom vagrants and criminals are bred, is perhaps one of the greatest economical, let us rather say social, mistakes ever committed. It is an abdication of .the most im_ _  perative duties of a State, that of helping those who cannot help themselves, as well as the self-destructive impolicy of withholding a little outlay in schooling from those on whom they must afterwards spend largely in the nay of jails and workhouses. We shall no doubt have . . .  Mies Carpenter's protest added to ours in this question. The whole reformatory measuresare intimately connected with this subject, and the success of these with female  offenders is now 'clearly proved in the diminution of their crimes. The diminution of other offences, it is to be hoped, has taken place likewise; but a disturbing influence of a kind deeply to be lamented has operated from the impolitic restncting of the remuneration of witnesses. The case of juvenile offences affords the  strongest reason for extending to adults thrTielo-rin—a; tory system so ably and satisfactory explained by Cairt, Crofton, to whom we owe it, at our Liverpool meeting, Its success in Ireland has been complete. It is to behoped that within either the sanitary or the general department the subject may be allowed to fall, of the great frequency of fatal accidents lately to be deplored. Those on railways really urgently demand attention, and their causes cannot be fully investigated without the suggestion of some preventive. It is remarkable that the evil is confined to Great Britain. In France the greater discipline and more careful administration, even more than the leaser speed and the want of excursion trains, is probably the reason that grave accidents there are all but unknown. The other class of injury to persons, often fatal, is that of careless or foolhardy and adventurous travellers being severely hurt, often losing their lives in attempts to climb or descend dangerous primes, in neglect or in defiance to their guide's advice. The misery thus inflicted on families—in some cases the publia injury thus occasioned—should be impressed upon men's minds, and the guilt incurred by their carelessness or obstinacy. A life thus thrown away is by self-slaughter, not self-murder; and the crime bears the same relation to suicide that manslaughter does to murder.