Mr. Beggs's Inquiry into the Extent and Causes of Juvenile
De- pravity received the second prize for an essay on the subject, when the first was awarded to the Reverend Mr. Worsley, whose book we noticed lately. Mr. Beggs has taken a more various view of the causes that produce the vice and misery of the masses, than his competitor, who con- fined himself strictly to the terms of the offer, which ascribed it all to drink ; but he does not handle that particular topic with the force and comprehensiveness of the first prizeman. We suspect that in these books, and in most discussions on the sulaject, a sufficiently broad distinction is not drawn between persons whose vice is the consequence of their misery, and those whose misery is the consequence of the vice. It is in evidence that large numbers practising the grossest vices, and living half their time in distress, are in the receipt of sufficient wages ; but they are always in debt, and pretty frequently in drink ; so that, what with forestalling and squandering their wages, keeping Saint Monday, and an utter want of management, they live in a condition of discomfort and apparent desti- tution. For this class education may do something—proper training a deal. Except by some economical change, little, we imagine, can done for persons born to the most abject state of poverty, or oast naked upon the world, and compelled by want to live by vice and to fly to excitement to stifle thought or feeling. They want bread, not books.
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