Mr. Balfour on Monday laid the foundation-stone of the new
village which the Chorlton Board of Guardians are building for the children of the Chorlton Union, at Wilmslow,. in Cheshire. At present the plan is to build twelve large cottage-homes, each containing accommodation for twenty children, and four smaller cottage-homes with accommodation in each for ten children, each home to be under the care of selected foster-parents,—the plan thought most adapted to combine the advantages of the boarding-out system, with the advantages of direct inspection by the Chorlton Board of Guardians. In laying the foundation-stone, and speaking of the great success of the boarding-out system over the old barrack-schools for pauper children, Mr. Balfour reminded his hearers how long it was before the Guardians of the Poor had learned the unsatisfactory nature of these barrack-schools, and the strong reasons for establishing some- thing more like domestic influences over these poor pauper children. When the great barrack-schools were first built nobody knew how cold and mechanical the life in them would be. It has only been by the teaching of experience, and by comparing their effect with that of the boarding-out system, that the Guardians have gradually come to perceive that their first great institutions were so ill-adapted as they are to elicit in the child the best part of his nature. Mr. Balfour hoped, however, that the plans which they are just commencing would combine all the best influences of the boarding-out system with that complete supervision which it is almost impossible to maintain when the children are boarded out in widely-scat- tered places. Mr. Balfour's treatment of the subject was very wise and sober as well as thoroughly genial.
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