In conference with his friends at Birmingham Mr. Adderley has
added to the number of his earnest appeals in favour of re- formatory institutions, and he now calls for action, rather than mere legislation ; yet at the same time he shows that legislation itself, at least in England, is imperfect. A distinction is drawn here, he said, between the vagrant and the convict class ; and while children are removed from prisons to reformatories, reforma- tories are not moved into the class to which-they should belong— that of schools for juvenile education. This appeal to the public from the Vice-President of the Education Committee is remark- able, when we remember to have seen Mr. Adderley, under the pressure of official necessity, declining to extend the aid of the state to schools opened for the children of the unconvicted class.
It is remarkable, too, in contrast with the movement which is going forward in Dublin, where seven girls have been taketi from
the workhouse as a smaltinstalment, and platted at school at St. Joseph's Industrial Inatitute ; a few charitable ladies actually beginning the work which the Imperial State of England de-
clines to undertake ! -
It is total confusion. While the Poor-law Commissioners are debating whether or not an entirely new metropolitan establish- ment shall be founded with separate asylums in six great dis- tricts of the metropolis, the Times is becoming a department of the State : it has issued its summons for charitable contributions towards the existing "refuges," which have been founded by private charity ; and in obedience to the mandate many thou- sands sterling have been collected. We talk of "the power of the press" ; but it is obvious that a journal like the Times, might, if it pleased, make serious encroachments on the Execu- tive in more than one of its departments, perhaps in all. Nor is it quite certain that England would be less happily guided by that kind of "editing."
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