the sacred interests of the children of whom they are the parents or custodians; on the other hand, it bespeaks wise and humane forethought and action on the part of the powers that be. The necessity for Industrial Schools is matter for regret; but their establishment evidences the noble purpose to rescue from a career of crime, and to train for useful and respectable citizenship, the little ones born and reared in haunts of pollution and infamy. Not only for the sake of the poor children so unfortunately circumstanced, but also for the welfare of the State, preventive measures are imperative. It is an old and a true saying that "prevention is better than cure"—and cheaper too; and even on the low and selfish ground of cost, and apart from the consideration of the benefit accruing to the country from the well-doing of those rescued, it is beyond question that—confining ourselves to our own Industrial School from its inception until now—the thousands of pounds expended in feeding and clothing and educating its inmates have saved tens of thousands that would otherwise have been spent in restraining and punishing most of them, and that the care by the State of the children of criminal parents has prevented the necessity for the increase of gaol accommodation. "They haven't a chance, sir!—they haven't a chance!" was the indignant exclamation of one who listened to the sad tale of one of the young Arabs of old Edinburgh, a boy of twelve, who had just been turned out of prison, but had no abode to go to worthy of the name of home. In this lesser and younger Edinburgh, after the opening of the goldfields, and consequent influx of mixed population, children that "hadn't a chance" attracted attention, and the State in mercy and in self-defence stepped in to ensure to them the birth-right denied them by their dissolute and criminal parents. "We laugh at the Turk," says the late Rev. Dr. Guthrie in his "City—Its Sins and Sorrows," "who builds hospitals for dogs, but leaves his fellow-creatures to die uncured and uncared for. And doing so, we forget that dogs and horses enjoy by act of Parliament a protection from cruelty among ourselves, which is denied to those whose bodies and whose souls we leave savage parents to neglect and starve. I lay it down as a principle which cannot be controverted, and which lies, indeed, at the very foundations of society, that no man shall be allowed
