ge regain him by virtue of
parental authority. This indiscretion of evil parents ... is the way
that the first-fruits of correctional or charitable education are
corrupted and that a great many minors who would have become useful
members of society, are definitely lost to it."

It may be heresy to criticise our public school system but it is more
than an open question whether we are not producing a generation of badly
educated people who are not aware of their own ignorance, who see no
dignity in labour and who prefer to make their living by speculation
rather than by work. The fault largely consists in estimating the
efficiency of a school or a teacher solely by the results obtained at
examination and making the children work for this end and this end only.
Their memories are taxed to the uttermost but no attempt is made to
develop them into reasoning, enquiring and labour loving beings. The
difficulty with which children in the sixth and seventh standards follow
the simplest arguments is simply amazing. The teachers, moreover, have
no opportunity for cultivating the art of pedagogy. Their whole time is
taken up preparing matter to pour into the child's mind. The bad
salaries that are paid can also have but one result, viz., the depriving
the State of the services of the most manly and most noble teachers and
having the work committed to those of the genus prig.

Bad homes, bad schools and playgrounds only once removed from cattle
yards, will be, in this country, the most potent factors in producing
crime.

=Alcohol.=--The influence of alcohol in the commission of crime is both
direct and indirect. We see its direct influence in those crimes which
are committed whilst the culprit is either in a state of intoxication or
else just recovering from such a state. To detect and trace its indirect
influence a much closer study is required. The inconsequent, lazy and
thriftless life of the criminal demands some sort of stimulant, and this
is found readily at hand in alcohol. Alcohol is not the cause of the
crimes of these people but it is closely associated with such cause. The
man who stabs another in a saloon is not then guilty of his first crime.
Under the influence of intoxication he has lost his power of
self-control and he commits a deed for which he may in a sober moment
have still a degree of moral abhorrence or be perhaps too much of a
coward to perform.

Many criminals, whose crime requires a certain amount of ne