r dirtiest British youngster is hedged
round with principles of an inviolable liberty and rights of Habeas
Corpus. You let his father and mother, or any one who will save you the
trouble of looking after him, mould him in his years of tenderness as
they please. If they happen to leave him a walking invalid, you take him
into the poorhouse; if they bring him up a thief, you whip him and
keep him at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor; if his passions, never
controlled, break out into murder and rape, you may hang him, unless his
crime has been so atrocious as to attract the benevolent interest of
the Home Secretary; if he commit suicide, you hold a coroner's inquest,
which also costs money; and however he dies you give him a deal coffin
and bury him. Yet I may prove to you that this being, whom you treat
like a dog at a fair, never had a day's--no, nor an hour's--contact
with goodness, purity, truth, or even human kindness; never had an
opportunity of learning anything better. What right have you then to
hunt him like a wild beast, and kick him and whip him, and fetter him
and hang him by expensive complicated machinery, when you have done
nothing to teach him any of the duties of a citizen?"

"Stop, stop, Sir Charles! you are too virulent. There are endless means
of improving your lad--charities without number----"

"Yes, that will never reach him."

"Never mind, they may, you know. Industrial schools, reformatories,
asylums, hospitals, Peabody-buildings, poor-laws. Everybody is working
to improve the condition of the poor man. Sanitary administration goes
to his house and makes it habitable."

"Very," interjected Sir Charles Sterling, dryly.

"Factory laws protect and educate factory children----"

"They don't educate in one case out of ten. They don't feed them, clothe
them, give them amusement and cultivation, do they?"

"Certainly not--that would be ridiculous."

"Why, the question is whether that would be ridiculous!" replied Sir
Charles. "I do not say it can be done, but in order to transform the
next generation, what we should aim at is to provide substitutes for
bad homes, evil training, unhealthy air, food and dulness, and terrible
ignorance, in happier scenes, better teaching, proper conditions of
physical life, sane amusements, and a higher cultivation. I dare say you
would think me a lunatic if I proposed that Government should establish
music-halls and gymnasia all over the country; but you, Mr. Fissu