had, from the time of their establishment in 1787, been regularly attended; and no difficulty had occurred in supplying work for the knitters and spinners, though there had been some at first, as to the sewing school. In procuring employment for the school for washing and getting up linen, there has been very great difficulty; and in consequence this part of the plan was soon given up. The schools are now reduced to two,* one før knitting, the other for sewing; these are very well supplied with work, and the children continue there for two years. On their first appearance at school, the children come in but ill clothed, and not well behaved; but, in a short time, by their industry, and by the co-operating benevolence of the ladies who visit the school, they are not only improved in behaviour, but are supplied with uniform gowns and petticoats, as well as with several other articles of dress; all their clothes, except shoes and stockings, being made at the sewing school. * The great improvement of spinning mills has very nearly deprived the poor of any profit by spinning. There are few cottagers who have not suffered in this respect; but in some parishes the labourers' wives and children are now entirely precluded from this employment, without any other means of occupation being opened to them. The subscriptions were at first limited to five shillings each: though, among the more opulent, several persons of the same family were admitted as subscribers. They are at present not subject to limitation; and liberal donations have been made for supplying books, wheels, forms, and for other expenses. A considerable benefit has accrued from connecting these girl schools in some degree with the Sunday schools of Chester :-for, as an encouragement to good behaviour, the most deserving girls in the Sunday schools are regularly elected into the working schools. This has a powerful and extensive effect in improving the morals and behaviour of all the girls in the Sunday schools, and with them of almost all the female children in Chester. It is not an unreasonable or unfounded presumption, that the extension of the schools at Chester will operate to improve the rising generation, in skill, industry, honesty, economy, sobriety, and in all those virtues, which result from a proper and religious education, and which can contribute to an useful and happy life. There are very few of these virtues, that do not principally depend on education, and on the seeds sown in the mind during the early - period of life. A very able writer* has ob served, that drunkenness is the vice of an uncultivated mind:" and in truth, with very few exceptions, this vice, in all its beastly defor mity, will be found to be most prevalent among the ignorant and uninformed; among those who have had no means of improving or ap preciating their faculties, and who, in respect of mental and moral improvement, can be placed but little above the brute creation. In all those moral virtues, which are of such inestimable value through life-of industry and skill I say nothing, for it is obvious that instruction and habit are their vital principlebut in moral virtues,-in fidelity, truth, justice, and integrity, every attainment is casual and accidental,—all improvement, deceitful and uncertain, except that which originates in principle, and whose basis firmly rests on the sure ground of a religious education. The absurd prejudices that have existed against extending the common and general benefits of education to the children of the poor, and the extraordinary supposition, that an uneducated and neglected boy will prove *The Rev. Mr. Townsend in his Dissertation on the Poor Laws. an honest and useful man,-that a youth of ignorance and idleness will produce a mature age of industry and virtue,—are now in great measure exploded. Switzerland and Scotland, and the northern counties of England, where the education and occupation of youth are particularly attended to, afford very gratifying evidence of the contrary position. The individuals of those counties, are not only more industrious and more thriving, but, of all parts of Europe, peculiarly exempt from criminal habits.* If the revenues of all our charity schools were applied as advantageously as those of the Blue Coat School, and the other schools at Chester, it is probable that the funds would be sufficient to give to every individual in England, the same advantages of early instruction and good habits, as are enjoyed by our northern neighbours, and by the inhabitants of Switzerland. In order to produce this effect, some existing prejudices against removing ancient abuses, and (I am sorry to be obliged to add) some degree of interest or patronage in the continuance of those abuses, must be given up; and the in * See Howard on Prisons, p. 124; and on Lazarettos, p. 120. quiry must be fairly and impartially entered into, how the good effects of every charity may be best attained, and most widely extended, without injustice to its original objects. There is hardly any charitable fund in England to which the example of Chester may not in some degree apply; and by the application of which, children may not be enabled to acquire those early habits of life, without which wealth and power (and even liberty itself) are to the possessors of but little value ;-too frequently the source of ungoverned passions; pernicious at the same time to other members of society, and destructive to the welfare and existence of the community. |