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We are not aware that "Christian principles" were at all in question. The separation turned upon the wording of a resolution referring to the use of Scripture; and here the point at issue was not-Is the Bible an essential means of reformatory influence, and the teaching of the Bible the great instrument of the reformatory teacher? On such a point no difference did or could exist between any of the founders of either Union. The point was this, "Shall it be a fundamental rule of our Union that no school shall be comprehended in it in which the Bible is not used and taught from?" Shall, that is, such a rule be adopted as will ignore all Roman Catholic schools, and at once exclude the great Continental labourers in the cause-De Metz, Ducpeteaux, Pol, &c., from the association?

The promoters of the National Reformatory Union formed their society not to give money, or to disseminate a system, but as a general medium for gaining and imparting knowledge, and for communicating and awakening interest on the subject of reformatory discipline, upon as wide a scale as possible. They wished to inform all who wanted information to obtain the advantage of inquiry and experience from all that could afford them. It was their desire to form an union not of schools but of individuals, as a sort of open club, in which all the labourers in the Reformatory cause might find and give mutual society, help and comfort. To have excluded any because of the rules adopted in the schools they were connected with, would have changed its character, and would have imposed upon its members a responsibility for the views and proceedings of others, which many might have felt unwilling to undertake-and it was from an objection to adopt any exclusive rule whatever-and not from any hesitation as to the particular resolution proposed that they found themselves obliged to differ from the other association as to the ground they should take up-in proof of which it may be mentioned that several of them are members also of the Refuge and Reformatory Union, and gladly subscribe to its assertion of the paramount importance of sound Scriptural teaching.

What their feeling and their practice are was indeed truly and forcibly expressed by Lord Robert Cecil at the Bristol meeting

"Religion must be the teacher's motive, in reality his only motive. Religion is the moving power of the reformatory school; without it the best machinery must inevitably fail; while with it an organization and staff, intellectually inferior, are often attended with gratifying success.”We are, Sir, your very faithful servants,

T. B. Ll. Baker, Hardwicke; Henry I. Barton, Northampton-
shire G. H. Bengough, Kingswood; I. G. Blencowe, Sussex;
C. H. Bracebridge, Warwickshire; Alwyne Compton, North-
amptonshire; William Cartwright, Northamptonshire; C.
Castleman, Hampshire; John Field (Chaplain), Reading Gaol;
William G. Garnett, Lancashire; William Gladstone, Redhill;
Thomas Hutton (Chaplain), Northampton Gaol; G. W. Latham,
Cheshire; Lovaine; George Alan Lowndes, Essex; I. C.
Mansel, Dorsetshire; D. Melville, Worcestershire; William
Miles, Kingswood; I. Bligh Monck, Berkshire; H. O.
Nethercote; Stafford H. Northcote, Devon; Charles Ratcliff,
Saltley; W. B. Stopford; Sydney Turner, Redhill; I. W.
Perry Watlington, Essex; E. B. Wheatley, Yorkshire West
Riding; Thomas E. Winnington, Worcestershire.

NATIONAL REFORMATORY UNION.

To the Editor of the Philanthropist.

DEAR SIR,-Will you have the goodness to correct an omission by publishing the following names in your next PHILANTHROPIST.

They ought to have appeared amongst the signatures to the letter addressed to you from members of the National Reformatory Union, in answer to Mr. Robert Hanbury's letter in your number for September last. Mary Carpenter. O. W. Hambrough. H. O. Nethercote.

Cary C. Elwes.

J. C. Mansel.

I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
HENRY J. BARTON.

ART. VI.-THE IRISH CENSUS.

The Census of Ireland for the Year 1851-Parts V. and VI. General Report and Tables of Deaths. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Dublin: Thom and Sons, 87 Abbey-street. 1856.

"In conclusion, we feel it will be GRATIFYING TO YOUR EXCELLENCY, to find that, although the population has been diminished in so remarkable a manner, BY FAMINE, DISEASE, and Emigration, and HAS BEEN SINCE DECREASING, the results of the IRISH CENSUS ARE, on the WHOLE, SATISFACTORY"!!!

Did the respectable and respected gentlemen who drew up and affixed their names to the Report from which the foregoing truly astounding sentence is taken,-(the General Report just published of the Commissioners of the Irish Census of 1851),-did those good and undoubtedly most competent Commissioners fully ponder and consider its words and tenor? Could they have done so, being what they are? or is it not far more likely-does not our previous knowledge of them make it much more probable-that, overpressed by their great and exceedingly creditable labors, they were not able, when at length approaching the termination of their heavy task, to give the same attention and thoughtful care to some of its concluding expressions, which they have mani fested in the preparation of the deeply interesting and useful statistics, and historic and other details contained in their valuable Report ?

Assuredly there cannot be a doubt of the soundness of this latter supposition. The alternative we will not, indeed we could not, bring ourselves to consider for one moment! It is not only improbable, judging from what in the ungainly but expressive phrase of the day, may be called their "antecedents," -but it is really impossible, that they or any one with a heart in his bosom, or a conscience to guide him-could have, aforethought, and with full deliberation, penned such a sentence-savouring as it does not a little of heartlessness towards man and even of profanity towards Heaven!

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These expressions may at first sight appear too strong, but a little reflection will shew that they are really no more than what the case demands. Let first the fact, (unhappily too well attested), be taken, that more than a million of the Irish people have perished by famine or disease! Next, that nearly if not quite another million have been driven away in a despairing Emigration, losing fully one-half their number in the miseries of the ocean-passage, or the destitution and pestilence awaiting them on the American shore. Thirdly, that the amount and due natural increase of the population of Ireland have been so reduced and repressed by the appaling agencies just mentioned, that her people were fewer in 1851 than they were twenty years before, and can any one say that all this should be spoken of in the same breath with congratulations and satisfactions!

Renewing again and again our earnest and explicit protestations against being held to charge these Commissioners with wilfulness and deliberateness of intent in the sentence we are dealing with, we must be permitted in continuation to remark, that if that sentence could have a deliberate meaning, it would plainly be that the number and increase of our fellow creatures in any country are matters to be judged of and regulated by views of human policy in correction sometimes, and at other times in equally presumptuous approval and adaptation of the designs and dispensations of Providence; and that the desolating of a people's homesteads, and the waste and wide-spread destruction of human life, are not to be weighed in the balance with economic considerations and the theories of the day!!

Happily, however, without any paltering with the truth, or over-anxiety to conceal or excuse wrong-doing, the supposition can unhesitatingly be accepted as valid that the real

force and true meaning of the expressions on which we are commenting, so far from being intended, were not so much as dreamed of, by the gentlemen who wrote them.

While thus willingly and repeatedly declaring this to be our belief in so far as the Commissioners of the Irish Census are concerned, and attributing the very unfortunate words they made use of in the passage quoted at the commencement of this paper, simply to the natural inadvertence of men hastening to conclude a labor which had we cannot say overtasked, but doubtless wearied and exhausted them, we certainly neither ignore, nor wish to appear desirous of ignoring, the sad and shocking fact, that there were, and are, in England, and we fear in Ireland too, in a few scattered instances at least, public writers and public men who deliberately avow the opinion, that the loss of so many of her people was a benefit to Ireland. With them we shall hold no argument; for the opinion is too monstrous and revolting to admit of argument, and calmness would be imposssible in dealing with it. Neither do we at all want to ignore the fact that there has been what the Census Commissioners designate as an "advancement of the country." The full nature, extent and value of this "advancement" we must afterwards more particularly consider. But there can be no question of the general correctness of the statement, so far as the "increased extent of arable land since 1841," the "progress of education among the people," and some other points. Coming now to a closer consideration of this Report; we must in the first instance express a regret that it was not found possible to comprise the results of the Census-Commissioners enquiries into less than the ten large blue books, of which the two last are now before us. "Blue books," according to a parliamentary proverb, "are never read;" and without going quite so far in our assertion, we will say that certainly those readers who make themselves at all extensively acquainted with the contents, are rather an insignificant minority of the general public. By the statist, by the future historian, by the philosophical and physiological enquirer, the "blue books" will be and are perused with attention and valuable fruit; for that class of readers have full and unlimited leisure for the purpose; and can examine closely, and carefully, and thoroughly sift, arrange, and methodize, the somewhat "rudis, indigestaque

molis" of information which is the general characteristic of these overgrown productions, owing inore to the misfortune than to the fault of their compilers. The zeal and industry of the latter are unduly taxed by the amount of work they have to do within a necessarily very limited and inadequate period. Facts have to be hunted out, gathered up, snatched as it were, almost at random, with little or no opportunity for selection or digestion,-impressions and assertions to be accepted and adopted without time for due examination, and views and opinions to be enunciated and supported without leisure sufficiently to consider and mature them. Greater latitude as to the time within which their Report was to be presented, and we are quite willing to believe greater natural capacity than common, have enabled the Irish Census Commissioners to avoid many of these shoals: but this has been to some degree counteracted by the length to which their own scrupulous exactitude and self-unsparing laboriousness have extended their Report. He should, however, be captious indeed who on that score would find serious fault with so valuable and creditable a work.

Entering as we are about to do into the details of this Report, we confess to no little difficulty in deciding at what point to begin. The difficulty is in fact double :-One phase of it arising from the extremely wide scope taken by the Commissioners' enquiries and the enormous mass of matter accumulated by them; while the other phase is simply attributable to the sad and sickening feeling inevitably excited by a close perusal of the mournful and frightful details. Having taken up the task, however, we must go on with it through all obstacles or discouragements, and do not at the moment see any more convenient mode of so doing than to continue upon the kind of text furnished by the quoted paragraph with which this paper commences. Before launching out at large. into our commentary, we shall complete that text by as plainly and briefly as possible, setting out the leading statistics that tend to illustrate it.

On the one hand then, or one side of the account, namely, that of the loss to Ireland, are to be set down these facts, viz., had the population of Ireland increased up to 1851 in the same proportion as that of England and Wales, the official calculators say that she should in that year have numbered 9,018,799. They report that she actually numbered only

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