paupers and needing public help in the way proposed. Adding these figures together, we get in round numbers 28,000, for whom it is desirable for the State more or less to provide, in the way of training schools and custodial establishments. Those who are now in workhouses and in lunatic asylums would be removed from them, and so far would relieve the latter from their present crowded condition. This object would be still further gained if harmless lunatics, as proposed by the Charity Organization Committee, should be legislated for in the same way as idiots and imbeciles, and removed from asylums to separate institutions, as has been done at Caterham and Leavesden. The number of this class needing public administration is calculated at 7615. Confining still our attention to England and Wales, where, as we have seen, voluntary effort has only succeeded in providing training schools for about three per cent. of the idiot and imbecile class, we desire to draw attention to the action taken by the Charity Organization Society of London, arising out of a consciousness of the inadequacy of this provision. In the summer of 1877 a sub-committee of this Society entered very fully into the consideration of this subject in all its bearings, and continued week by week, for some months, to discuss the various questions which presented themselves. Sir Charles Trevelyan, who originated the inquiry, observed that "he had rarely, if ever, known a subject so completely threshed out." The most important conclusions arrived at were--that a small proportion of idiots and imbeciles can be so far improved as to support themselves, that a larger proportion may be trained to do some useful work, and that the remainder can be rendered happier and not so burdensome to others. On inquiry, it was found that about two per cent. of the cases admitted at Earlswood were cured so as to be able to support themselves. At one period in the history of this institution, when certain very unfavourable classes were rejected, as many as ten per cent. were so trained and improved. That this should be the maximum proportion will surprise those who have been misled by the _ad captandum_ statements sometimes put forward to the public, no doubt with laudable and benevolent motives. This amount of success, disheartening as it seems at first, is not to be despised; but the strength of an appeal, whether to the charitable public or to the State, to provide for the training of idiots, lies in elevating them to the highest level of which their organization admits, curing them of offensive habits, affording them some positive happiness, and shielding them from unkind and irritating treatment. It is the judgment of the above-mentioned Committee that idiots ought to be treated distinctively from other classes, whether the blind, or lunatics in asylums and workhouses, or children in schools, and that they should not be boarded out.