No one in their senses would at the present moment venture to bring in a Bill for the segregation of criminals and vagrants, for we are not prepared for such a measure. A certain number would, no doubt, be strongly in its favour, but they would be in a small minority. At present the community at large have hardly even discussed their obligations as race producers, and the enforcement of these obligations could only follow a strong growth of public feeling and public practice. Long, too, before the question can be discussed in a practical form, the criminals and vagrants must be separated from the deserving poor; it is probable that this step would commend itself to all, indeed in all probability the present system continues to exist solely on account of a widespread ignorance of the real state of things. Our workhouses and institutions for the relief of the poor have never elicited much personal interest; they are rarely visited by the public, who have never realised the scandalous herding together of the very scum of humanity with the respectable but unfortunate and aged of the labouring class which is nowadays prevalent. Once this state of things were ended, once the public could see the inveterate criminal and vagrant class by itself, it would be able to deal with it on rational lines. It would view it as a hopelessly inferior class, having no place among the workers of the State; a class to be cared for and controlled, but whose perpetuation, on the score of pity for the offspring, must in duty be prevented. _Segregation no New Idea, and Ultimately a Necessary Practice._ The idea of segregation is no new one, for at the call of religion man and woman have in most countries, and in all times, separated themselves from their fellows. They have denied themselves the pleasures of love, and of the table; they have foregone worldly ambition, and have lived lives often of utter solitude, and of miserable privation, in order to fulfil what they considered to be a higher duty. Believing in the advent of some sudden change, of the destruction of the present condition of things, they naturally thought and cared little for the preservation of a race, destined soon to have spiritual existence alone. Thus, it came about that millions of the most thoughtful and noble-minded men and women have in the past committed the fatal mistake of leaving the rest of humanity to carry on the race. Theirs was a voluntary segregation which must have had the most direful results upon the race. That which we speak of is an enforced segregation which would eliminate from it some of its worst qualities.