We give the answer--the answer which has been our 'open, sesame' everywhere--and after a pause a woman opens a door a little and asks us to wait a moment. Presently we are admitted. A woman pleasing looking and with a certain refinement in her features holds the door open for us. She has evidently made a hurried toilet and put on an ulster over her night attire. She has also put a brass chain and locket round her neck. There is a little rouge left on her cheeks and a little of the burnt hairpin colour left under her eyes from overnight. At the table having their breakfast are two neat and clean little girls of seven and eight. They rise and curtsey as we enter. We ask them a few questions, and they answer intelligently--they are at the Board School and are making admirable progress--charming children, interesting and well-behaved in every way. They have a perfect knowledge of good and evil--one of them has taken a Scripture prize--and yet these two charming and intelligent little girls live in that room night and day with their mother, and this is the den to which she snares her dissolute prey. I would gladly have passed over this scene in silence, but it is one part of the question which directly bears on the theory of State interference. It is by shutting our eyes to evils that we allow them to continue unreformed so long. I maintain that such cases as these are fit ones for legislative protection. The State should have the power of rescuing its future citizens from such surroundings, and the law which protects young children from physical hurt should also be so framed as to shield them from moral destruction. The worst effect of the present system of Packing the Poor is the moral destruction of the next generation. Whatever it costs us to remedy the disease we shall gain in decreased crime and wickedness. It is better even that the ratepayers should bear a portion of the burthen of new homes for the respectable poor than that they should have to pay twice as much in the long-run for prisons, lunatic asylums, and workhouses. Enough for the present of the criminal classes. Let us see some of the poor people who earn an honest living--well, 'living,' perhaps, is hardly the word--let us say, who can earn enough to pay their rent and keep body and soul together. Here is a quaint scene, to begin with. When we open the door we start back half choked. The air is full of floating fluff, and some of it gets into our mouths and half chokes us. When we've coughed and wheezed a little we look about us and gradually take in the situation.