Among the inmates of the city prisons a large percentage are without a trade, and no doubt this idle condition is largely due to their ignorance and is one of the great stimulants to their criminal course. Who can say how much the knowledge of Geography alone may stimulate a child or a youth to emigrate, and thus leave his immediate temptations and escape pressing poverty? ORPHANAGE. Out of 452 criminal children received into the House of Refuge in New York during 1870, only 187 had both parents living, so that nearly sixty per cent. had lost one or both of their parents, or were otherwise separated from them. According to Dr. Bittinger, [Transactions of the National Congress, p. 279.] of the 7,963 inmates of the reformatories in the United States in 1870, fifty-five per cent. were orphans or half orphans. The following figures strikingly show the extent to which orphanage and inheritance influence the moral condition of children. Mettrai, the celebrated French reformatory, has received since its foundation 3,580 youthful inmates. Of these, there are 707 whose parents are convicts; 308 whose parents live in concubinage; 534 "natural" children; 221 foundlings; 504 children of a second marriage; and 1,542 without either father or mother. [Une visite a Mettrai. Paris, 1868.] An intelligent French writer, M. de Marsangy, [Moralisation de l'enfance coupable, p. 18.] in writing of the causes of juvenile crime in France, says that "a fifth of those who have been the objects of judicial pursuit are composed of orphans; the half have no father, a quarter no mother, and as for those who have a family, nearly all are dragged by it into evil." EMIGRATION. There is no question that the breaking of the ties with one's country has a bad moral effect, especially on a laboring class. The Emigrant is released from the social inspection and judgment to which he has been subjected at home, and the tie of church and priesthood is weakened. If a Roman Catholic, he is often a worse Catholic, without being a better Protestant. If a Protestant, he often becomes indifferent. Moral ties are loosened with the religious. The intervening process which occurs here, between his abandoning the old state of things and fitting himself to the new, is not favorable to morals or character. The consequence is, that an immense proportion of our ignorant and criminal class are foreign-born; and of the dangerous classes here, a very large part, though native-born, are of foreign parentage. Thus, out of the whole number of foreigners in New York State, in 1860, 16.69 per cent. could not read or write; while of the native-born only 1.83 per cent. were illiterate.