Begging is more lucrative in proportion to the degree to which the child’s appearance is calculated to arouse compassion--the poorer, the more miserable, the more delicate it looks. In actual fact, a child is often ill-used simply in order to give it an aspect which will arouse more sympathy. Frequently a minimum amount of money is fixed, which, under fear of punishment--usually gross physical ill-treatment--the child has to bring home as a result of its day’s begging. In large towns children are hired out to professional beggars; in such towns as Paris and London there is actually a regular market for such children. The child employed for purposes of begging suffers many moral disadvantages; it becomes crafty and obstinate, acquires a dislike for work and a love of enjoyment, &c. The general public, which squanders money freely in almsgiving to child beggars, gives without thought of the consequences. It is less trouble to drop a few coppers into the outstretched hand of a mendicant than to undertake a thorough investigation of the case, and, if necessary, to remove the child from the corrupting influences of its present environment, and to see that it will be properly cared for in future. Mendicancy frequently leads to criminal courses, more especially to offences against property, and in the case of girls to offences against sexual morality. The immediate causes of the maltreatment of children are the following: (_a_) Illness or delicacy of the child; (_b_) illness or nervousness in the parents; (_c_) interested motives; (_d_) a rough disposition and incapacity for education on the part of the child; (_e_) improper views concerning education; (_f_) alcoholism; (_g_) exaggerated religious ideas; (_h_) sexual causes; (_i_) unhappy conditions of conjugal life. (_a_) Parents are much more likely to ill-treat sickly or weakly children than healthy ones, for the former much more readily prove a burden than the latter. Feeble-mindedness, moreover, is difficult to recognise, and is often regarded by the parents as obstinacy or naughtiness. It is a painful fact that in many cases the parents are themselves responsible for the defective intellectual equipment of their child, and yet it is on account of this very defect that they ill-use the child. (_b_) Delicate and nervous parents are much more likely than healthy ones to ill-treat their children. In the case of parents who are mentally unsound, the lust of cruelty may be a direct outcome of their mental state. (_c_) In many cases children’s lives are insured for a considerable sum, and in this case the death of the child may be desired by the parents for the sake of the insurance money. This happened very often in the manufacturing towns of England, until the matter became the subject of special legislation. Sometimes parents ill-treat children in the hope of inheriting money belonging to these latter.