_Child-Protection and the Family._--An overwhelmingly large proportion of child-protection to-day is mainly concerned with cases in which children have (in one sense or another, materially or morally, permanently or temporarily, wholly or partially) been abandoned by their parents. Such cases are those in which: (_a_) the parents are unable to fulfil their duties, on account of lack of means, illness, or absence; (_b_) the parents are unwilling to fulfil their duties; (_c_) the parents make an improper use of their parental authority. But certain children also need protection from the community who cannot in any sense whatever be said to have been abandoned by their parents; and it is altogether erroneous to suppose that the idea of “child-protection” has reference solely to abandoned children. The child is born in a state of complete helplessness, and is unable to protect itself, not only immediately after birth, but for a considerable time afterwards. It lacks the requisite organs for self-protection, it lacks power, and it lacks instinctive knowledge. For these reasons, if our legal system makes provision for the protection of adults, _a fortiori_ must it do so, and to a greater extent, in the case of children. From all these considerations it follows that the most important relationships of child-protection are not, as is commonly assumed, with criminal law and with local administrative activity, but with civil law and individual rights. The kind and degree of child-protection, depend chiefly upon the mutual relationships existing between the State and the family. The institutions of child-protection, in so far as they are associated with civil law and individual rights, will, as a rule, be found to be preventive in character; institutions based upon criminal law, on the other hand, commonly exhibit punitive and repressive tendencies, as will become apparent when a number of concrete instances are studied. If the legal relationships of family life undergo changes, the methods of child-protection will also be transformed.