_Nature of Official and Institutional Guardianship._--The legal basis of official guardianship is the right and the duty of the State to act as the supreme guardian of all minors. Its characteristics are as follows: Over a specified group of children--children put out to nurse, foundlings, or illegitimate children, a particular person (he may be a private individual or one in an official position), in virtue of the authority of the law (that is, without specific appointment in each case, and without the option of refusing in particular cases to exercise his powers), exercises the powers of a guardian. In certain cases, official guardianship involves powers superseding those of ordinary parental authority (this applies to the case of illegitimate children, destitute children, and children put out to nurse). There can be no reasonable objection to this, for in such cases the parents’ own authority exists _de jure_ only, and not _de facto_. But the parental authority is not irrevocably invested in the official guardian, and the latter exercises only such rights and duties as properly belong to a guardian. For example, the right of usufruct in a child’s property cannot be assigned to the official guardian. Institutional guardianship consists in the exercise of guardianship by a State educational institution, or other State institution for the care of children, over children in that institution, the actual powers of guardianship being invested in the director or some other official of the institution. _Advantages of Official and Institutional Guardianship._--(_a_) The local authorities entrusted with the general care of a particular group of children--destitute children, for instance--can readily, and with little additional trouble, assume the duties of guardianship. Experience shows that this combination of duties gives extremely satisfactory results, without imposing on the Boards in question any serious increase in their duties. The administrative Boards controlling reformatory schools must, if their duties are to be properly performed, possess unlimited authority in respect of all matters bearing on the upbringing of those under their care. In Europe, the official guardianship of morally uncontrollable children is likely to bring into being a system of children’s courts, with probation officers, or to develop that system further where it already exists.