The Reformatory Schools have risen from 1 in 1854, to 47 in 1858; and the number of inmates, from 21 to 700. To these schools, the government allows $1.75 per week, for each inmate; and the Managers have authority to require a contribution from the parents, when able. From the former source $127,844 were received, and from parents $3,738; showing the cost of each inmate, under these items alone, to be $187 per annum; and the Report has no allusion to their labor as of any value. The average cost in any House of Refuge in the United States, with which we are acquainted, does not much exceed $100. There is now an extension of the system of Reformatory Schools, which will doubtless prove of much value. The law authorizes a provisional commitment, to certified industrial schools, of children taken into custody on a charge of vagrancy,—after due inquiry into the condition of their parents, and of the circumstances of their arrest,—to be detained till fifteen years of age, unless suitable provision is made for their care and employment elsewhere. The present (1859) is the first year of its operation. It is not easy even to approximate an estimate, in money, of the cost to which crime subjects a community. Sixty years ago, Colquhoun, in his work on the “Police of the Metropolis,” estimated the loss by depredation, in London alone, at ten millions of dollars; and the Watch-Committee of Liverpool, in an elaborate report in 1836, stated the loss in that borough, by depredation, at not less than three million five hundred thousand dollars, declaring that this was not exaggerated, but, on the contrary, much less than the actual amount. We suppose that in such an estimate are included, not only the property abstracted by theft and robbery, but also the fruits of the various species of frauds on the government and on public institutions, fraudulent bankruptcies, losses by incendiary fires, and various kinds of malicious mischief. To the value of property sacrificed to crime, must be added the expenses of police, prosecutions and prisons, amounting to not less than twelve millions of dollars; and to these we must add a large sum for a proportion of the salaries of judges and justices, and their clerks; the maintenance of court-houses; costs of coroners’ inquests; expenses of sheriffs; costs of prosecution by public bodies, and costs paid by private prosecutors over and above the costs allowed; charges for convicts and colonies, &c.