Half-naked children paddle about in the mire or wallow on the heaps of decomposing substances just alluded to,—greedily devouring the parings of turnips and carrots, sucking the marrow out of the rotting bones, and rejoicing when they happen to find a mouldy crust, a morsel of putrid meat, or the maggot-eaten head of a fish. Neglected beings, too, are they—knowing nothing save blows, curses, and hunger at home, and learning naught save every corrupt habit and ruinous vice abroad. How can we be surprised if such an infancy becomes imbued with those evil principles which gaols and treadmills only tend afterwards to confirm, and which give ample promise of occupation for turnkeys, penal-settlements, and the hangman? The Established Church is maintained at an annual expense of several millions sterling; the clergy belonging to that Church claim the right of educating and instructing the people;—and yet in no country in the civilised world is there such an appalling amount of juvenile depravity as in England! For ourselves, we declare—we repeat that our Government, our Legislature, our Clergy, and our Great Landowners are all guilty of the blackest turpitude in permitting hundreds of thousands—aye, millions of children to be neglected in so horrible a manner. If a child be seized with a malignant, infectious, and dangerous disease, what would be said of the father who looked on indifferently—who omitted to call in medical advice—and who beheld, with equal calmness, the furious malady spreading amongst the rest of his offspring! Should we not denounce—should we not execrate such a man as a monster deserving of any penalty which our statutes could inflict? _Yes_—a thousand times _yes_! By a parity of reasoning, then, do we hold up to abhorrence those men who seize upon the reins of power merely to gratify their own selfish ambition; also those men who accept seats in the legislative assemblies, and fritter away the time of a great nation in their own party-squabbles,—those men, too, who put on black gowns, preach sermons as a duty rendered in return for the enjoyment of enormous revenues, and then declaim against the wickedness of those millions whom they do not attempt to reform,—and, lastly, those men who wring the sweat from the poor man's brow to distil pearls for themselves, but who care not for the welfare of that poor man's offspring! Hundreds of thousands of pounds are annually subscribed to further the objects of foreign missions, the scene of whose labours is in far-off lands scarcely known to us by name, and amongst a race with whom our sympathies cannot exist;—but beneath our very eyes—crossing our paths—constantly displaying their loathsome rags to our view, are small children innumerable, whose only training is for the prison, the hulks, and the gallows!