“‘It is not difficult to find out what are the occupations of many of these children. They are hawkers of papers, or sellers of matches,--most of the time occupied in quarreling and gambling. They are beggars, male and female, strolling from street to street, through lanes, by-ways and alleys, practicing the elementary lessons of pilfering, lying, deception and theft. They may be seen wherever wooden structures are in the process of building, repairing, or tearing down;--seeking for fragments of wood to which they evidently feel they have a very questionable right. They are the loafers on wharves and in all the modes of juvenile vice. Are these children in the way to become useful citizens or happy and respectable men? Are they not growing up to be the occupants of jails and almshouses? Are they not in a course of education for worthlessness and crime? “‘Let us see what answer the records of the courts of justice make to these questions. “‘There are, on an average, 74 inmates of the House of Reformation; nearly the same number in the school on Thompson’s Island; and, for the year ending in November last, 456, under age, had been inmates of the jails. “‘In reference to providing instruction for this great mass of uneducated children, our _system_ is not defective. Sufficient provision is now made for the instruction of those children who have passed the age at which they are admissible into the primary schools, and who are not qualified for the grammar schools. The number of this class is rapidly increasing, and is likely to increase still more. Our system was contrived and adapted to a small city, peopled by persons born in New England, and always enjoying and disposed to avail themselves of the advantages of the free-school system of these States. But some (no?) provision has been made for the vast accessions to our population by immigration from foreign countries of persons of every age, and of every condition of ignorance. Our system of government supposes educated citizens; and will not be safe unless our citizens are more or less educated. Now there are great masses coming in upon us who are not educated, except to vice and crime; the creatures or the victims of the justice or the oppression, or the over-population of the old world. For the education of these, adult and juvenile, not only must provision be made, but means must be used to render the provision effective. It is not enough to say that provision is made for their education, if they will avail themselves of it at a proper time. Unless they are made inmates of our schools, many of them will become inmates of our prisons; and it is vastly more economical to educate them in the former than to support them in the latter. The annual cost of educating an individual at