CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE BOARDING-OUT SYSTEM.

Forty years ago or thereabouts, we happened tomake a visit to an hospital for pauper orphanchildren in a large city. It was a dismal spectacle.The little creatures, seated on forms, and dressed ina poor garb, had a woe-begone appearance. Theirfaces were pallid, and a number of them had soreeyes. The sentiment which arose in our mind wasthat the whole affair was unnatural, and morallyand physically unwholesome. Here was a spaciousmansion kept up for the accommodation ofsome hundreds of poor children whom destiny haddeprived of their parents. Treated well, as it wasthought, according to regulations, they were evidentlyunhappy, and pined for that species of freedomwhich is only to be obtained by childrenbrought up within the domestic circle.

Since that time, so far as Scotland is concerned,there has been a considerable revolution in thematter of juvenile pauper management. The planof immuring a horde of orphan pauper children inlarge buildings under the charge of nurses andteachers is pretty generally abandoned, not somuch on the score of economy as of common-sense.Nature has clearly ordained that children are tobe reared, instructed, and familiarised with theworld under the direct charge and responsibilityof their parents. That has been the way since thebeginning, and it will be so till the end of time.The family system is the foundation of everythingthat is valued in our institutions. Our wholestructure of society rests on it. Any attempt torear children artificially on a wholesale principle,is necessarily defective, will prove abortive, andbe attended, one way and another, with bad effects.

Unfortunately there are exceptions to a sweepingrule. There can be no family system whereparents are removed by death, or what is moredreadful, where the parents are so grossly dissoluteas to be unfitted for their appropriate duties. Ineither case arises the question as to what is to bedone with children who are so haplessly thrown onpublic charity. An answer to this bri

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!