e moral interests of the community. These interests demand that
women should not be debased, as criminal statistics prove that they
are by active participation in modern industrialism; they demand that
the all-important duties of motherhood should be in the hands of
persons capable of fulfilling them worthily, and not in the hands of
persons whose previous occupations have often rendered them unfit for
being a centre of grace and purity in the home. It cannot be too
emphatically insisted on that the home is the great school for the
formation of character among the young, and it is on character that
conduct depends. In proportion as this school of character is
improved, in the same proportion will crime decrease. But how is it to
be improved when the tendencies of industrialism are to degrade the
women who stand by nature at the head of it? Indifferent mothers
cannot make children good citizens; and the present course of things
industrial is slowly but surely tending to debase the fountain head of
the race. At the International Conference concerning the regulation of
labour held recently at Berlin, M. Jules Simon, at the close of an
excellent speech to the delegates, pointed out the remedy for the
present condition of things. "You will pardon me," he said, "for
concluding my observations with a personal remark, which is perhaps
authorised by a past entirely consecrated to a defence of the cause
which brings us here. The object we are aiming at is moral as well as
material; it is not only in the physical interests of the human race
that we are endeavouring to rescue children, youths, and women from
excessive toil; we are also labouring to restore woman to the home,
the child to its mother, for it is from her only that those lessons of
affection and respect which make the good citizen can be learned. We
wish to call a halt in the path of demoralisation down which the
loosening of the family tie is leading the human mind."

Passing from the question of sex and crime we shall now consider the
proportions which crime bears to age. According to the calculations of
the late Mr. Clay, chaplain of Preston prison, the practice of
dishonesty among persons, who afterwards find their way into prisons,
begins at a very early age. In a communication addressed to Lord
Shaftesbury, in 1853, he said that 58 per cent. of criminals were
dishonest under 15 years of age; 14 per cent. became dishonest between
15 and 16; 8 per cent. became dish