that time when their labour can be of
value to their parents. But the other answer, in my opinion, is still
more decisive: it is found even at the early age of seven or eight,
that children are not void of those propensities, which are the
forerunners of vice, and I can give no better illustration of this,
than the fact of a child only eight years old, being convicted of a
capital offence at our tribunals of justice; when, therefore, I find
that at this early period of life, these habits of vice are formed, it
seems to me that we ought to begin still earlier to store their minds
with such tastes, and to instruct them in such a manner as to exclude
the admission of those practises that lead to such early crime and
depravity. A Noble friend has most justly stated, that it is not with
the experiences of yesterday that we come armed to the contest: it is
not a speculation that we are bringing forward to your notice, but an
experiment.'--_The Lord Chancellor_.

"In leaving poor children to the care of their parents, neglect is the
least that happens; it too frequently occurs that they are turned over
to delegates, where they meet with the worst treatment; so that we do
not in fact come so much into contact with the parents themselves as
with those delegates, who are so utterly unfit for the office they
undertake. Infant Schools, however, have completely succeeded, not
only in the negative plan they had in view, of keeping the children
out of vice and mischief, but even to the extent of engrafting
in their minds at an early age those principles of virtue, which
capacitated them for receiving a further stage of instruction at a
more advanced school, and finally, as they approached manhood, to be
ripened into the noblest sentiments of probity and integrity."--_The
Marquis of Lansdowne_.

"I am a zealous friend, upon conviction, to Infant Schools for the
children of the poor. No person who has not himself watched them, can
form an adequate action of what these institutions, when judiciously
conducted, may effect in forming the tempers and habits of young
children; in giving them, not so much actual knowledge, as that which
at their age is more important, the habit and faculty of acquiring it;
and it correcting those moral defects which neglect or injudicious
treatment would soon confirm and render incurable. The early age at
which children are taken out of our National Schools, is an additional
reason for commencing a regular