them. What are they to do? The Army and
Navy will have none of them! and industrial life has no place for them.
So prison, workhouse and common lodging-houses are their only homes.

Wise emigration methods would include many of them, and decent fellows
they would make if given a chance. Oxygen and new environment, with
plenty of food, etc., would make an alteration in their physique, and
regular work would prove their salvation. But this matter should, and
must be, undertaken by the State, for philanthropy cannot deal with it;
and when the State does undertake it, consequences unthought-of will
follow, for the State will be able to close one-half of its prisons.

It is the helplessness of weaklings that provides the State with more
than half its prisoners. Is it impossible, I would ask, for a Government
like ours, with all its resources of wealth, power and influence to
devise and carry out some large scheme of emigration? If colonial
governments wisely refuse our inferior youths, is it not unwise for our
own Government to neglect them?

In the British Empire is there no idle land that calls for men and
culture? Here we in England have thousands of young fellows who, because
of their helplessness, are living lives of idleness and wrongdoing.

Time after time these young men find their way into prison, and every
short sentence they undergo sends them back to liberty more hopeless
and helpless. Many of them are not bad fellows; they have some qualities
that are estimable, but they are undisciplined and helpless. Not all the
discharged prisoners' aid societies in the land, even with Government
assistance, can procure reasonable and progressive employment for them.

The thought of thousands of young men, not criminals, spending their
lives in a senseless and purposeless round of short imprisonments,
simply because they are not quite as big and as strong as their
fellows, fills me with wonder and dismay, for I can estimate some of the
consequences that result.

Is it impossible, I would ask, for our Government to take up this matter
in a really great way? Can no arrangement be made with our colonies for
the reception and training of these young fellows? Probably not so long
as the colonies can secure an abundance of better human material. But
has a bona-fide effort been made in this direction? I much doubt it
since the days of transportation.

Is it not possible for our Government to obtain somewhere in the whole
of