he two facts bear the relation of
cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful
crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on
which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral
as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon
further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the
best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not
only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every
town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established,
that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail
are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls,
and _vice versa_.

"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools
of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the
right direction:

____________________________________________________________________
|1847.|1848.|1849.|1850.|1851.|1852.|1853.|1854.|1855.|
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
Imprisoned, | 12 | 19 | 26 | 9 | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | - |
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|

Imprisonments in } 66, averaging 16.5 per year on number of 417
the first four years} children.

In subsequent five } 3, averaging 0.6 per year on number of 728
years, } children.
____
Difference, 15.9

16.5 : 15.9 :: 100 : 96.36.

"Thus," says Mr. Thornton, "it appears that the diminution of the
average annual number of children attending our schools imprisoned in
the latter period of five years, as compared with the annual average of
the previous four years, is ninety-six per cent.--a striking fact, which
is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit conferred on them by the
religious and secular instruction they receive in our schools, or, at
the very least, of the advantages of rescuing them from the temptations
of idleness, and from evil companionship and example."

I also copy, from the work already referred to, an extract from a paper
on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol, by Mary Carpenter:
"In numberless instances children may be seen growing up decently, who
owe their only training and instruction to the school. Young persons are
noticed in regular work, who, before they attended the Ragge