cumstances of the times could have been adopted; at the present day it appears to be both unnecessary and ineffectual. If, however, it should be deemed imprudent to abandon altogether long established foundations, which, however, imperfect or inadequate, are still productive of some advantage, we take the liberty of recommending the adoption of measures, for rendering them more useful and efficient, and placing them under such regulations, that every Diocese may contribute its proportion towards their establishment and support; for these purposes we beg leave to suggest, that instead of requiring a school to be kept in every diocese, which has been already found impracticable, a certain number only should be established in every province, to be supported out of the contributions from each diocese in the Province; or, if it should be found more convenient, out of a general fund, consisting of contributions from all the dioceses in every province: supposing the whole number of schools thus established to be twelve, and that the average contribution of the 34 dioceses was 361., the endowment of each school would be 1027. per annum; but it is presumed that the average might be raised to 40%., without bearing hard on the clergy, especially if impropriators were obliged to contribute, and if the sons of the poorer clergy and curates were to be admitted into the schools as free scholars. In fixing on the situation for the schools, regard should be had principally to the want of proper grammar-schools in the different districts of each province, and, as far as might be, to the continuance of the best of the Diocesan Schools already existing; by the acts of the 12th George I., and 29th George II., provision is made for building and repairing Diocesan School-houses; and in the act which would be necessary for the purpose here suggested, they might be so amended, as to apply and be accommodated to that purpose, and provision might be made for putting them in force.

neg

The Report proceeds to exculpate the bishops and clergy from the charge of lect in the present state of these schools. This attempt at exculpation is at variance with the report; for if the commissioners have established that blame, and if the blame is to fall on one class of men particularly, the bishops and clergy of Ireland appear most deserving of the censure.

The Fifth Report is upon the state of the charity schools founded under the will of a Mr. Wilson, and situated in the county of Westmeath; as this cannot be deemed a national object, upon it I shall not dilate.

The Sixth Report is on the Blue Coat Hospital, and from it I have formed the following table:

1797

Expenditure.
£4142

Boys admitted.

Boys apprenticed.

These few figures will have a stronger effect than any comment. Upwards of £40,000. expended in eleven years for 208 apprentice boys!

The Seventh Report is on the Hibernian School in the Phoenix Park. This school was established for the education of the children of non-commissioned officers and private soldiers, and is meant to be a military school; from the appearance of it, indeed, it must be completely so. Having drawn the attention of the Commissioners of Education to a subject very irrelevant to the object of their inquiries, namely, the necessity of standing armies to the British empire; a short analysis of the Report will demonstrate that it has failed in supporting this object.

Independently of this expense, there is a farm, and a dairy of cows grazed in the

park.

£63,395. EXPENDED IN EIGHT YEARS, AND TWELVE BOYS GIVEN TO THE ARMY!

The Eighth Report is upon the Foundling Hospital, which the commissioners have wisely taken into their consideration. It is, however, unlike the two institutions last mentioned. These may answer in providing for agents and inspectors, registrars, and providores (an office in England known by the name of house-keeper), chaplains and stewards; and they may ultimately send out a few children at an enormous expense; but they do not exhibit that melancholy waste of life, and that extensive misery in its most hideous forms, which is to be met with in the institution I am about to examine. I shall, perhaps, be informed that these charities were intended for the maintenance and education of poor children; and that I am mistaken in concluding, that they are institutions the only use of which is, the expending of large incomes for the extension of the patronage of trustees; but I am grateful to the Board of Education, for the facts which they have laid before parliament correspond exactly with the conclusions I had drawn from my own researches. It exhibits an almost unparalleled system of neglect and corruption, in every institution which they have examined; and in the report which I have now before me, they expressly state, we are informed that (except when offices of emolument were to be disposed of) it was difficult, out of a board consisting of nearly two hundred governors, to procure the attendance of five once a quarter, to transact the ordinary business of the establishment."* Why the commissioners included the above few words, which I have put in italics, within parentheses, I cannot divine; they ought to have been printed in capitals, to render them more conspicuous, as they mark in the strongest terms, the general characters of these public charity trustees. These institutions are monuments of national vanity; they are the source of great corruption, and of misplaced patronage; and are maintained at such enormous annual charges, that seven-eights of the expenditure might be lopped off, and a greater number of necessitous objects relieved. The extent of these evils, as they apply to the Foundling Hospital, must be my apology for dwelling upon the situation of that Charity at such length. They will be found to be so great in this particular institution, that no one, taking extraordinary trouble to discover them, would be justified to himself or to his country, were he not to give them a full exposure. In such a case all private feeling must give way to public duty.

The commissioners, by their report, do not seem to have sufficiently canvassed the propriety of, or the benefit to be expected from such an institution; but have admitted it to be one of the highest national importance. I shall proceed to

* Page 2.

examine it. First, I dissent from the commissioners on the principle of the Institution. I consider an hospital that presents an open basket, to receive every infant, without distinction, as one of the greatest national evils that can be devised by human ingenuity; even if well conducted in its internal regulations, it holds out encouragement to all kinds of vice, and imperceptibly deadens the finest feelings of the human heart: the poor are tempted to part with their offspring; to resign into the hands of strangers the most endearing of all parental employments, that of a mother fostering her own child. But if it should chance to be badly conducted, humanity must be further shocked, while the miserable victims are left to bewail the conduct of unnatural parents, and the existence of so vile an institution. A writer of no mean celebrity,* has exposed the folly of these establishments, in such a manner, as precludes my entering into any general discussion of the subject. After his observations, I shall not attempt any farther illustration, but refer those who entertain any doubts of my opinion, to the Essay on Population, confining myself to some remarks on the information so beneficently laid before the public by the Board of Education in Ireland.

In Dublin there is another institution, not merely in name, but in fact, a House of Industry, an asylum for every person willing to labour; unlike in its principle to the hospital for foundlings, and managed, as I shall shew, in a very different manner. The one receives a human being, a prey to idleness, loaded with filth and friendless, and returns the same individual to the world, industrious, clean and healthy; and though without a friend, improved by those habits which render assistance less needful: the other, in most cases, receives a blooming infant, by a temptation which no one can contemplate without astonishment, that of the enjoyment of idleness to its unnatural parent; and either soon sends it to its grave, or renders it a spectacle too shocking to be viewed without a mixed sensation of horror and indignation. If given out to nurse, it robs some infant of its destined food, and induces a foster-mother, by the temptation of a trifling pittance, to bestow upon it a part of that care, which ought exclusively to belong to her own progeny. Such are the leading distinctions of these two very different institutions. The contrast is striking, and much room is left for reflection.

The constitution and objects of the Foundling Hospital+ have undergone many and various alterations by acts of parliament, since the erection of the building in 1704 ; but it is now managed on a plan established by the 35th sec. 3d chap. of Geo. III. On this act subsequent ones have been ingrafted; but by it the institution was vested in the hands of nine persons, under whose direction it still remains. This change,

Mr. Malthus.

+ In England, the nature and circumstances of the Foundling Hospital had been investigated by Parliament, and all further grants of public money discontinued. See Mr. Baker's Speech, Woodfall's Debates, vol. 2, 1802. P. 160.

according to the Report of the Commissioners of the Board of Education, took place in consequence "of the vices in the constitution, and the abuses in the management of it."* As an instance it is stated, that "a majority of the infants received were abandoned, as hopelessly afflicted with a loathsome disease;"+ but on an investigation which took place January 8th, 1799, "it was clearly established, that but one in twenty-nine of these helpless infants were so infected, and subsequent observation reduced the proportion still further." So much for the accuracy of that popular opinion, under the influence of which these helpless infants were abandoned; but it is necessary that the public, who are encouraging and supporting this institution, should be made acquainted with the numbers which were thus inhumanly left to their fate.

Table of the ADMISSIONS of Children into the Foundling Hospital, from 1785 to 1797 inclusive, stating the DEATHS which took place in each Year, in the Infant Nursery and Infant Infirmary.