rest of the family, we sent word that we had a bed promised at the Children's Hospital, and that the child should be returned to her when he was cured. Again she answered she would rather nurse him herself; and her devotion has been rewarded by his becoming a fat little rolly-polly, trudging, we hope, not "unwillingly to school!"

It is a vexed question whether it is preferable to make an allowance sufficient to leave a margin after the expenses are met, or to cut it down to the point where it only just covers the expense among the poor class of fosterparents, and meets merely the main cost of the children among those who are in easier circumstances.

There are advantages on both sides, but I am inclined to believe, although many able persons have decided in favour of liberal payments, that there is greater security in the smaller sum, for it precludes the possibility of persons applying for children who desire to make a profit out of their charge. At Birmingham the negotiation has often broken off as soon as it was ascertained that while stipulating that the foster parents should bear a high character, we were not prepared to pay the usual charge for a nurse child in that district.

The maximum expenditure allowed. under the regulations of the Local Government Board is £13 a year, exclusive of school and medical expenses. But the average is less than this. One committee reckons it at £11; another at £10 8s., while at Birmingham it is £9 16s. per annum per child, or, including every expense, £10 7s. 2d., while the average annual cost per child in the nine district schools was, in 1873, £20 11s. 2d.,1 exclusive of rent charges. The Birmingham expenditure is a few shillings per case less than it costs the City Parish of Edinburgh to maintain its children; but the salary of their superintendent is reckoned in the expenditure upon them, while at Birmingham the supervision is voluntary.

The supervision of voluntary com1 L. G. B. Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 498, 640.

mittees is often said to be worthless, and to be, in fact, a sure cause of failure, although hospitals, reformatories, industrial schools, and indeed most charitable institutions are so managed, and usually with success.

The Local Government Board takes great care to obtain a guarantee that the duties undertaken by the Certified Boarding-out Committees, under whose charge alone children can be placed outside their union, shall be conscientiously performed, not only by requiring that every member, as well as the officers, shall be certified by itself, but by laying down stringent rules to be observed by the committee in supervising the children, and by the guardians in supervising the work of the committee.

Boards of guardians can, and do, employ voluntary committees, or even single individuals, to help in boardingout within the limits of the union, but in that case the children are considered to be on out-relief, and to be legally in the charge of the relieving officers. Both kinds of committees have almost without exception satisfied the Local Government Board and the guardians who have employed them.

The death-rate, combined with the cost of medical appliances, affords a true criterion of the efficiency of a system for the management of children. Tried by these tests, our system comes out well, for the medical expenses in the four largest unions in Scotland in 1869 (mentioned by Mr. Henley in his report upon boarding-out in that country) averaged 1s. 7d. per child per annum, the death-rate at the same time being 14.15 per 1,000, which, as it includes children boarded-out at three months old from urban parishes, is highly satisfactory. In England, as yet, the statistics do not seem to have been so carefully taken; but there is no reason to believe the mortality to be excessive. In Birmingham there has been hitherto no death among eighty children (for we do not, of course, reckon the deaths of J. C.'s sons mentioned above, who were delivered up to their father in perfect health), and

the medical expenses have averaged just under 2s. per head per annum.

The little traits exhibited by the children are sometimes very amusing, for, childlike, they imagine that what pleases themselves must be gratifying to every one else. To one of our boys-a little Roman Catholic-a sixpence was given by an old lady for some little service, dangerously close to Guy Fawkes's celebration. He had never had so much money before in his possession at one time, and, fortunately for her, as it turned out, resolved to husband his resources. He therefore only expended a penny in gunpowder, of which, to do her the greater honour, he laid a train on her doorstep, borrowed a match, and let it off much to the poor lady's astonishment and alarm. His triumph was, however, soon damped by the admonitions of a policeman, and next morning it was completely extinguished, when, on entering school, he was told that he had insulted the Pope by his exploit !

"What a lucky boy I am!" said little J. S. "When I was in the workhouse I had nobody belonging to me; but now I have a father and a mother, two brothers, and a sister, and [as climax] an uncle in New Zealand!"

As to the subsequent career of our children, we cannot, of course, expect uniform success, nor do we claim the 99 per cent. of favourable cases boasted of as obtained in district schools. Originating, as many of these children do, in the dregs of our large cities, we must expect them to bring some remembrance or taint from the sad lives they have led before they came under our charge, which the deplorable precocity of this class enabled them to retain. One of our girls recollects being made drunk by her own mother on gin before she was seven years old!

The English children have not yet been boarded-out in sufficient numbers and long enough to be able to point confidently to results, but such as have been obtained are very encouraging. In Scotland, also, attention has generally not been more directed to the tabulating

of statistics as to success or failure than is usually the case here (in fact, little more is ascertained about the career of the Scotch boarded-out than of the English pauper school children), although many facts have been collected which give ground for belief that at a comparatively small charge to the ratepayers they are, in very fair proportion, made well-conducted, self-supporting members of the community. The City Parish of Glasgow, however, which for many years has had an average of over 300 children boarded-out, has been careful to test the success of the system from time to time by collecting statistics. The latest table. (published in August 1872) drawn up from information concerning persons who, having been boarded-out in childhood, had ceased to be chargeable to the rates in the sixteen years between September 1855 and September 1871, shows the very satisfactory result of 91 per cent. of ascertained success-the other nine being "dead," "unknown," and "bad." That this return was taken when the majority of the individuals composing it were grown up, and not before they had had time to show that they could resist the temptations which they cannot escape on attaining adolescence, is probable from the fact that some of the boys were entered in occupations which they could not have undertaken until they were much over thirteen years of age, when their chargeability ceases.

It may seem extraordinary that while seventy-four should have utterly disappeared from knowledge in less than two years out of 319 of our district school girls (vide Mrs. Senior's report, Local Government Board Report, 1873-4, p. 352), out of 466 Glasgow girls only fourteen should have been lost sight of in sixteen years. But it must be recollected that in the former case four personsthe chaplains-have to keep in communication with the 319, and in the latter each foster-parent has only at the most five or six under his care. Boarding-out, therefore, while it supplies the children with parents whose interest and pride it is that the "Maggie" or "Alick"

whom they have tended in childhood should turn out well, also supplies the means of more exact information concerning them in after life. We readily grant to the officers of a separate school equal measure of interest in the success of their pupils. But the circumstance of their well-known connection with pauperism deters the children from applying to them. This is acknowledged by the superintendent of the Central London School,' who makes the girls say, "I wish to shake off the trammels of official visits-to be free from the pauper stamp." Although they probably did not use these words, which the Irish would call "the hoighth of foine language," they have in all likelihood expressed the sentiment; and they are thus deprived of friends who could, and would, help them when they most required it. Not so the boarded out. No

shame attaches to their connection with their foster-parents, and should the first place be not suitable, or illness attack them, while they are struggling to maintain themselves, they look upon their homes as a sure refuge until the time of trouble be past.

Although under no legal obligation to contribute to the maintenance of their foster-parents when incapacitated, like real descendants, I am glad to say that there are many well-attested instances of the support being willingly conceded. We hear, too, not only of pecuniary support, but the devotion of a son, or the careful nursing of a daughter, perhaps for years. I was told in Scotland that when reports had reached one of the inspectors concerning a house, which made him doubtful whether he should retain children under a foster-mother's charge, a young man entered his office,

1 Observations on Mrs. Senior's Report, by E. C. Tufnell, 1875, p. 6.

having tramped a considerable distance, to say that he had had personal experience of her care, having been himself boarded-out with her. "Let her hae them, sir," he said, them, sir," he said; "she is unco odd, but gude nathless," which testimony saved her from the threatened deprivation.

Such is the boarding-out system. It separates the child entirely from pauperism, it procures for him natural training, and gives him a knowledge of common every-day affairs not to be learnt in the school; for a bright little fellow of eight did not know the relative value of a halfpenny and a sixpence which were put into his hand the day he left the workhouse. Moreover, it places him in an advantageous position for beginning the work of his life. Even if she-for this refers especially to girls-be known to be a boarded-out pauper, it is also known that she has been for at least three or four years with persons of high character, and, consequently, the intending employer does not run the chance, inevitable at the workhouse, of taking a girl into her house whose whole life up to a few weeks, or even days, has been passed among the dregs of our population. When even the life's work has begun the girl is still closely connected, both with persons in her own social position and in the one above-not newly-made friends-who are deeply interested in her welfare.

Boarding-out is a system by no means free from dangers, requiring great care in its working, and under which there is no immunity from failure. But in these points does it differ from any other? Family life is the means which God Himself has instituted to train His little ones, and, in so far as we endeavour to assimilate our methods to His, so far may we look for success.

JOANNA M. HILL.

Ir is characteristic of the way in which great questions are raised in England that an inquiry into the working of our monetary laws should be made, not because there have been great changes in trade since 1844, when legislation last took place, but because a bank which had the right to issue 17. notes in Scotland opened a branch in Cumberland, at which it did not propose to issue any notes at all. As the question of our monetary laws is now, however, exciting attention, it may not be inappropriate to inquire how they came to be what they are; how our system of banking grew up in the face of many legal restrictions, and is still largely modified by these restrictions; and what changes are now required so as to remove these restrictions with the least possible danger to the existing fabric.

In one respect the ground has been cleared for such an inquiry; and it may fairly be said that the facts and traditions upon which the Act of 1844 was based have now disappeared. In 1844 the Bank was the great and even controlling power in the money market. Its transactions were so large, and its possession of the Government deposits. was so important, that practically it controlled the rate of discount, and it was upon this control, and the conseaction the upon quent immediate bullion reserves and the foreign exchanges of a high or low rate of interest, that the Act was based. But in thirty years it has become only one of many. There are single institutions whose discounts are much larger than those of the Bank, and for some years back the governors of the Bank have been acting on the principle that their first duty is to make money for their shareholders, and not to preserve an adequate specie reserve. They have

The

very much ceased to trouble themselves about any abstract questions of money or the exchanges, and are content to rub along as well as they can. It is, for example, undoubtedly the case that as a rule the Bank of England does not hold more gold than the balances which it owes to the other banks. Its normal condition now is very much what it was on a summer evening in 1866, when a deputation of bankers waited. upon the Chancellor of the Exand chequer informed him of their ultimatum, that if he did not suspend the Act of 1844, they would force its suspension by withdrawing their deposits from the bank. other assumption in the Act of 1844, that the circulation of Bank notes should fluctuate as would a circulation of gold, will be discussed in the sequel. But it is sufficient to excite attention to the question to know that the theory that the Bank of England can immediately lessen or raise the rate of interest in the money market, and so influence trade and prices, has ceased to be true. To make the theory of the Act of 1844 now correspond to the facts of the case, it would be necessary that all the great banks should be directly interested in maintaining an adequate specie reserve, and should act unitedly upon all questions affecting that reserve. That they do not so act together, and that our system of banking is what it is, I will now proceed to explain.

The explanation is, that the English system of banking, and of credit so far as it depends upon banking, is largely a creation of the law. At no time for two centuries has the business been in any sense a free one; and however various the opinions of legislators may have been at different times, and however conflicting the principles upon which

cus

they acted, they have always treated bankers as if they were members of a dangerous class. A history of banking legislation would indeed be a not uninteresting addition to the history of human follies. The earliest in point of time, and one of the most pernicious of these restrictions was the Usury laws, which were only entirely abolished in the year 1839. By these laws bankers and capitalists were prevented from obtaining directly the fair value of their money, and were forced to resort to all kinds of indirect means. Customers were compelled to keep large balances, or they were charged various commissions. What was still more important, the banks must often have been crippled in obtaining deposits by their inability to give a fair market value for them; whilst, on the other hand, they must have done injustice to small tomers, especially in times of pressure, and refused them accommodation, because, without a high discount rate, their accounts were not profitable. Nor could the banks raise and lessen their discount rate, and so check prices and speculation, and regulate the flow of bullion. The whole theory of the Usury laws, which affected not banking only, but all credit, was thus precisely the reverse of that of the Act of 1844; and it is one of not the least curious facts in the history of banking that between 1839 and 1844 our legislators should have so entirely changed their policy. Even more curious is it that so short an interval between two opposite excesses was allowed for the medium course of free trade. So little, however, were people prepared for free trade that in these five years alone four alterations were made in the Bank of England rate of discount, while now, for example, in the year 1873, the changes have been twenty-four.

But if the Usury laws affected bankers in common with other classes of capitalists, there has not been wanting much special legislation for their exclusive benefit. The first London bankers were the goldsmiths, whom Charles II. robbed so barefacedly. Almost as soon as the

present constitution was fixed by the Revolution of 1688, the Bank of England was started as a monopoly. No other joint-stock bank was allowed to be formed in England; and no bank, jointstock or private, was allowed to issue notes within sixty-five miles of London. In this way the formation of large banks, such as the Scottish banks, with numerous branches was prevented; and so the banks in large towns, where money is always in demand, were unable directly to obtain the deposits of the smaller towns, where money is always plenty. Owing to this the class of money-brokers, of which Overend, Gurney and Co., was the type, grew up towards the close of the last century; their legitimate business was to obtain money from country bankers and capitalists, and to give them in return the bills of town bankers. No doubt some of these restrictions were gradually abolished, but the process itself was a slow one, and as soon as the older restrictions were abolished, new ones were created. In fact, if one might use the illustration, the old twist or bias in the system was not removed till a new one was created. Thus, for example, the first permission to establish-joint stock banks compelled all banks to adopt the principle of unlimited liability, although in the older banks, the Banks of England, Ireland, and Scotland, the liability was limited. The capital of the banks was thus made small when compared with their liabilities, as many parties would object to take shares in unlimited companies; and of course when the shareholders were limited in number, the capital of the banks would also be limited. This restriction has now, indeed, been removed, and banks with limited liability have been created; but there is still a prejudice against them, which, as will be shown in the sequel, it will require years to overcome. Then again this permission to found "unlimited " jointstock banks was, by a curious fatality, almost coincident in time with the withdrawal of the right to issue notes under 51. But as a very considerable proportion of the business of new banks depends