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 which did get into the world, should be properly cared for, so as to give it all the best chances; but that all the care possible to the somewhat delicate case should be taken, that as few more of such children as might be should follow them.

All of this new project, bearing upon the criminal and mendicant elements of society, involved an apparatus of vast preliminary effort and expense. The State must have reckoned upon having, at the outset, to prrovide for, as well as control, a huge mass of criminal, worthless, and helpless beings. But if the State could clear all these demoralizing elements out of sight upon society's highway, and, by having them generally in secure permanent disciplinary charge, prevent, in great measure, inter-marriage and the legacy of a like succession, the State and society would be eventually great gainers. The present cost would form a capital account, large indeed, but well laid out; as the succeeding generation would emerge upon an altogether higher social platform. Let us glance for a moment at both sections of this subject, the criminal and the mendicant.

All over the country, and more especially in the great metropolis, there existed a multitudinous class of professional criminals. These were mostly themselves the descendants of criminals before them, and they were mostly rearing descendants of their own