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 in a large proportion, would be apparent to every unprejudiced person. The poor-law rule warns such officials that "warmth of temper and passionate conduct generally betray a consciousness of want of firmness. The commissioners are desirous that all the master's duties should be discharged with the strictest regard to propriety. The habits of many of the inmates will often be coarse and depraved, but the conduct of every officer of such an establishment should correspond with what those habits ought to be, rather than with what they actually are." One of the master's duties is "to take care that no pauper at the approach of death shall be left unattended, either during the day or night." How often all these rules are broken or evaded, every one must be aware who believes all that has been said of the interiors of workhouses. Passionate temper and abusive language, there is every reason to believe, is a common style of behaviour towards the paupers, and all the rules and injunctions in the world will prove quite ineffectual to guard against such abuses of power, if persons from a vulgar and uneducated class continue to be selected for such posts of responsibility, where "temper and discretion and integrity are required for the judicious discharge of its duties."

Amongst sixteen rules laid down for the guidance of the matron, one of her duties is said to be "to visit the sleeping wards of the female paupers every day at eleven, and all the wards of the females and children every night before nine." Whether this might be done or not by the overworked matron, with many hundreds or thousands under her charge, I cannot say, but I know that often it is not done at all.

The following words, written with regard to prison management, are equally applicable to that of workhouses, and till the truth they inculcate be heeded, all our hopes of reform will be in vain. "Fallen men, to be elevated and humanized, must be dealt with as men and brothers, not as brutes and slaves. Whether this golden rule has, in all cases, been followed as strictly by the inferior as by the superior officers"—(here, alas! there are few, if any, "superior officers")—"and whether there can be sufficient security for its general observance until these offices are occupied by a higher class of men, acting on higher motives, and with a special training for their duties, is an important subject of inquiry, to which it will be needful that public attention should be directed." The lower, the more hopeless and degraded the class we have to manage and elevate, the more zeal, patience, devotion and courage must there be in the governors, and there-