"Men of notorious depravity," "catchwork
labourers," "men of indolent and drinking
habits," are common definitions of gang-
masters; and there seems no more doubt that,
by sanctioning gang-labour as it exists now, we
are training pupils for the prisons and the hulks,
than that under other circumstances the same
children might be made useful and honourable
members of society.

If gang-labour is to be permitted at all, it is
obviously our duty to insist upon the gang-
masters being men of character; that there
shall be proper limits of age, of hours of labour,
and of the distance to be walked for the children.
There must be no more mixed gangs of
boys and girls working indiscriminately; and a
female superintendent must be employed for the
gangs of female workers. Efficient checks must
be provided over the conduct of gang-masters
and mistresses, who should be licensed by the
magistrates, and called strictly to account for
their own conduct and that of their gang. But,
above all, the children must be educated. The
moment they begin to earn wages, there need
be no difficulty in enforcing this. Nay, we have
already, in the Factory Act, a useful precedent
at hand. The great principle of that act is
that, in the case of children between the age of
eight years (under which age the same act forbids
their being employed at all) and the age of
thirteen, a small per-centage of each child's
earnings shall be devoted to education. It is
impossible to over-estimate the beneficial effects
of the clauses securing this, which are briefly
epitomised as follows:

"The parent or person having any direct
benefit from the wages of any child under
thirteen years of age employed in a factory must
cause such child to attend school.

"The school-attendance must be either for
three hours a day during five days of the week,
or on three alternate days for five hours each
day.

"Non-attendance is excused: 1, for
sickness or other unavoidable cause. 2, by
consent in writing of inspector of factories. The
inspector cannot disallow the certificate of a
bad school unless he can specify a good one
within two miles.

"The occupier of every factory in which a
child is employed must obtain, on a day named
by the inspector, a certificate in a certain form
from the schoolmaster, that such child has
attended school during the prescribed times, and
must produce such certificate when required by
the inspector.

"Provision is made for the payment to the
schoolmaster of the school fee. The duty is
imposed upon the occupier of the factory (the
employer of the child) to pay to the schoolmaster
for the education of such child any sum
the inspector may require, not exceeding
twopence per week. This sum the occupier
(employer) may deduct from the wages payable to
such child; but the sum is not allowed to
exceed one-twelfth part of the child's weekly
wages."

It is obvious that similar regulations to these
might be, and ought to be, enforced wherever
child-labour is in request. Throughout Lincolnshire,
Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk,
Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire, agricultural
gangs, composed of women and children of both
sexes, may be found at work. They exist, too,
but less numerously, in Northamptonshire,
Bedfordshire, and Rutland, and many thousands
of innocent children, speaking our own tongue,
and amenable to our own laws, are at present
doomed to all the evils of ignorance, demoralisation,
and ill health. This is no distant grievance,
no case for missionary effort, for subscription-
lists, memorials, or platform oratory. It is
a heinous sin crying at our very doors for relief,
and the particulars of which are set forth on
the unimpeachable authority of a parliamentary
record. Is it too much to ask of the six hundred
and fifty-eight disinterested gentlemen
who are kind enough to act as guardians of the
country's honour (or to talk about it), that
this foul blot shall be removed from our
escutcheon, and that, for the sake of the
Christianity we profess, helpless infants shall be no
longer pressed and tortured into the devil's
service, in order that a premium may be secured
to ignorance, cupidity, and crime?

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

SARAH MALCOLM.

IN one of the snug compartments, tapestried
with pictures, of the Historical Portrait Exhibition
now open at South Kensington, the visitor
comes suddenly upon a woman's face that at
once fascinates and repels him. There is a hard
shameless beauty about the full rounded
forehead; the eyes are steely and fixed like those
of a bird of prey, the thin compressed lips
are stern and cruel. Mr. Tom Taylor, that
admirable art-critic, says the face has something
of a Lady Macbeth expression, and so it has
—Lady Macbeth as she would have been in
common life. The pretty yet forbidding
woman wears, if we remember right, a low-cut
gown, her bosom is covered with the modest
and simple muslin tucker of that time; she
sits bare-armed at a table, her hands are
pressed together in a peculiar way, expressing
a stubborn, unrepentant resolution. That
woman is Sarah Malcolm; she is in the condemned
cell. The picture was painted by Hogarth
when he was about thirty-five, perhaps the very
day that he went to Newgate to watch through
the spiked hatch for a typical face for his idle
apprentice.

On Thursday, the 2nd of February, 1733, a
certain Mrs. Frances Rhymer went to call upon
Mrs. Lydia Duncomb, an old widow with some
property, who lived with her two servants, Elizabeth
Harrison, an old maid, her companion, and
Ann Price, a girl of about seventeen, in Tanfield-
court, a mere passage still existing in the
Temple.

Tanfield-court is a little dark bin with the