population, which was thus with each passing year more and more unsuitable for every form of unsettled life, there was already beginning to be felt the direct effect of the sanitary reconstructions going on, not only in London itself, the prime mover in that way, but also at the other chief urban centres, in turning all the criminal class out of the long-accustomed dark dens and recesses of old town life, which had previously sheltered from common view the hosts of those owls of the night. Nor must we forget the stimulus imparted by a universally educated people, who could thus more clearly apprehend existing social defects, and understand how best to grapple with them.
There was in particular one conspicuous feature of the new movement. Listening at last to the repeated admonitions of science, we had now turned our attention to repressing, by all reasonably practical means, the progenital continuation of the bad or worthless existing elements with which we were thus so vigorously waging war. "Like parent, like child." We might securely dispose of the hardened parents, so that they should no longer harm the rest of society; but it they freely left their brood to take their place, all of society's work had simply to be done over again, and even upon an ever-increasing scale. Already we restrained lunatics from leaving behind them a like lunatic offspring. Thenceforward, in that way, our restraining efforts were extended to the criminal, and to the useless and worthless in general. Our new policy, in short, in this particular department of it, was substantially to this effect—that every child of the society, even of the most questionable origin,
