PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETY, FOR THE REFORMATION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS.-Report presented at the Farewell Anniversary Meeting in St. George's Fields, October 28, 1849. -The Committee of the Philanthropic Society would take the opportunity of this parting Anniversary Meeting within the walls of the old London Establishment, to thank the friends and well-wishers of the charity, assembled on the occasion, and especially those who have for so many years attended the chapel services, and formed part of its congregation, for the support and encouragement which they have given in furtherance of the society's objects. It is not without regret that the committee carry out the arrangements for finally removing the institution from the locality where it has been so long established, and in which it has been enabled to be of so much substantial service to the public, and to the many hundreds of destitute and helpless children received under its shelter. The demands however made on the society for larger efforts; for a training more adapted to make the lads under its care useful and acceptable emigrants; have left them no alternative. They felt that they had to choose between the gradual extinction of the charity, and the carrying out the important experiment which is now going on in the Farm School at Redhill.-How far, namely, the discipline and occupations of a country school, conducted on the footing of a free agricultural colony, can be successfully applied to the religious and industrial training of such youths as the Philanthropic seeks to rescue and reform? They have, therefore, steadily pursued the plan determined on last year for the transfer of the society's operations; and most thankful are they to state that hitherto their undertaking has been blessed and prospered, and gives substantial promise of success. Many difficulties have ne

cessarily been met with; many drawbacks encountered. Many questions of discipline and employment could only be settled experimentally. The farm house already existing on the farm offered only imperfect and limited accommodation. The occupations at the farm requiring the lads to work in earnest nine or ten hours a day at different points, in small parties together; and requiring, too, that their industrial teachers should work with them, and not merely superintend them; offered abundant means and opportunities of escape. The necessity of exacting a real industry, obedience, and regularity from the boys, and of accustoming them to the plain hardy system of the ordinary labourer's life, entailed repeated provocations and inducements to the indolent or refractory to abscond; and the majority of the elder lads being strictly volunteers, admitted at their own application, on the expiration of their sentence, the society had no legal power of detaining them, or of enforcing their return if they absconded. Yet, thanks to the power of religious influence, to the attractive and subduing force of kindness, to the self-respect, thoughtfulness, and sense of personal responsibility, created (especially in the older lads) by their free position and the confidence reposed in them, and last, not least, to the interest attaching to the varied and active occupations of agricultural life, the steadiness and industrial exertion of the boys have been greater, the faults and offences committed have been much fewer and of lighter caste, than during any corresponding period of the society's operations, on its former system of sedentary employment, and restriction within walls and gates. The numbers in the

school has for the last three months been above fifty (being as many as the farm house will contain), mostly between fourteen and eighteen years of age; while only eight instances

have occurred of boys leaving the school without permission. Of these, three left at the first starting of the school, shortly after their removal from London, having evidently awaited that opportunity of returning to their former course of life. The remaining five were all young boys, whose motive for absconding was their wish to see their friends, from whom the situation of the Farm School effectually separates them. Three of these five boys returned of their own accord, soliciting re-admission and forgiveness; the other two were sent back by their friends and are now in the London school.

To these encouraging circumstances it may be added, that the hostile and distrustful feeling which was very generally expressed among the residents in the neighbourhood upon the first establishment of the Farm School has now disappeared, and that a most kindly interest and goodwill towards its youthful inmates is now generally evinced ;--a change mainly attributable to the good conduct of the boys themselves. So far, therefore, as the system of the Farm School has been yet tried, its promoters have reason to rejoice in its success, and to rely on the methods of discipline and industrial education which are in action in it. The committee trust that when established on a larger footing, and more completely organized, the school will yield still more abundant and favourable results; and that the friends who have aided and supported the Philanthropic so liberally in past years will, in return, continue and enlarge their efforts in its favour, feeling that the great public ends for which the charity was originally founded are being more effectually and lastingly secured by the changes that have been gradually made in its arrangement and mode of operations. The admissions to the school have been necessarily much restricted. Since the anniversary meeting on the 10th of December, 1848, however, forty-four boys have been received. Of these, seven have been admitted on the free list; ten on con

dition of a payment towards their maintenance from their friends; five on recommendation of Sir George Grey; and twenty-one from the county associations in alliance with the Philanthropic, in Cheshire, Norfolk, &c. Of these last, sixteen have come from Knutsford House of Correction, all of the older and volunteer class; a remarkable testimony to the influence which the chaplain of that prison, the Rev. C. Mitchell, has acquired over the minds of the difficult and unhopeful description of youths under his charge. It has been necessary to return a considerable number of the younger boys, admitted in 1848, to the care of their relatives; about thirty others have been placed out with masters; thirty-six were enabled to emigrate to Algoa Bay in February last. The accounts received of these lads, as also of those sent out in the previous August to Swan River, are very encouraging they have all been well received and engaged in favourable situations: the large majority of them appear to have maintained a very satisfactory character. There are now fifty-three boys at the Farm School, and twenty-seven in the London Establishment: these latter will be removed very shortly, the new buildings, of which His Royal Highness Prince Albert laid the first stone on the 30th of April last, being now completed. The committee take this opportunity of acknowledging the kind and acceptable gift of a Harmonion (or small Organ), presented to the society for use in the new chapel of the Farm School, by an old and constant friend of the institution, Mr. George Vaughan: as also that of a stained window for the eastern end of the chapel, from the treasurer (Mr. Gladstone) and Mr. Cattley. While they enforce the utmost plainness and simplicity in all the arrangements of the houses in which the boys are to be accommodated, they are anxious that the devotional effect of the chapel should be made as great as possible, and that its fittings should be of the solid and substantial character appropriate to the building.