gratification of sensual desires and appetites. In this manner,
filthy, lewd, sensual, boisterous, and skilful in the commission of
crime, a great part of the populations of our towns grow up to
manhood. Of the truth or falsehood of this description any one can
convince himself, who will examine our criminal records, or who will
visit the back streets of any English town, when the schools are
full, and count the children upon the door-steps and pavements, and
note their condition, manners, and appearance, and their degraded and
disgusting practices."--Kay, vol. i. 33.[133]

This is, however, little different from what might be looked, for in a
country whose provision for the education of its people is thus
described:--

"About one-half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of
signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of
education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how
stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds,
which is the centre of the movement for letting education remain as
it is, left entirely to chance and charity to supply its
deficiencies, how do we find the fact? This, that in 1846, the last
year to which these returns are brought down, of 1850 marriages
celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of the men and 1020 of the
women, or considerably more than one-half of the latter, signed their
names with marks. 'I have also a personal knowledge of this
fact--that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate
neighbourhood, only 14 men can sign their names in the receipt of
their wages; and this not because of any diffidence on their part,
but positively because they cannot write.' And only lately, the
_Leeds Mercury_ itself gave a most striking instance of ignorance