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The question, then, as to the form which future provision for the needs of the whole class of idiots, becomes a pressing one to all interested in their welfare or their management.

It was known that the attention of the authorities of Great Britain had already been turned to this subject. Steps had there been taken with reference to meeting the needs of all by a degree of classification and appropriate care. With the permission of the trustees I made a brief visit to that country to study the methods adopted there.

During that visit I inspected all the institutions of that country, except a small establishment at Dundee, in Scotland. Knowing also that more or less of the total number of the class were still to be found in the insane asylums, I visited nearly thirty of such institutions. I am therefore enabled to speak of the present and prospective plans for providing for idiots both a suitable training, where such training would be of service, and also mere custody for the more helpless and hopeless cases.

In Great Britain there are, as in this country, well-ordered private institutions for the care and training of idiots.

There is another class of institutions for the same purpose, endowed and supported mainly by donations and legacies of the wealthy and benevolent. These admit a certain number of indigent cases gratuitously, as also pay cases.

These, by their mode of support, have been constrained to receive not only teachable cases, but also custodial cases.

Thus, donation of a certain amount, carries with it the might to vote in the selection of pupils. At the annual elections, the circumstances of the family from which the candidate comes, have more influence than the question of teachableness in the person whose admission is desired. It is not necessary to show the unwisdom of selecting pupils on the ground of sympathy, rather than of judgment. It is beginning to be strongly felt in England, and will soon doubtless be abandoned.

The question of the proper care and training of idiots, as a public measure and at the expense of the tax-payers, is now being discussed, and practically answered in the affirmative.

Two large custodial asylums, the one at Groyden, and the other at Caterham, are now receiving the adult idiots at the metropolitan lunatic asylums and poor-houses.

Within a year, one of the counties constituting a part of London has founded an asylum for the care and training of nearly 300 young idiots. This establishment has temporary occupation of one of the London orphan asylums. New buildings are now being erected for its accommodation in the suburbs of London.

In Great Britain, the tendency now is to a proper classification of all the dependent classes. One obvious reason for this lies in the fact that when thus classified, the needs of each class can be more readily seen and more economically met. This same disposition is seen in the action of the public authorities of Scotland and Ireland. This motive moves those who have to deal with pauperism and dependence in its aggregations. There is another influence in the same direction, that has its rise in an enlightened observation of the individual and family tributaries, that go to swell these collections of unfortunates. In the families of the indigent, the occurrence of an idiot member is seen materially to diminish or cripple the productive industry of a whole family. In the older civilization of Europe, indigence means a struggle for existence, in which every member of the family, old enough to be put to work, is a participant; even then, the family, perhaps, can only just keep its head above water. In such a case, an idiot child may sink the whole family into absolute pauperism. When this becomes apparent, it is a short sighted public policy that will not assume the lesser, rather than the greater, burden.

So in Great Britain social economy prompts the separation of this class and their proper management in institutions expressly designed for them.

Fortunately in this country, away from the large cities or the large centers of manufactures, such positive indigence is not common. And yet the burden of an idiot member is a serious one in many a family in the state.

In general terms, it may be said that what is the part of wisdom in Great Britain, in such a matter of social economy, is wise in the United States. At all events, their example may be safely followed in the matter of classification, so far as the public institutions are concerned, subject to such modifications as difference of circumstances may demand.

To confine the comparison in circumstances to Great Britain and our own state, it may be observed that the population of this state is much sparser than that of England, and so there is no occasion for the building up of mammoth establishments, which only a supposed necessity would justify anywhere. Even the limits of size, in point of economical administration, are reached, when are collected as many inmates as one superintending head can grasp in all the required details of executive management.