information as to the internal situation and circumstances of the country :-the office of the Board to be open to proposals, suggestions, and communications, from every part of Ireland; upon which reports should be made to Government, from time to time, as circumstances might require.

Instead of apprehending that private charities might be checked by such an establishment, one may venture to express a confidence, and that founded on experience, that the efforts and exertions of the landowners and gentlemen would be thereby increased and encouraged, in every part of Ireland; when they saw a Board, so established and sanctioned by Government, expressly to pay attention to and assist their endeavours to meliorate the character and condition of their tenants and neighbours. At present the difficulty is great, because the appearance is formidable. No one, however, doubts the expediency of improvements, in the morals and industry of the country, where they have property or are resident.

And be it remembered, where labour is made easy and pleasurable, and examples of success are frequent, exertion and cooperation will never be wanting in the cause of humanity.

Tho the preparing and arranging of plans for the improvement of the Irish poor will require some degree of steady and continued attention on the part of one or two of the Committee, yet the attendance of the other members may be on the same footing as that of the Board of Agriculture, or of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor. The situation may be made honourable and respectable, and the labour chiefly confined to the first proceedings and arrangemets, the duty being to advise and report, but not to decide and carry into execution. It would therefore be perfectly unnecessary that there should be any salary for any of the members of the Board; and the expence of the whole establishment might be so trifling as not to exceed £500. a year.

The present moment does not indeed, at first view, appear to be open to new projects, and new suggestions of civil improvements. It will appear, however, that there are circumstances peculiarly favourable to a measure of this kind at present. The necessity of some melioration of character and condition in the poor of Ireland, is become so pressing and imperious, as to be felt by every one. A crisis of public danger and calamity has been always found to soften, prepare, and awaken the human mind, and to produce the most favourable disposition for improvement, exertion, and co-operation; and, at the present moment, the personal characters of all the leading men in Ireland as well as in England, are such, as to offer great advantages in the commencement of so arduous and important an undertaking.

4th June, 1804

No. CXVIII.

Extract from an Account of a School in the Borough Road. By JOHN WALKER, Esq.

IN In 1798 Mr. Joseph Lancaster opened a school in the Borough Road, Southwark, for the instruction of 100 children of mechanics in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is now attended by 500 scholars, and preparations are making for 200 more. Only go are children of persons in a more independent situation. The peculiar modes of instructing the children, of exciting emulation by rewards, and of preserving order by division of attention, are such as merit a more detailed account than the plan of the Reports admits. This detail, however, the reader will find in a publication of Mr. Lancaster's, intitled, Improvements in "Education,* as it respects the industrious "Classes of the Community."

Sold by Hatchard, Piccadilly; also by Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch-street, and J. Matthews, Strand.

In order to produce a stimulus to exertion, the master provided about 200 leather tickets, gilt and lettered, according to relative degrees of merit. The value of these tickets vary, from No. 1, which must be obtained six times to entitle the bearer to a halfpenny prize; to No. 6, which gained forty times gives a shilling prize. The prizes consist of bats, balls, kites, and the like. Besides this, there are in the schools honorary orders of merit, worn by the pupils until forfeited by misbehaviour; the forfeiture being in lieu of corporal or other punishment.

The system of tuition is almost entirely conducted by the boys; the writing books are ruled with exactness, and all the writers supplied with good pens by the same means. In the first instance, the school is divided into classes, to each of these a lad is appointed as monitor. He is responsible for the morals, improvement, good order, and cleanliness of the whole class, and it is his duty to make a daily, weekly, and monthly