different classes who are admitted, and all requiring judicious moral treatment.
The chief aim of those who have considered the subject of workhouse reform is to suggest a remedy for the present state of things in providing other influences that may impart some feeling and sympathy into the system. It is not an alteration of the system itself that is demanded, but rather the introduction of the law of love into it.
The publications we have named, excepting one, are written by women, and though they are of small dimensions, they may be taken as strong indications of a growing interest in the subject of which they treat. Women, therefore, may be said to have first enlisted public sympathy in behalf of the better management of our workhouses, as they have already done for the better management of our hospitals. And in matters connected with the poor, the sick, and the aged, it would seem to be especially the mission of women to work a reformation. In so doing, they will not only be blest themselves, but become the means of blessing to countless numbers. The object of Mrs. Jameson's book is to shew the necessity of men and women working together in the "communion of labour," and the truth of this principle is proved by the success of those institutions in which that law is obeyed. It can scarcely be said to be the case in our English workhouses, where the one matron and the pauper nurses are the sole representatives of the feminine influence so especially needed in every institution for the poor. If the theory is a true one, our disregard of it sufficiently accounts for all the failures and abuses in our institutions for the poor established by law. Poor law commissioners did not take this element into consideration in framing their new system of laws. Ladies have hitherto been told triumphantly by masters of workhouses that it is against the law that they should be admitted as visitors. Boards of guardians certainly neither contemplated nor desired the help of women in their ungracious task. They would be too tender-hearted, too sympathizing, or too meddling and interfering with that which belonged to men only. These and such like fears have haunted the minds of officials, and will continue to haunt them, for some time to come, to the exclusion of women from a large portion of what may be considered their proper sphere of work. The following remarks are made by Mrs. Jameson, in the preface to her first lecture, on "Sisters of Charity," and her wide experience of charitable institutions abroad enables her to write with confidence on the subject. Speaking of the numerous letters she has received on the subject of workhouses, she goes on to say:—
"Surely it is worth considering whether the administration of these institutions might not be improved by the aid of kindly and intelligent women sharing with the overseers the task of supervision.....
