“As I have already said, the moral, intellectual and physical condition of the peasants and operatives of Prussia, Saxony and other parts of Germany, of Holland, and of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and the social condition of the peasants in the greater part of France, is very much higher and happier, and very much more satisfactory, than that of the peasants and operatives of England; the condition of the poor in the North German, Swiss and Dutch towns, is as remarkable a contrast to that of the poor of the English towns as can well be imagined; and that the condition of the poorer classes of Germany, Switzerland, Holland and France is rapidly improving.  The great superiority of the preparation for life which a poor man receives in those countries I have mentioned, to that which a peasant or operative receives in England, and the difference of the social position of a poor man in those countries to that of a peasant or operative in England, seem sufficient to explain the difference which exists between the moral and social condition of the poor of our own country and of the other countries I have named.  In Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, a child begins its life in the society of parents who have been educated and brought up for years in the company of learned and gentlemanly professors, and in the society and under the direction of a father who has been exercised in military arts, and who has acquired the bearing, the clean and orderly habits, and the taste for respectable attire, which characterize the soldier.  The children of these countries spend the first six years of their lives in homes which are well regulated.  They are during this time accustomed to orderly habits, to neat and clean clothes, and to ideas of the value of instruction, of the respect due to the teachers, and of the excellence of the schools, by parents who have, by their training in early life, acquired such tastes and ideas themselves.  Each child at the age of six begins to attend a school, which is perfectly clean, well ventilated, directed by an able and well-educated gentleman, and superintended by the religious ministers and by the inspectors of the Government.  Until the completion of its fourteenth year, each child continues regular daily attendance at one of these schools, daily strengthening its habits of cleanliness and order, learning the rudiments of useful knowledge, receiving the principles of religion and morality, and gaining confirmed health and physical energy by the exercise and drill of the school playground. No children are left idle in the streets of the towns; no children are allowed to grovel in the gutters; no children are allowed to make their appearance at the schools dirty, or in ragged clothes; and the local authorities are obliged to clothe all whose parents cannot afford to clothe them.  The children of the poor of Germany,