§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
§ LORD HERSCHELLMy Lords, the object of this Bill which has passed the other House is very simple. The Poor Law in Ireland at present permits Boards of Guardians to provide for the education of workhouse children, children that is to say under the charge of the Poor Law in places of education outside the workhouse. As the law stood until 1889 they could only keep them at these places of education till the age of 15. In the year 1889 the Poor Law Act of that year enabled them to keep deserted children, if they were boys to the age of 16, and girls to the age of 18, without any necessity for returning them earlier to the workhouse. This Bill proposes to extend that by applying the same law in the case of other children which the Act of 1889 applied to deserted children, and also to any other children under the charge of the Guardians to whom they think it expedient that it should be applied. There seems certainly no reason why that which was desirable in the case of deserted children should not be desirable also in the case of orphan children and some of these other children, enabling them, instead of returning to the workhouse at the age of 18, to continue another year.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Herschell.)
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House to-morrow.