It is seriously to be apprehended, that the mea- DIED,-At his residence, in East Greenwich, R. sures which have been pursued during many I., on the evening of the 4th inst., THOMAS ANyears past, in relation to slavery, must, by destroy-ing, aged 77 years; having been for about forty THONY, a member of Greenwich Monthly Meeting the value of the federal union, lead at no dis- years an approved minister of the Society of tant day, to its dissolution. Freedom is the boast Friends. of our people, the object which attracts to our shores, the victims of European oppression. But freedom founded on the oppression of others, can neither be peaceful nor permanent.

Secretary-H. Bosee.

The President prefaced the proceedings of the meeting by some pertinent remarks, in reference to the Missouri Compromise, and the unanimity of opinion in Chester county, thirty-five years ago, against the admission of Missouri as a slave State.

Upon motion of Joseph J. Lewis, Esq., prefaced by some views in relation to the rights of the States under the constitution, the following persons were appointed to draw up a preamble and resolutions expressive of the sentiments of the meeting-Jos. J. Lewis, Francis Parke, Norris Temple, Jesse Evans and Dr. John Edge. During the retirement of the committee, Wm. Darlington, Esq., addressed the meeting with much force against the Nebraska Bill now before the House of Representatives in Congress.

instrument, other compromises have been made. by law hardly less sacred and not less obligatory in honor and conscience than the constitution itself. Among the laws of this kind is the act of Congress of 1820, by which Missouri came into the Union as a slaveholding State.. By that act it is declared that in "all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north latitude, not included within the limits of the State of Missouri, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall be duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited." This prohibition, securing to freedom all north of the line prescribed, was the consideration given to the North for the admission of Missouri without the proposed restriction. It was a compact of the most solemn character.

The following preamble and resolutions were reported by Mr. Lewis, chairman of the commit-To the south the benefit was immediate. Missouri tee, and unanimously adopted:

It is an undoubted legal truth that slavery is an institution of positive law, without which it does not and cannot exist. It is contrary to natural right, and its dominion is limited by the territorial jurisdiction of the government by which it is established.

took her stand on the side of the slave holding States, and in every contest in which the same element of controversy was involved, the vote of her Senators and Representatives in Congress was secured in support of the slave power. To the North the benefit was only prospective. Whether it should be realized was left to depend in some measure upon the faith of the South, plighted by their Representatives in Congress, by whom its stainless purity was vaunted in the highest terms of characteristic self-laudation.

Independently of the compromises of the constitution of the Union, every slave who should escape or be removed beyond the limits of a State where slavery exists, into a State or territory where it does not exist, becomes immediately It is now proposed, at the end of thirty-four free. The United States government has never years, to annul the prohibition, which it was authorized slavery. If slaves are held in any promised and agreed should last forever, and thus territory over which Congress has exclusive juris- deprive the non-slaveholding States of all they diction, except the District of Columbia, which were to receive in exchange for what they gave was carved out of a slaveholding State, they are away beyond recall; and this is done at the first held without warrant of law, and in violation of moment that the prohibition begins to be felt in their natural rights. Every encroachment made its operation upon the settlement of the counby slavery upon any territory lying beyond the try, and it becomes of any value or efficacy. In limits of any organized State, and over which the our apprehension, the proposition is in the highest jurisdiction of State authority has never extend- degree perfidious and dangerous. If the pledged ed, has always been unauthorized and illegal, and faith of one half of the States of this Union, that might have been so declared by the federal judges, a law shall remain a perpetual contract between upon well recognized principles of general law, them and the other half, is to pass for nothing, and Congress might properly and lawfully have and that law is to be repealed and the contract refused to admit any new State into the Union, annulled when it happens to suit the pleasure or unless upon the condition that slavery should be the interests of one of the contracting parties, the forever excluded. All the provisions that have confidence which ought to exist between the been made, whether by the Constitution or by members of this great confederacy, will be desacts of Congress, whereby the rendition of "fu- troyed, and no basis will be left on which future gitives from labor" was secured, or slavery per- compromises can rest. When it is discovered mitted to extend beyond the limits of the thirteen that the sentiment of honor which constituted original States, were concessions made by the the foundation of our trust, is gone, there is nonon-slaveholding to the slaveholding States, in thing upon which it can hereafter repose. Those the spirit of compromise and conciliation. With who seek, in their avidity for power or in their a territory so extensive as ours, involving interests zeal for the supposed interests of a particular secsingularly diversified, and conflicting at many tion, to extinguish that sentiment in its influence points, it was impossible to form, and it has been upon the action of the government, aim a deadlier found equally impossible to maintain a govern-blow at the existence of the nation that it is in ment, upon the basis of republican principles except by means of compromise. The constitution is a compromise; and since the adoption of that

the power of any external enemy to inflict. They do more to shake the stability of the Union than the worst forms of agitation. There are many

provisions in our constitution, affecting the several, States, that can be enforced by no sanctions, and must therefore depend for their observance and efficacy upon the honor, virtue and good faith of the States themselves, or of those who act as their chosen representatives. This consideration makes honor, virtue, and good faith essential elements of the government-the very cement of the constitional fabric-without which it must, sooner or later, crumble into atoms.

it was

committees to be appointed by the Guardian of the Poor, the Board of Health, the Inspectors of the County Prison, and the Police Board, respecting this subject. This conference selected. a sub-committee, of which Morris S. Wickersham was chairman, for the purpose of framing an act, which was duly prepared and submitted to the Legislature. Failing, however, at that time to get the bill enacted into a law, subsequently pressed with great zeal and diligence Impressed with these opinions, it is therefore on the attention of the General Assembly, by a Resolved, That the bill providing for the or- committee representing the Prison Discipline Soganization of a territorial government for Ne-ciety, of which Mr. Wickersham was also chairbraska, and for the repeal of the act of Congress of 1820, excluding Slavery forever north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes of north latitude, is a violation of a solemn contract between the slave-holding and non-slaveholding States, of as binding obligation in honor and jus

tice as the constitution itself.

Resolved, That the said act as a compromise of conflicting views and interests, by which the nonslaveholding States made important concessions to the slaveholding States which might have been fairly withheld, ought to be maintained with scrupulous fidelity by all the influence of government and the whole power of popular sentiment, as one of vital consequence to the nation.

Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting are due to those patriotic members of the Senate and House of Representatives representing slaveholding interests on the floor of Congress, who, regarding the good faith of the Government superior to sectional views and interests, have upheld the Compromise of 1820.

Resolved, That if the Compromise of 1820 shall be now repealed, it will be unsafe again to rely upon the good faith of slaveholding States in the future legislation of Congress; and that the duty which the States of the North owe to themselves will imperatively require that they shall use the power which they possess to maintain the interests of freedom, without venturing to accede to any future compromise in which a question relating to slavery shall be involved.Ind. Register.

PHILADELPHIA HOUSE OF CORRECTION AND
EMPLOYMENT.

We have seldom had occasion to congratulate this community upon an event more important to its moral welfare and interests than the passage of the law providing for the establishment here of a House of Correction and Employment. The act is eminently wise and comprehensive in its provisions, and will meet effectually a social want of the gravest and most urgent character. It is proper to state, as forming an early part in the history of its movement, that in January, 1851, the Philadelphia Prison Discipline Society appointed a committee to confer with similar

man.

so earnestly and ably made, did not result in sucThe effort, notwithstanding it had been cess until the present session, during which the enterprise had the additional aid of a committee appointed by the Inspectors of the County Prison, and especially that of its chairman, Ě. Y. Farquhar, whose industry and perseverance largely contributed to secure the passage of the bill, which was signed by the Governor on the 28th of April last.

The act authorises the commitment to the "house" of all able-bodied paupers and vagrants who may have been committed or sentenced to be confined in the county prison or Blockley Almshouse, for no less than three months, and all vagrants, habitual drunkards and disorderly persons whom the court of Quarter Sessions and the inspectors of the county prison may deem it best to so confine. It also requires the managers of the Blockley almshouse to transfer to the House of Correction and Employment, within twenty-four hours after entrance into said almshouse, all able bodied paupers-authorises the managers of the House of Correction, or any of them, to commit thereto any and all persons who are willing to be so committed, and empowers the Mayor of the city, the Inspectors of the County Prison, and all committing magistrates in the city and county, to commit to the same place, for any period of not less than three nor more than twelve months, all persons who, being under existing laws liable to be committed to places of confinement, shall apply to them for such purpose; and all persons who may hereafter be convicted according to the existing laws of the Commonwealth as vagrants. The act directs that the persons confined in the House of Correction shall be put to work, that they shall be credited with so much of the profits of their labor as exceeds the cost of their board, clothing, &c., and limits the lowest commitment to three months, and the highest to twelve.

These are, substantially, the provisions of the law, and it is obvious that they are designed to create an institution for which there is great need in every populous community, and from which the most beneficial consequences may be confidently expected. It will occupy a wide and important space in the social system intermedi

ate between the poor house on the one hand and the penitentiary on the other, bringing under salutary restraint, in connection with regular occupation at some industrial pursuit, hundreds of indolent, vagabond, and evil disposed persons, whom the laws have not, heretofore, been able to apprehend and subject to any appropriate discipline or punishment. It will constitute, indeed, a valuable reformatory school, as well as a home for industry, where those who are not depraved enough for the common jail may be rescued from demoralizing influences, associations and habits, and where others, who, willing to earn an honest living with their hands, but temporarily unable to find employment, may escape starvation and the evil shifts to which it often leads, until they can obtain work elsewhere. While the inmates of such an establishment will be greatly benefitted morally and physically, society will be happily relieved from a class of vagrants, beggars and incipient felons, who throng the highways day and night, offending the sight with deformity and filthiness, subsisting on ill-bestowed charity, or gaining a precarious livelihood by a course of petty crime.

to an appetite which renders him for the time a madman, is disentitled to his personal freedom, should be seized by the law and held under that restraint which may deprive him of the power to injure himself and others. Viewed then, as a means of at once controlling and reforming the intemperate, the House of Correction and Employment to be established here may be regarded as a most valuable acquisition.

The institution deserves to be appreciated also to be a receptacle for all able bodied paupers and It is intended as a means of public economy. House, or committed to the county prison. vagrants who may be entered at the city Alms Hundreds of these people are not only able to work, but possess the art of some mechanical made to exercise their talents and their trade. They will be put where they will be strength for their own support, and thus a heavy annual drain on the city treasury will be largely reduced. It will appear, by a reference to the statistics of this head of our municipal expense, that the matter is one of considerable importance. The expenditures of the county prison, during the last fiscal year, amounted to nearly fifty thousand dollars, exdollars. The expenditures of the Blockley Almsceeding the receipts by about twelve thousand house, in the year ending May 20th, 1853, were immense. The general account current shows the total disbursements made by the Guardians of the Poor for all purposes, including indoor and outdoor expenditures, to have been over three hundred thousand dollars, while the receipts from all sources were but about one hundred thousand dollars, leaving a deficiency to be supplied from the tax fund of more than two hundred thousand dollars. The total inmates of the Hospital during the year amounted to twenty two thousand four hundred and fifty-one persons, thousand and five hundred women, and the rest of whom about ten thousand were men, nine

children.

One of the most interesting cases for which the law provides, is that of the habitual drunkard. There has long been a necessity for some adequate means by which persons who have become so addicted to intemperance as to be incapable of self control may be arrested by the civil authorities, and put under a restraint and treatment, adapted either to reclaim them from their fatal vice, or to keep them for successive intervals, not only from indulgence, but from perpetrating in their homes acts of violence and improvidence, which render whole families wretched. It was because we believed that there was a pressing need for an institution in which abandoned inebriates might be confined, as well for the protection of helpless women and children who were exposed to their wastefulness, cruelty and corrupting influence, as for their own security and reformation, that we so repeatedly and earnestly urged, many months ago, the erecThis shows to what an enormous extent the tion of just such a place of correction and em-poor-house and the prison tax the community for ployment as the wisdom of the legislature has the maintenance of certain classes, very many at length supplied. Perhaps the most deplora- of whose members are entirely competent to ble effects of the drunkard's habits are those earn enough to pay at least the charge of their which are suffered by the miserable wife whose custody in a place of confinement and correction. hard struggles for a scanty living are defeated Besides, when a house of employment is substiby the helpless and unreasoning prodigality tuted for one of idleness, there will be fewer which squanders her small gains in drink, and voluntary paupers claiming the attention of the by the equally unfortunate offspring who grow authorities, and in this respect the institution of up familiarized with brutal behaviour and shame- which we are speaking, will perform an essenless depravity, without a gentle or good influ- tial service. In all aspects in which it may be ence to save them from the contamination. Gov- contemplated, a great engine of moral reform ernment should tolerate no such nurseries of has been secured. We hope the edifice to be crime. It should permit no liberty in the citi- built will be extensive enough for its purposes, zen to ruthlessly violate all the duties and af- and in selecting the architecural plan, the utfections of home. Hence, it is eminently just most care should be taken to have it complete in and right that he who has ceased to be a respon- all particulars of arrangemens and adaptation.— sible agent, or who, from an abject subserviency North American & U. S. Gazette.

REASON FOR ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION.

MESSRS. EDITORS-It is said that the Prohibitory Liquor Law is unreasonable in its demands; that it is, oppression and fanaticism. I think not, and will briefly assign my reasons.

1. It is impartial in its operation. It treats all offenders exactly alike. The gorgeous saloon as well as the low groggery, the splendid hotel as well as the low-price tavern, are put on the same footing If a rich man violates it he suffers the penalty as well as the poor man.

2. It rests on a right foundation. License laws assume that the liquor traffic is dangerous, and then give any one legal authority to pursue it on the payment of a paltry tax. The grand principle of prohibition is, that the rum-traffic is the great fountain of pauperism, misery and crime, and its aim is to stay these bitter waters forever.

3. No new principle is embodied in this law. Our existing laws forbid the sale of arsenic or Prussic acid to persons who, there is reason to believe, will make an improper use of these poisons. The advocates of prohibition do not wish to proscribe the sale of ardent spirits for mechanical, medicinal and artistic purposes. What they ask is, that the law will forbid their sale to be used as a beverage-to make men drunken, and kindle all their bad passions, and send them into the community ripe for assaults, riot and murder. In 1834, General Jackson, then President, approved of a law passed by Congress, forbidding the sale of ardent spirits in the Indian territory. If it was found there, it was seized and summarily destroyed. Is it not as important to protect white men from the cupidity of rumsellers as red men?

4. A prohibitory law can be enforced. License laws are not, and cannot be. This is specially true in large towns and cities. But a few months since, a grand jury for the city and county of Philadelphia, expressed the opinion that there are nearly as many unlicensed as licensed houses. But a prohibitory law exterminates this nefarious business root and branch. True, it is sometimes evaded and violated. So is the law against theft and robbery and arson and murder.

The subjoined notice of the conversion of the staff of life into an instrument not only of physical, but of moral death, is actually frightful. Who can estimate the amount of misery, pauperism and crime which the whiskey thus produced must cause in the community? Surely it is time that some means were found to stop the manufacture and sale of such enormous quanIt may tities of this deleterious article. be hoped, that a considerable portion of this fire water is used in the arts: but if one tenth or one twentieth part is consumed as a beverage, the evil is incalculable:

Whiskey.-The manufacturers of whiskey in Ohio, with some from Kentucky and Indiana, had a meeting at Cincinnati last week. Twenty three establishments were represented, which daily, or over four millions a year. The Cinciconsume 14,058 bushels of corn and other grain nati Gazette says:-"The whole number of distilleries which send their whiskey to this market for sale, is at least thirty, and the whole consume at least five millions bushels grain annually. Large quantities of hops are also used in the manufacture. These establishments also feed constantly upwards of 100,000 hogs. One establishment, David Gilson's, at New Richmond, twenty miles up the river, consumes 1440 bushels of grain a day, and employs upwards of fifty coopers in making barrels. The twenty three establishments manufacture upwards of twelve millions of whiskey annually, all of which is sold in this city, and from hence it is shipped to all parts of the United States.”—Inquirer.

Important Lecture, on the connexion of health

with abstinence from alcoholic liquore.

A lecture was delivered on February 15th, at the Whittington Club, by Dr. Carpenter-Sir John Forbes, M. D., presiding. The point throughout maintained by the lecturer was, that health, instead of being sustained, was impaired in its activity by the use of alchoholic liquors. Taking as the ground of his argument that nothing more was requisite to keep the frame in its 5. The law is popular and effective. Never muscular vigour than good food, good air, and a was there such a movement among the masses of necessary amount of sleep, Dr. Carpenter showed the people as at the present time. A few days that alcohol led to important deteriorations in since, a petition signed by eight thousand persons the body. It stopped the process of eliminawas presented to the Georgia Legislature for a tion of everything that ought to be carried away, prohibitory law. Michigan recently gave twenty impeded the body from getting rid of its effete thousand majority, in favor of the law. It is and used-up matters, curdled albumen which was effective. This is proved by the powerful oppo- one of the greatest constituents of the blood, sition arrayed against it. A gentleman of this and prevented the removal from the tissues of city connected with a large brewery, said their the inert fatty matter which accumulates about firm would expend forty thousand dollars rather them. Among the many instances which Dr. than have the law enacted. Other reasons for Carpenter gave to prove the inefficiency of alprohibition may be given at another time.cohol to sustain bodily exertions, he quoted a Philad. Ledger. remarkable circumstance, which had been told