they are thriftless, and in their way, extravagant. One may expend all for food; and another, all for dress, or for some other equally foolish indulgence. Masters and mistresses of families may do much for the prevention of poverty from these sources, and make themselves great benefactors to their domestics, by faithfully instructing those who live with them in this relation, in the rules and habits of personal and domestic economy; by encouraging them, instead of squandering their wages, to deposit them for accumulation and interest in the Savings Bank ;* and, by calling forth, and strengthening in them, a sense of duty in regard to the future, their future support and comfort in life, — train them to the sen

concerns.

a

*The Savings Bank in this city was incorporated in December, 1816. Since that time, the depositors in it have been 21,260; and the amount of deposits $3,347,533. A number of gentlemen, in succession, have gratuitously given much time to the direction of its But it was begun, and has principally been sustained, by the energy and untiring benevolence of James Savage, name which needs no titles. I know, indeed, that nothing which I can say will add anything to the estimation in which this gentleman is held among us, as a benefactor of our city. But my opportunities have been greater than those of most of our fellow citizens to know the extent of his labors, and the worth of his services in this cause; and I know that his good fame has been well earned, and that it will wear well. When the causes of pauperism and crime, and the principles and means of their prevention, shall have obtained a wider interest, and shall be better understood among us, the value of the institution for which we are so much indebted to Mr Savage will be even more generally, and strongly felt, than it now is. Nor do I hesitate to say, that he will deserve to be held in grateful remembrance by succeeding generations in our city, till the pile of granite which has been reared for our New Savings Bank shall have crumbled into dust.

timents and habits, which will do much to secure for them a competency, under any but extraordinary exigencies of their life. Nor will the ministry for the poor be unfitly employed in teaching this economy from house to house. Nor will any one, be he who he may, have conferred a small benefit either on the individual, or on society, who has impressed wise, prudential maxims on any mind, which might not otherwise have learned them; and by the influence he has thus exerted, has saved a fellow being from the sufferings, and the exposures, of a life of thriftlessness and poverty.

The fourth of the classes into which I would divide the poor consists of those, whose poverty is irremediable, and is to be ascribed to their own misconduct.

In the first division of this class I would place the irrecoverably intemperate.

I have indeed stated, as a leading principle of my ministry, that human nature, or in other words a fellow being, whatever may have been his transgressions, and whatever may be his character, is never to be given up as irretrievably lost. The number, however, is not inconsiderable of those, in whom the springs of their moral being seem to be so far enfeebled, or even worn out, by long continued vicious indulgence, for example, by the habitual and almost unrestrained intemperance of many years, that they are no longer to be trusted within the circle of the exposures, under the power of which they have most clearly proved themselves unable to maintain a resolution of abstinence and virtue. They are not to be morally given up, as utterly beyond hope, because there are yet in them moral elements, of which, under a change of circumstances in regard to them, we may

avail ourselves to do much for their moral restoration. But they must be brought under other external influences than those under which they have lived, in order to their due preparation for the excitement, and exercise of the moral power, which still remains to them. They are not in a condition to be trusted with freedom, and therefore should not have it. At least, they should be restrained, till it is believed by those who are competent to a judgment upon the subject, that a trial of liberty may be allowed to them. I believe without a doubt, that if an asylum should be instituted for the intemperate, by a confinement in which they should be made to feel, that, vicious as they have been, and are, still they are not confounded in public estimation with profligates and thieves; in which every inmate, as far as may be practicable, should work at the trade in which he has been educated, and in which his earnings would be greatest; in which his confinement should be long enough to give a reasonable hope that a change of moral habits, as well as of dispositions, has been acquired; and in which the earnings of every inmate, above the sum necessary for his own support in the institution, should be appropriated, if need be, for the support and comfort of his family; I have, I repeat, no doubt that such an asylum would be a means of a complete moral recovery of very many, who would otherwise be irrecoverably intemperate, poor, and miserable. I feel as much abhorrence of intemperance as is felt by any one. But I have lived in a connexion so long, and intimate, with this class of our fellow beings, that I well know, that desperate, self-abandoned, and even utterly irrecoverable as some may be, many of them have claims upon universal sympathy, and commiseration, as strong even as those of any class

and

of human sufferers. I have seen them weeping bitterly under convictions of the guilt and misery to which their intemperance has brought them; and I believe that, for the time, they were sincerely resolved to avail themselves of the means of maintaining a life of future sobriety. I believe their sincerity of purpose, because I have known it to be followed out by a total abstinence from intoxicating spirits for a month, or for six weeks, or even for three months. But the deeply seated disease, moral as well as physical, which has been induced by years of intemperate indulgence, and which has seemed to have been, may it not actually have been? -controlled in its power for a time by the strong moral exercises of their minds, has again renewed its attacks; and, when these moral sensibilities have been less strong, and these moral exercises less active than they were, or, it may be, have been suspended, the demon has returned, as it would sometimes seem, with a seven-fold power; and each last state of the poor victim is, perhaps, worse than that which preceded it. While, therefore, I would never cease from endeavors to reclaim every intemperate individual, to whom it may be my privilege to extend the offices of the christian ministry, I am yet compelled to form from the habitually inebriate, a division of the irremediably poor. For, even though many, and most of them, by the means I have suggested should be wholly recovered to temperance, yet if the physical system be so far diseased, and broken down, by their previous habits, that they are not again to be capable of labor, they must, if they have depended on their daily labors for their daily bread, be irremediably poor; or in other words, dependent on chariVOL. VI. NO. LXVI. 3*

ty during the remainder of their lives. In our new House of Correction, now in progress, in which classifications may be made of its inmates; in which the principle of solitary confinement at night will be adopted, and I hope also, lengthened terms of confinement, and a wise provision for religious and moral instruction, during which a fair trial at least may be made of the practicability of establishing new habits, something may be done to meet the want of an asylum for the intemperate; and no inconsiderable influence exerted for the reformation of this, and of other classes of its inmates. Our old House of Correction, to the reproach of our city, has been too long tolerated among us. I have had ample opportunity to know its character, and influences; and I have no doubt whether it has greatly ministered to the increase of intemperance, and of profligacy among us. Should the intemperate, in our new institution, be wholly separated, as they ought to be, from other classes of offenders within it, and be brought under the moral discipline under which they may be brought there, I believe that the irremediably poor of their number will be small, compared with what it now is. And, should society avail itself of its rightful power, in regard to the existing causes of this evil, a very large proportion of the pauperism by which our fellow beings are debased would be prevented, and an incalculable amount added to human virtue and happiness.

2dly. Here, too, I would place the inveterately profligate who fall into poverty.

There is indeed much less ground for a hope of the recovery of those who are far gone in profligacy, than of