port all who have hitherto been supported? No. It is the facility with which this provision has been obtained, by many of the idle and able bodied, who will never work, while they can live without work, and by the intemperate and improvident, who might support themselves in the time when there is no demand for their labor, were they to spare and save as they well might while they are every day finding employment, which has occasioned a great extent of the expenditures that have been incurred for the poor. It is a matter of course, that, as long as individuals of this description have only to demand public support to obtain it, the necessity of labor in one case, and of providence and economy in the other, will be unfelt. I would even say, let the law make the amount of its allowance as small as it may, and prescribe the manner in which this allowance shall be given with as many restrictions as it may, the simple fact of an appropriation for this object by law confers a legal right, and justifies a legal claim to it. And how shall the right, or the claim, be limited in practice, where the ground of either cannot be contested by those to whom application for the provision is made? Let the difficulties of the case, then, be as great as they may, which would be consequent upon a repeal of our poor laws, the proposition of a return to these laws would at best offer but a choice of very great difficulties. It would at best be the proposition of a measure which would be as sure to produce an ultimate increase of the evil, as it would be to bring a temporary relief from it. The questions, then, are to be fairly and fearlessly met, are there no better provisions to be made for the poor, than any which are within the scope of law? Are not the claims of justice and of humanity to be fully answered, while at the same time the measures are

avoided by which pauperism in its worst forms, and sin and misery are extended? In other words, should all legal provision for the poor be abolished, how are the poor to be provided for? I hardly know whence a greater amount of moral good could be looked for to our community, or our State, or, at least, whence a rescue could be obtained from a greater amount of moral evil, than from an interest, as strong, and as prevalent as should be felt, in this inquiry.

Do you ask, then, what answer I would give to this last inquiry? In reply, I must ask, from whence has come upon us this extent of poverty? Who are these multitudes of the poor? Are the causes of the condition in which we find them unintelligible? Or, where these causes may be understood; are they wholly beyond our control? Is this whole multitude in some way to be supported by alms? May we not cleanse, or dry up, some of the springs of this evil which threaten us as with an inundation ? Let us pause at these questions. Look at this amount of the poor en masse, which is thus to be thrown upon the community, and the difficulty of provision for them without legislative requisitions, aye, and without legislative allowances for their support, may seem to be insuperable. But separate, and classify them, and light will break in upon the questions of duty, and of interest in regard to them. Who, then, I ask again, are these poor? What are their just claims? And what are the rights and duties of society respecting them?

In answer to the question, who are these poor ? I would divide them into five classes. First: The idle, intemperate, and improvident, who, but for their idleness, intemperance, and improvidence, might support

themselves by their own labors.

Second: The per

manently poor, who are broken in constitution and health by the viciousness of their lives, and are capable of little or no service by which they may minister to their own subsistence. Third: The permanently virtuous poor, who, by reason of disease, debility, or old age, are to be permanently supported. Fourth : The temporarily and occasionally poor, who are doing what they can for self-support; but who need, especially in winter, and during a time of sickness, occasional and temporary aid. And, fifth: The orphan, or deserted, or neglected and morally exposed, or actually vicious children of these classes of the poor. Each of these classes, I think, has strong claims, which imply duties. on the part of society towards them. But society has also corresponding claims and rights respecting them. Let us then be just in our judgments of their claims and rights, as well as of our own. Nay, we cannot correctly estimate our own claims and rights, or conceive justly of our duties in the case, while we deny, or think lightly of, the just claims which they have upon us. If society have caused, and who can doubt whether it have caused? —a great amount of this poverty and vice, it is so far responsible for it, and should provide for it. But it should so provide for it, as at the same time to prevent its continuance. should provide for it on the broad basis of the inalienable rights of humanity; of christian brotherhood; and of the obligations of the stewards of the manifold gifts of God that they be found faithful.

It

What, then, are the fair rights and claims of the first class, and what are the rights and duties of society in regard to them ?

The distinction,' says the report of the Commissioners on the pauper laws, 'is a broad one, and should never be lost sight of, between the idle beggar, and the impotent poor. For while the duty, in regard to the latter, is most plain, and enforced alike by the principles of religion and humanity, that they are to be supported by those who have the means and opportunity of supporting them, it is equally clear that the able-bodied and the idle have no claim to support from a tax upon the capacity, and the property of the industrious.' This is true. But it is neither all the truth, nor the most important truth upon this subject. For who, I again ask, are these idle and able-bodied, these intemperate and improvident claimants of alms? Some of them, indeed, were reared under advantages, from which a better condition and character might have been hoped for. But they had not moral strength to resist strong temptations to early vicious indulgence, surrounded as they were with facilities and excitements to this indulgence, which, even if they were not in all cases, in some at least were authorized by law; and in all were sanctioned by the approbation, or were either winked at, or unheeded by the policy, or the negligence, of society around them. A very great proportion, however, of these degraded fellow beings drew their first breath in the abodes of poverty; were reared amidst improvidence and intemperance; had few or no advantages during their childhood for religious, or any other useful instruction; and in the most susceptible season of life were exposed to all the influences which can corrupt the mind in all its springs of thought, and disposition, and conduct. When I see, as every week I see, the number of children who are growing up even in our City

of Schools, under the full action of all the circumstances which can vitiate the body, and deprave the soul; without any regular employment, and uncared for whether they are idle, or employed; very early as familiar with the language of profaneness, and as flippant in the use of it, as even a systematic education in it could have rendered them; already having acquired a love of ardent spirits, and being accustomed to obtain them when, and as they can; when I see these children, now wandering about with no other object than that of wearing away the time, and now engaged in petty gambling, or in some other and equally reckless indulgence; wholly uncontrolled at home, and only checked abroad, and kept from outrage, by their fear of its consequences; and when I think of the number of children similarly exposed in all our great towns, and in many of our small ones; when I am told of between ten and twelve thousand children in the city of New York, between the ages of five and fifteen years, and of two hundred and fifty thousand, between the same ages, in the State of Pennsylvania, who are not in any school; and when I think of the many hundreds of thousands in England, in Ireland, and on the continent of Europe, entering upon life, and passing its first fifteen or twenty years amidst moral dangers, of which no one speaks to them a warning word, and in the formation of habits as vicious and corrupting as they well can be ;- truly I am surprised. But at what? Not that there is so much idleness, and intemperance, and improvidence, so much abjectness, and beggary, and vice among those who have physical strength for their own support. My surprise is, that there are not more, and more terrible outbreakings of the worst passions; that there is not more out