they have an opportunity to express them. Does this seem to any one to be mere theory, or a creation of fancy? Here is a wife, whose husband, very feeble in health, under the best circumstances can earn but little; and often, for successive days, can absolutely earn nothing. She has two, or three, or four young children, and she supported them comfortably, while she could find employment. But she cannot now find it more than two or three days in a week. Again: Here is a widow, she has three, or four, or five children. She goes from one to another of the slop-shops to seek for work, and from day to day cannot obtain it. Or, she occasionally gets a dozen shirts, or a dozen pair of pantaloons, or a dozen of truckmen's frocks to make; and the highest price to be received for her labour, the very hard labour of a week,-and with some it is the labour of ten or twelve days,-is a dollar and twenty cents. Here is one more tried, more unhappy than a widow. She has an intemperate husband; the whole charge of supporting her family is upon her; and yet, with the best dispositions to industry, and the best efforts for employment, she cannot earn more than half of what is required, to secure a home and food for those who are dependent on her. And, here is another, with an honest and temperate, but inefficient husband; of whom it is very doubtful whether he earns sufficient for his own sustenance. She, too, is struggling with the same embarrassments; and enduring all a mother's sufferings, who would, but cannot, provide for the wants of her children. And, even again: Here are a husband and wife, whose united efforts,and neither of them fail in effort,-are often insufficient for the support of their family during the pass

ing week, because they cannot procure employment in the only services of which they are capable. These, I repeat, with the exception of the intemperate husband to whom I have referred, in an important sense are virtuous poor. And they are the representatives of many. Nor have I at all exaggerated their embarrassments, and sufferings. And who will say that ordinary virtue, or even that virtue in which he might confide under happier circumstances, is secure amidst such difficulties, and such temptations? How many of those, who have no mean opinion of their own virtue, may be confident that they would themselves retain all the heroism of their own resolution in duty, if, through successive weeks, or successive months, they should be dependent on daily labour for daily bread, and often be unable to find the service, by which bread could be obtained for their children; if often, for weeks and months they had but the choice, for the subsistence of their families, to beg, to borrow, or to steal? And if, in addition to these sufferings of many virtuous poor, we consider the wants and distresses which they experience, either when they are themselves confined by sickness, or when their children are sick, and requiring all their time, and thought, and care, it will be felt, I think, that the exposures of their virtue are neither few nor small;-that, in truth, they demand the most solemn regard of those, who know any thing of human weakness, or propensity to evil, and who have any interest in the cause of human virtue, salvation and happiness.

From these turn your attention to another class. Of the intemperate, there are very many who depend, for themselves and their families, upon daily wages. And

there are very many too, who are not confirmedly intemperate, who are even regarded as sober men, who consider themselves, and are considered, as honest men; and who have no means of support except their daily earnings. Suppose these earnings, then, to fail them. The journeyman mechanic, or the handcartman, or the day-labourer, traverses the streets and wharves for work, and from day to day returns home as empty-handed as when he left it, because he could find no work to do; and, at the end of the week or month, cannot pay his rent, or the debt which has been incurred at the grocer's. Is his moral condition a safe one? Is it not rather full of danger? Is not the man, who would have revolted at the thought that he would ever have become a drunkard, most alarmingly exposed to the sin and misery of living, and dying a drunk. ard? And ought it to surprise us, if the honesty of many of these men, who have been very partially educated; the best security of whose uprightness, perhaps, has been in the maxim, that honesty is the best policy; and who, it may be, have overcome some small temptations to benefit themselves by the injury of others, and have thus gathered some strength to their virtue in the days of abundant labour; ought it to surprise us, if in these circumstances, the honesty of many of this class should fail them; and if, in a time of adversity, of perplexity, of great embarrassment and want, and when they know not where to look for employment, or for provision for their families, they should be driven by their wants to crime? I would not, under any circumstances, be the apologist of crime. But it will not require a long acquaintance with the poor, in a time of prevailing distress, to know that what I have here stated is fact. The

want of employment brings those who would other wise be industrious, to association with the idle and dissipated. Excited by embarrassments abroad, and by trouble at home, they seek oblivion of their sufferings in that, which seems to them, for the time, to be the smaller evil,-I mean, intoxication. And, when once thus given up to intemperance, what evils may not be dreaded? Prosperity, without doubt, is attended with many and great exposures of virtue. But great and pressing want, for which not even the best dispositions to labour can secure a provision, may drive him, or her, who suffers it, to the greatest sins; and expose society to all that is to be feared, from an unbridled license in crime.

Nor are these the only evils to be apprehended in a time of great and extensive suffering among the poor. The number is always considerable, in this class of the population of a large city, of those who maintain little or no discipline at home; and whose children, in consequence either of the gross negligence of parents, or their excessive fondness, or their equally excessive severity, are exposed to all that is to be dreaded in a life of ungoverned passion, and of vice. There are many, too, the children of widows, who rejecting maternal control, and becoming early the associates of idlers and vagrants, at ten and twelve years of age, are profane, false, and dishonest; who have already begun to love ardent spirits, and can talk flippantly of the lewdness, of which it would be thought that they could yet hardly form a conception. And there are children, who have faithful mothers,-mothers who are at least anxious to do what they can for their chil dren's virtue, but whose fathers are not to them as fa

thers; and who are even more rapidly carried on in the career of sin, from which maternal influence is insufficient to restrain them, by the daily example of a profane and intemperate parent. Among all the objects of a philanthropist, no one has stronger claims, than the salvation of these children. Even in a time of prosperity, the number of girls, as well as of boys, who are thus constantly exposed to moral ruin, is alarmingly great. And if we add to these, who are living with their parents, the large number of boys, who, while they can only, and very imperfectly read and write, and have not begun to cipher, are taken from school to be placed in shops and offices, not as apprentices, but as errand boys, and who will therefore grow up in ignorance, and probably be alone the associates of vicious boys; and of girls who are put to service at twelve, and fourteen years of age, in families in which their education and their virtue are unregarded; the number of children of the poor, in a large city, demanding the most solemn interest in their dangers, and the most earnest efforts for their rescue, will be considerably enlarged. Some of the children to whom I refer, are truants from our schools. Some are kept at home by their parents, either to gather chips, or to beg, or to be market boys. And some are suffered by their parents to live where they will, and as they will, provided only that they occasion to them as little inconvenience as may be. What, then, in these various families, must be the effects on children, of a time of great and pressing want, when it shall scarcely be practicable, by any honest occupation, to obtain the means of subsistence? Can it be doubted, whether the number of young vagrants, in such a time, will be