The showing, then, of the last five years is that the Society, whose only constitutional method of doing good is "the circulation of religious tracts," and whose circulation of tracts by sale to auxiliaries and others is assumed to pay for itself and to be therefore no legitimate charge upon the charitable resources of the Society, has received $261,509.90 more than the retail value of all the publications it has given away, with all its foreign appropriations added in.

What portion of this $261,509.90 has been added to the capital on which the Society conducts its manufacturing and commercial operations, we do not now inquire. Ordinarily the Reports give no explicit information concerning the increase of the Society's capital from year to year. But in the Report of May, 1857, the Treasurer's account is followed by a statement of" the Society's means in possession and use." At that time, the Tract House, with the ground it occupies, at the corner of Nassau and Spruce streets, was valued by the city assessors at $114,000, and was encumbered by a debt of $21,000. The annual income of such parts of the building as were not occupied by the Society, was $5,850, which was applied as a sinking fund to the reduction of the debt. In 1859 the Report (p. 28) gives us the further information that the debt (contracted in the erection of the building) had been wholly paid from the proceeds of rents, "except the sum of $12,000, chiefly a legacy, the interest of which is to be annually applied to colportage;"—also that "the stores and offices unoccupied by the Society" were at that time rented for $6,525 per annum, and that the proceeds could thereafter be applied to the general purposes of the Society. It is fair then to assume that now (though the Treasurer's reports have never yet acknowledged any receipts from that source) the Society's real estate of $114,000 is clear of all encumbrances, and will henceforth yield, in addition to all the accommodations required by the business of the establishment, a clear increase of not less than $6,000 annually. The same statement (1857) shows that five years ago the Society's capital, besides what is wisely and most productively invested in the building which it occupies, consists of "machinery, presses and mate

rial for printing and binding;" "sheet stock, paper, stereotype plates, and engravings;" "books in the depository;" "books in the hands of colporteurs ;" sums "due from auxiliaries and others;" and a small "balance in the treasury ;"—all amounting at that time to $401,550. (Report, 1857, p. 211). Deduct from this aggregate $20,769, the then amount of those prospective "engagements for paper," which have been the basis of so many pathetic appeals to the Christian public; cancel, at the same time, as worthless, all the debts to the Society "from auxiliaries and others," amounting to $15,891, and the remainder ($364,890) is probably not far from the Society's stock in trade to-day. Add to this the value of the real estate, ($114,000), now clear of all encumbrance, and surely we are safe in assuming that the American Tract Society of New York began its last financial year with an accumulated capital, fixed and floating, of $478,000. How this amount of capital was accumulated, is a question of little moment. Yet it may satisfy a reasonable curiosity to say that the Tract House, with the ground it occupies, and with the expense of an entire demolition and reconstruction not many years ago, has been paid for, partly by the specific donation of $25,852.95 subscribed for that purpose chiefly by citizens of New York at the founding of the institution in 1825, and partly by the rents derived from the building itself—no donations to the general use of the Society having been at any time diverted to the building fund. Of the stock in trade, somewhat "more than $50,000" was contributed for that purpose, while the remainder has accrued from other sources-from profits on sales, or from the investment of donations and legacies in the Society's manufacturing and commercial operations, or from both.

We do not inquire whether this amount of capital is, or is not, indispensable to the Society's operations. It is enough that such a capital is actually employed, and that the interest on $478,000 must be reckoned as one item of annual expense in this method of doing good. At the rate of 6 per cent. that item is represented by the sum of $28,680 annually. Assuming that the active business-manufacturing, commer

cial, and charitable-is conducted with the utmost frugality and wisdom; and that the publications of the Society are, of all the tracts and books that are or might be, the best suited to the great end of diffusing the knowledge of Christ and promoting the interests of vital godliness and sound morality; our present inquiry is only, How much does it cost to circulate religious tracts calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians?

The report for 1857 gives us, (pp. 232, 233), among other results of an investigation by a special committee appointed at the preceding anniversary, a "Summary view of the Society's receipts and expenditures for thirty-two years," that is, from its beginning. At that time, the sum total of receipts from donations and legacies (aside from the building fund) was $2,160,715.87; while the sum total of publications granted as gratuities by the Society was estimated by the Executive Committee as equivalent to $459,278.37,-less by one quarter than the retail prices. Add to these grants of publications the sum total of "foreign grants in cash," $475,294, and the difference between all that had been given to the Society in thirty-two years, and all that had been given away by the Society in the same period, is $1,226,143.20. "More than $50,000" of this had been given expressly as capital to be employed in the manufacturing and commercial business of the institution, and therefore could not be employed in purchasing tracts or books to give away. The remainder (if not the whole) may afford to those who read, mark, and inwardly digest the figures, some notion of how much it has cost to give away tracts valued by the manufacturers and donors themselves at less than a million of dollars. The benevolent public has given to the American Tract Society of New York more than two dollars ($2.31) for every dollar's worth of printed matter calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians, which the Society, with its great building free of rent, at the very centre of business in New York, has been able to give away. Concede that $364,890 of the donations may be shown at the Tract House in the form of capital, and assume that the tracts and books sold have merely paid for themselves; and $861,253 (an

average of $26,918 annually for thirty-two years) is what was expended in working the machinery of a Society which, however desirous its officers may be to employ all means and all methods in diffiusing the knowledge of Christ and promoting the interests of vital godliness and sound morality, is strictly confined by its constitution to the one work of circulating religious tracts. The working expenses of the institution for those thirty-two years (if we assume that it exists only to circulate tracts, and that the tracts which it circulates by sale are sold at reproductive prices) were almost forty per cent. of all its receipts from donations and legacies. The ratio for more recent years is still greater.

Such of our readers as are familiar with the operations of this Tract Society, have already perceived the bearing of these facts. The leading minds in the administration of the Society discovered, long ago, that the mere publication and voluntary circulation of tracts, and even of volumes, (for, to this day, their annual Reports, with something like an unconscious confession that the practice of the Society is at variance with its name and constitution, make a distinction between "tracts" and "volumes "), was not work enough for the capabilities of their institution. A system of auxiliary societies, with local depositories for the sale of publications, and with arrangements for the distribution of tracts from house to house by volunteer distributers, was not enough. The institution, with its accumulated capital, and with its growing income from donations and legacies as well as from sale, could manufacture more books than it could sell, and more than it could reasonably give away. Hence the necessity of some enlargement; and so there came into being a scheme and method of home missions for the whole country, to be sustained by contributions to the Tract Society, and to be managed by the central power in Nassau street. The English language was not sufficiently copious for the uses of such a scheme; and it seemed expedient to enrich the vocabulary of all evangelical Christians with two French words, quite difficult of pronunciation to untrained organs, yet not less impressive on that account, and somewhat imposing by their outlandishness,-" colporteur," to dencte the

missionaries of this new model of missions,-and "colportage," to denote the method and system of operations.

It is upon this system of home missions that the administration of the Society has been expending, for these twenty years past, a large portion of its resources. This whole system of operations, as it seems to us, has been undertaken and pursued in violation of that fundamental article in the constitution of the Society, by which its labors to diffuse the knowledge of Christ and to promote the interests of religion and morality are confined to the circulation of religious tracts calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians. We regard it as an attempt to organize and conduct a system of home missions under the pretense of doing something else. What is called colportage is a system of viva voce evangelism and itinerant preaching, sustained and conducted by an institution which gave in the beginning of its existence an irrevocable pledge to do no such thing.

If any of our readers are startled at the suggestion that the Society has thus trifled with the fundamental principle of its constitution, we beg such readers to remember that either the so much lauded colportage is simply a method of getting the tracts and volumes into circulation, or it is something else; and that whatever else it may be, is a departure from the legitimate province of the institution, and a violation of the pledge on which it was founded.

Assuming, then, for the present, that the colportage is what it ought to be, simply a method of circulating religious tracts— assuming that the good which is expected to result, and for the sake of which the agents are employed, is to be done simply by the books and tracts, and not by the viva voce teaching and exhortation of the agents, we encounter the question, How much does it cost to circulate religious tracts by such an agency? Let us look a little more carefully at this particular question touching the expensiveness of tract distribution. We begin with the latest Annual Report. The Treasurer's account for the year ending April 1, 1862, acknowledges the receipt of $48,242.57 from colporteurs and colporteur agencies, for publications sold. Under the head of "Colportage," the in