Fifty years ago, there were three insane asylums, the Virginia Eastern, the Philadelphia Friends', and the McLean, with possibly two hundred patients in all, and an aggregate expenditure of twenty-five thousand dollars. The population of the country, at that time (not including 33,039 in the territories), was 9,605,152. To-day, with four times the population, we have twenty times the number of asylums, with nearly twenty-five thousand patients, an increase of ten thousand in ten years. Twenty years ago, the number cared for was not over seven thousand five hundred.

The same rapidity of growth is apparent in other departments of public charity.

There were but three institutions, fifty years ago, for the education of the deaf and dumb. Now there are thirty.

There are now about thirty institutions for the education of the blind. The first was that at Boston, founded in 1833, little more than twenty-five years ago.

The first house of refuge, or juvenile reformatory, was opened in New York, in 1825. The present number of reformatories in actual operation is about thirty, besides those in process of erection, of which our own is one.

The class most neglected, probably because they are regarded as the most hopeless, are the idiots. They have scarcely begun to feel the reviving influence of that increasing spirit of charity which is abroad in the land. Still, there are already seven public institutions for their benefit.

It would be easy to extend this list, but it is unnecessary.

* In the appendix to this report will be found four very interesting and valuable tables, prepared and published for the first time, exhibiting more fully than space will permit in the report proper, the growth of a single department of public charity, namely: the care of the insane. The tables referred to show the number of patients admitted, the total number treated, and the cost, annually, for fifty years, in all the asylums of the United States, so far as the board has been able to obtain the figures from the printed reports, or by personal correspondence with the present superintendents. They may be depended upon as more than usually accurate, each statement having been submitted to the officers of the institution for verification and correction, and will repay careful examination. Superintendents and others are requested to supply omissions and correct errors which may still be found in them, in order that a revised copy may be published at some future day.

PART THIRD,

GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

Any thorough discussion of the subject of public charity, must include an answer to the following questions:

First.-Who have a claim to relief?
Second.-What is the basis of their claim?

Third.-What is its extent ?

Fourth. Against whom does it lie?

Fifth.-Who should administer the relief granted?
Sixth.-What are the best methods of administration?

The answers given to these inquiries will apply, in substance, to all classes of public beneficiaries alike.

VARIETY OF FORMS OF DEPENDENCE.-To one who has not reflected upon the subject, there appears to be no essential identity between the various forms of dependence. Between blindness, deafness, deformity, orphanage, idiocy, insanity, pauperism and crime, the lines of demarcation seem, to a casual observer, to be sharp and well defined.

ESSENTIAL IDENTITY.-In fact, there is no absolute line of demarcation. The gradations are imperceptible. There are no abrupt transitions, in nature.

For example, it is impossible to decide at what point insanity ends and crime begins; or to say what constitutes the essential difference between congenital idiocy, and that imbecility which is often the last stage of lunacy; or to tell how far pauperism is the result of crime, and crime the result, on the other hand, of pauperism.

The differences between these varietics of dependence, are dif ferences merely of form; the identity which exists between them is one of essence.

Its Nature.—All dependence is deficiency of power.

Blindness is the lack of power of vision; deafness, of power to hear. Idiocy is the original absence of mental power; insanity, the loss of mental power once possessed. Pauperism is the want of power of self-support; crime, of power of self-restraint.

Further not only is dependence, in all its forms, essentially the same, but the causes of dependence are, for the most part,

identical. Even where they differ they fall under the same general classification.

ITS CAUSES.-The causes of dependence may be differently classified, according to the point of view taken.

A broad and obvious generalization divides them into physical and moral.

A second, more minute and very convenient division, is into accidental, hereditary, constitutional, circumstantial, social, and personal.*

A third classification, possibly too philosophical and abstruse, is based upon an observation of the fact, that all the phenomena of life, vegetable, animal, personal or social, fall into one or the other of two categories. Life involves two processes, to-wit: the supply and the expenditure of vital force; or the accretion and the excretion of substance-waste and repair, growth and decay. The life of every man consists of two distinct periods; a period of in

* Accidental causes, are such as it was impossible to foresee and guard against; e. g., a fall, a blow on the head, etc.

Hereditary causes, are those peculiarities of physical or mental organization, derived from ancestors, near or remote ; as when a deaf mute is born of parents who are deaf mutes.

The cause of dependence may be said to be constitutional when, without being able to trace it back to ancestors, near or remote, the dependence is nevertheless the result of individual organization; as in the case of a child deformed or idiotic from birth.

Circumstantial causes are very varied in their nature. Under this head may be classed all those physical surroundings, which create or foster dependence; such as insufficient or improper food, a vitiated atmosphere, the want of light, of heat, etc.

Social causes are those which inhere in the organization of society, whether that organization is deliberate or unconscious. Evil associations, social exclusion, vicious legislation, and a corrupt administration of the law, are illustrations of this class.

Finally, all causes not falling under either of the above categories, may be classed as personal. In this case, dependence results from the uncompelled ignorance or vice of the dependent person himself.

The doctrine of the correlation of force may be applied to organic as well as to inorganic nature. It may be applied to man, to the individual or to the race. And since all force is capable of mathematical expression, the total amount of force resident, at any given moment, in humanity, may be clearly and precisely stated. It is as susceptible of calculation, as the force of gravitation. As a financier keeps a record of pecuniary receipts and disbursements, posting them upon a book, under two heads-Debtor and Creditor-and from time to time strikes the balance of his losses or his gains; so a thoughtful man might, in imagination at least, open an account between man and nature, in which man, every man, should be charged with every atom of substance or of power derived by him from the external world, and credited with its actual expenditure. Statistics are simply an attempt to solve this problem.

crease, in which the accretion exceeds the excretion-and a period of decrease, in which the expenditure, both of substance and of force, exceeds the supply; the two separated by a well marked point of culmination. In the end, the excess of expenditure precisely equals the former excess of accumulation; then death ensues. An independent life, is one in which this two-fold process goes on naturally, regularly, normally. Dependence is the result, either of an abnormal failure of the supply of those elements essential to a full and vigorous life, or of an abnormal and disproportionate rapidity of expenditure. In the first case, the cause of dependence is negative; in the second, it is positive. Every possible cause of dependence necessarily falls under cne of these heads.

This thought may be illustrated, by a reference to the two leading forms of dependence, pauperism and crime.

If we view human society as a unit, a great natural organism, made up of individuals, whose relations to each other are necessary and vital, like those of the different parts of a single plant or animal, we may, without any very profound observation, discover, first, that the human race is a part of the universe; second, that all increase of humanity, as a whole, depends upon the daily conversion of a larger portion of the substance of the universe into human substance, than is reconverted into lower forms of existence; third, that nature itself has provided an apparatus of distribution, which, working automatically, so to speak, noiselessly, secretly, almost unconciously, insures to every individual member of the human family, whose relations to his fellow men are normal and undisturbed, a legitimate share of the supply of force and substance ceaselessly drawn from the external world; fourth, that the amount distributed to each individual, depends upon the nature and importance of his particular function in the general organization, and upon the intensity of his own personal activity; fifth, that as between man and man, the distribution is effected by means of an exchange, in which each gives and receives an equivalent benefit-there is a circulation, corresponding to that of the sap in a plant, or of the blood in an animal; sixth, that any diminution of human vitality retards this circulation, while its absolute cessation is death. In all these particulars, the correspondence between the social life of the race, and the lower forms of animal or vegetable life, is perfect.

Vol. I-4

According to this view, what are pauperism and crime? In what respects are they identical? In what do they differ?

Both pauperism and crime agree in this, that the pauper and the criminal* are alike men who receive benefits, without rendering an equivalent in return.

But pauperism and crime differ, on the other hand, in this; that the pauper is a man who is unable, while the criminal is a man who is unwilling, to render the equivalent due.

Wherever pauperism is voluntary, it is criminal.

The essential nature of crime and of pauperism being so nearly the same, consisting as it does, in non-restitution, we find, by prosecuting our inquiries a single step, that the causes of both are the same. The cause may be internal, personal to the man himself; it may be disease, misfortune, vice. Or it may be external; he may be a pauper or a criminal, not on account of any personal peculiarity, in which he differs from other men, but on account of his peculiar circumstances and relations, over which possibly he has no control; good men, as the world goes, are sometimes driven into crime, or made paupers perforce. The cause may be immediate, or it may be remote-character and circumstances are an inheritance. But in any case, it is always one of two things: it is defective supply, e. g., of light, air and food, (as in the crowded districts of large cities,) or of constitution derived from parents with some taint in the blood; or else it is excessive expenditure, intemperance, prodigality or license.

THE CURE OF DEPENDENCE.-The cure of pauperism and of crime, and of every other form which dependence assumes, lies in the counteraction of the causes of dependence. If the causes are two-fold, the cure is two-fold, also. In so far as we are able to do so, we must (1) supply to every individual the elements of life, or better, enable him to gain them for himself; (2) we must restrain prodigality and extravagance of expenditure of human force and substance.

To accomplish this result, is the two-fold office of government. A good government, with one hand holds the rapacious in check, while with the other it elevates the weak.

* A little reflection will show that this definition applies to all criminals. The thief takes property, the murderer takes life, the seducer takes virtue and honor, without rendering any benefit answering to that derived by him. The rank of crimes is determined by the degree of possibility of restitution. Murder is the highest of all crimes, because the restitution of life is under all circumstances impossible.