No. 216.] 421 



stances govern our lives, and precepts for good are feeble, unless ac- 

 companied by the strong arm of example. " Example is better than 

 precept," was the lesson taught us daily in our school exercises in 

 penmanship. All society regulates the conduct of its members, and 

 its phases of character are marked by their deportment and opinions. 



The " outcasts of society " constituting a very numerous tribe, 

 form societies of their own, and stamp, in a degree, the character 

 of the community of which they are a part. We have, as have all 

 large cities, numbers of them with us, but they should be regarded, 

 not as such by choice, so much as by compulsion — as the creatures 

 of circumstances beyond their control. 



The tide of emigration which now sets so strongly toward our 

 shores, cannot be turned back. We must receive the poor, the 

 ignorant, and the oppressed from other lands, and it would be better 

 to consider them as coming filled with the energy of hope for happier 

 days, and more useful labors, than they found at home. No one, I 

 presume, seriously believes they come with bad intentions, and then 

 whose fault is it that they live here in cellars more filthy than the 

 cabins of whose wretchedness we hear so much, and for whose exist- 

 ence, half the blame is thrown upon the government they have left. 



Let us first cast the beam from our own eye. We are parties to 

 their degradation^ inasmuch as we permit the habitation of places, 

 Jrom which it is not possible improvement in condition or habits can 

 €ome We suffer the sub-landlord to stow them, like cattle, in pens, 

 and to compel them to swallow poison with every breath. They are 

 nllowed, may it not be said required, to live in dirt, when the reverse, 

 rather, should be enforced. 



This depressed physical condition, and these bad moral and social 

 habits and propensities, to my mind, have an intimate relation to each 

 other — they stand clearly in the attitudes of cause and eflfect. For 

 instance, how often do we find poverty to be the instigator of theft, 

 and immoral indulgencies the results of certain circumstances in life. 



Men's passions are kept in check by the restrictions of the society 

 in which they live. Remove those checks — take from the individu- 

 als the moral atmosphere in which they move, and their evil passions 

 will rise. 



In a family composed of several persons of both sexes, in circum- 

 stances admitting of tiieir living in separate apartments, the restraints 



