CHAP. XL] ABSENCE OF PAUPERISM. 145 



government of laws made by themselves, pursue, unmolested, upon the 

 land and upon the sea, their peaceful occupations : 



&quot; That although we have heard the distant rumor, and seen the prepar 

 ations for war our common country is yet at peace with the world.&quot; 



In no part of the address was any claim set up to the peculiar 

 favor of God, or his special intervention in chastising the nation 

 for particular transgressions ; nothing to imply that He does not 

 govern the world by fixed and general laws, moral and physical, 

 which it is our duty to study and obey, and which, if we disobey, 

 whether from ignorance or willfulness, will often be made the 

 instruments of our punishment even in this world. The procla 

 mation concluded thus, in the good old style : 



: Given at the Council Chamber, in Boston, this 1st day of October, in the 

 year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, and of the 

 Independence of the United States the seventieth. 



&quot; GEORGE N. BRIGGS. 



&quot;By his Excellency the Governor, with the advice and consent of the 

 Council - &quot; JOHN G. PALFREY, Secretary. 



&quot; God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.&quot; 



The almost entire absence of pauperism even in the large 

 towns, except among the old and infirm, forms a striking point of 

 contrast between, the state of things in New England and in 

 Europe. One of my friends, who is serving on a committee in 

 Boston to see that the poor who are too old to work have all 

 necessary comforts, has just ordered, as one of the indispensables, 

 a carpet for the bed-side of an old woman. Yet, within five 

 miles of Boston, some of the newly arrived emigrants of the lower 

 class of Irish, may now be seen living in mud huts by the side 

 of railway cuttings, which they are employed to dig, who are 

 regarded by many of the native-born laborers with no small dis 

 gust, not only as the most ignorant and superstitious of mortals, 

 but as likely, by their competition, to bring down the general 

 standard of wages. The rich capitalists, on the other hand, 

 confess to me, that they know not how they could get on with 

 the construction of public works, and obtain good interest for their 

 money, were they deprived of this constant influx of foreign labo . 

 VOL. i. G 



