transfer, which has been customary since the Monson Almshouse was erected, is the better or more convenient educational facilities provided at the Monson institution; but whatever may be the reason, the fact itself suggests to every thoughtful mind, that such a system, based upon the severance of so many domestic ties, must be radically wrong, not only in the present, but in its future results upon old and young alike.

By a communication, which I herewith transmit, addressed to me by the foreman of a recent grand jury in Middlesex County, you will perceive that a presentment has been made of the Almshouse at Tewksbury for insecurity in its construction and arrangement, and I commend the subject to your attention.

The Rainsford Island Hospital seems to be under good management, but its benefits are almost exclusively enjoyed by the city of Boston. The Commonwealth has already expended more than $60,000 on the buildings connected with the institution, while its title to the land is believed to be not fully established.

The Industrial School for Girls, at Lancaster, the most recent of our reformatory institutions, has not reached that period in its history which would justify the statement that the experiment of its establishment is a success. But it is one of the most interesting of all our charities. The annual expenses of the institution are about $12,000. The number of inmates at present is one hundred and fifty, who are divided into five families, each occupying a sepa

rate building under the immediate charge of a matron and assistant, and the whole establishment is under the control and direction of a superintendent.

Some persons experienced in the conduct of reformatory institutions for the male sex, have distrusted the success of this institution, in accomplishing the purpose for which it was designed. Present circumstances are certainly favorable for a fair test of the question, but in the absence of precedents, and examples for comparison, time alone must determine. I believe it is capable of great results; that the family system there adopted is correct in principle; and that its reforming power has already been manifested.

The bounty of the State, which appropriates $10,000 annually for the education and support of the deaf mutes of this Commonwealth, was shared, the past year, by about eighty children of this unfortunate class. They are well and wisely cared for, and in addition to the rudiments of a common school education, both males and females are graduated with a knowledge of some useful trade or handicraft, by which to gain an honest livelihood.

The number of inmates of the Institution for the Blind averages from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty, of whom from seventy to eighty are placed there by the authorities of the Commonwealth, as a public charge. The policy of the Institution is to receive all proper applicants, train them for some occupation, and then find them opportunity to use

profitably whatever skill they may have acquired. About twenty-five blind adults are, on the average, employed at the Institution, on wages. Many others are established in country towns, earning a living by some handicraft. Very many become teachers of

music. And even such as are returned to their families, and not sent into the world for a livelihood, are not only more cultivated, mentally, than they would have been without the training they received there, but more active, also, and industrious. The general effect of the Institution, especially by the sending into the community of so many blind persons trained to work, is to stimulate all the blind, and lift them out of the class of the idle and unprofitable; and its example has done much to encourage similar undertakings in other States and countries.

At the Institution for Idiots, the average number is about eighty, and of these, Massachusetts furnishes about fifty, all of them indigent. To some persons, misled by the name of school, the results of the Institution may not correspond with their unreasonable expectations that idiots, as a class, can by any process of discipline, be transformed into persons of average or superior intelligence. But the general effect of the Institution is really gratifying. All its inmates are bettered in some way; a few are kept from sinking into the class of idiots for life, for whom such a fate would otherwise have been inevitable; and the effects of culture and instruction are the same here as else

where, though from the nature of the material they are less obvious; the trained and cultivated idiot is quiet, docile, and industrious, while the idiot who is neglected, tends surely to brutishness. Industrious habits are enforced as the desirable object, rather than skill in school exercises. Trades have been introduced. Many girls are prepared for a considerable degree of usefulness, as housemaids, most of whom would certainly have been degraded and ruined if left outside the Institution, of which certainty the condition of idiot women in the State almshouses affords an illustration; several boys and girls have made such progress, that they are now capable of being useful in farm labor or domestic work, if proper families could be found in which they could be placed; and generally society has been bettered by this Institution, for it withdraws from the community the presence of many, who, being themselves abandoned and brutalized, would otherwise, by an invariable law of nature, have tended to demoralize society around them.

To these institutions and the support of the inmates, for which the people without regret devote nearly half a million of dollars annually, must be added, in the category of penal establishments, the several houses of correction. These, however, are supported and controlled by the counties. But it is a consideration I cannot avoid mentioning, that, while a person for the same offence, may, in a large number of cases, be sentenced in the discretion of the courts

to the State Prison, or to a house of correction or a jail, he will only in the first alternative be subject to a prison discipline of which the State under whose laws he is condemned, maintains the oversight. Thus prison discipline as a science, gains nothing from all the mass of experience of which these prisons are the repositories, nor does any thing learned at one of them, accrue to the benefit of the others.

I had proposed, in assuming these official duties for the first time, to devote myself to careful observation of our system of managing and dealing with the various exceptional classes, whether of crime, poverty, or misfortune. But I have not been able to do so. Commanding duties have left time only for the most superficial examination, and for but little and rude reflection.

I am satisfied, however, that with all the good these institutions accomplish, and all the suffering and evil they prevent, they will require in the future a more systematic control. The annual visits of the governor and council are of but slight advantage. They give, and can give, no intelligent direction. They can only help prevent or cure flagrant abuses. But where is the intelligent, educated body of experts and learned philanthropists and practical thinkers, to supervise this mass of human nature, in which the laws of either physical or moral being, or of social order, are broken, or awry? Who is there to analyze and sift out the knowledge that lies buried in the mass of

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