vinced some of its most earnest advocates and helpers, that it is a work which the State is incompetent to do, and that it must be left, after all, to the inspiration of single hearts and the aid of private hands.

It is not easy to imagine a group of topics more full of interest to every thoughtful and imaginative mind, than those confided to the supervision of the Board of State Charities. There is, first, the administration of the entire system of penal law, in State prisons, penitentiaries, and jails, a matter on which more of moral genius and thoughtful humanity has been spent, since the time of Howard, than perhaps on any other, and to results, perhaps, more doubtful and perplexed than any other; a matter in which science, humanity, and public safety seem at length approaching one another, by slow and painful steps. There is, next, the class of institutions whose aim is not punishment, but restraint and reform, to save to the State the frightful waste of moral life, and rescue the germs of a useful and honest manhood out of the corruption of streets and the companionship of prisons; a work in which the way has been led by some of the purest philanthropy and most devoted lives. of modern times. There is, again, the invasion of foreign pauperism to be met at the threshold, and shelter to be found. for those wretched multitudes whom a common humanity will not suffer to perish at our doors; together with nurture and attendance for those miserable children of poverty and vice, sickly, doomed often to premature death for their parents' sin, whom the State must receive in its charitable arms, as a nursing mother, substituting Christian tenderness for the world's contempt. There is, again, that group of public charities necessarily public, because too responsible to be left altogether to private hands-which exhibits the miracles of modern science and humanity, in the treatment of the insane, the training of idiots, the education of the blind and deaf and dumb. To these various State charities, besides the cost of the judiciary and the penal system, Massachusetts devoted half a million of dollars in the year 1864, the year of the last Presidential election, the year which set on foot the severest and decisive campaigns of the war of the rebellion. And it is a

noble testimony which the Board are enabled to give, in their Report covering that year,

"that although in the midst of civil war, with entire prostration of some branches of business, and great fluctuations in others, with high prices of all kinds of provisions, yet the number asking charity from the State during the year has been less than in former years; and that the same was true as to the number dependent on the State at the close of the year. It is also a most gratifying fact, that, notwithstanding the greatly increased expenditures of the State in consequence of the war, not a single object of charity has been forgotten; all the usual appropriations have been made, and even new calls have met with a ready and cheerful response."- Report for 1865, p. xliv.

It is to the thoughtful and vigilant administration of Gov ernor Andrew, so decisive as to the acts and destinies of Massachusetts during the civil war, that the State owes the policy of combining the group of penal and charitable institutions just spoken of, under the supervision of a single Board. Side by side with the Board of Education, it is the most definite and emphatic announcement of the motive of its public policy, that the ancient Commonwealth has ever made, unless in the abortive effort to establish a qualified state-church system under the famous "Third Article of the Bill of Rights." And, in judging of its success, it is but just to remember how very wide and difficult is the field in which it has to operate; and how it must encounter, not only all the vexed questions of social science, but a great mass of conflicting interests, prejudices, convictions, both moral and religious, varieties in method and character, jealousies of administration, and animosities of sect. In fact, it is easiest to regard it, just now, less as a department or arm of State administration, than as an organized system for the experimental study of social science itself, in a grand and practical way. And, in its earlier years at least, it would seem even more important that it should be given in charge to competent scientific students of the great social facts it deals with, for the sake of more intelligent future action, than that it should exhibit any very striking, immediate, practical results.

In an organization of this kind, it is understood that the

general policy and the working energy of the Board rest mainly with the Secretary, the only officer of it who receives a full salary, and is supposed to devote all his faculties to its service. Governor Andrew's sagacity, discernment, and courage in the matter of appointments, both military and civil, were well proved throughout his administration; and to them the State owes the choice of the present Secretary. We consider the choice, on the whole, fortunate and wise. Mr. Sanborn is a young man, with a great deal to learn, and a great willingness to learn it; of high and cultivated, but not particularly practical, intelligence; of liberal, perhaps we may say radical, sympathies with the good fortune of possessing the interest and confidence of many of the stanchest friends of humanity; with a positiveness of opinion that is sometimes mistaken for conceit, and a style of criticism that sometimes gives just personal offence; a careful and diligent student of the methods of discipline, charity, and instruction now on trial in the world; a very intelligent expounder of what may fairly be considered to be established in the maxims of social science, or proved as the result of careful experiment. In particular, his reports and other public papers have already been of real service, in helping to make known the "Irish System" of prison discipline, which may be considered as the nearest approach yet made to the scientific solution of a moral problem of extreme practical difficulty, and the recent most interesting experiments in the education of deaf mutes. What may possibly be rash and partial in the judgments he is compelled to register so hastily, in annual reports stretched to cover so wide a field, is very sure to be chastened and corrected in time, by the exceedingly practical nature of the topics he must treat. Certainly, there could not be a sterner test, in the field of a man's labors, whether or not he enters on it with convictions and ideas. And it is not at all to Mr. Sanborn's discredit, as a student of social facts and needs, that he grapples first of all with the very plain, prosaic, practical, fundamental question of economy in finance; though, as we shall see, the prominence he has given it has lent some shadow of excuse to those who overlook a higher sort of economy, and even made

a handle for some positive, though (most likely) temporary,

wrong.

We cannot go over the broad ground of these elaborate and interesting Reports, to examine, still less to criticize, the many, various, and important institutions with which they deal. But circumstances have given, just now, a special prominence to one of them, and justify us in speaking of it somewhat freely and fully. We do it with a more serious purpose, and with a stronger desire to draw public attention to it, because it shows signs of a spirit, and gives indications of a policy, which threaten us with the alternative, either to abandon this whole enterprise of State charities, -a result to which, as we have before said, some very sincere philanthropists have come already, — or else to see it made a tool of religious bigotry, and a pivot of sectarian machinery.

The Westborough Reform School, as is well known, owes its foundation to the generous philanthropy of the late Hon. Theodore Lyman, to whom it is directly indebted for more than seventy thousand dollars in money,* as well as for the impulse and motive at starting. It is also known, that, after more than ten years of experiment, the result had been a gloomy and painful disappointment to many of the most hopeful friends of the noble experiment, the first, it is understood, in which a charity of this kind, so nobly successful elsewhere in private hands, had been attempted by State authority,until, in 1859, "the question of abandoning the experiment was seriously raised." We are not casting censure upon any of those many friends and directors of the institution, who served it with a sincerity and fidelity worthy of all praise, when we speak of three disastrous errors in its management,the policy of overcrowding it with boys of too various ages, and too mixed degrees of crime; the method of treatment, which was, in great part, the vulgar and harsh method of convict discipline, enforced by the carrying of bludgeons and loaded weapons among some of the officers; and the well

* In several instalments, beginning with the year 1847.

meant, though compulsory and unjust, enforcement of a system of religious instruction, exciting jealousy and alarm, especially among the Roman-Catholic families of the boys, which more than neutralized, in many cases, whatever moral influence the school could bring to bear. Friends of the school, who visited it at that period, speak of the cowed and "hang-dog" look prevalent among the inmates. Escapes, or attempts to escape, were constant. Serious difficulties occurred among the boys who had left the institution to be quartered in farmers' families or apprenticed to various trades. In frequent cases, the boys committed serious and unprovoked offences, for the sake of undergoing the milder penalties of the State Prison or the county jails. The building was repeatedly set on fire, till, in the "fortunate" conflagration of 1859, at least two-thirds of the entire structure was destroyed. Wise, merciful, and faithful men, serving on the Board of Trustees, such as the Hon. Simon Brown, of Concord, were either inured to the evils of a system they could not remedy, or else had come to regard them as hopeless evils, to be borne and made the best of. At length, this "vicious circle"—into which the school had settled, in a sort of despair was violently broken up, by the discovery of a case of discipline among the boy-convicts, for some time hidden from the inspectors, so abominably cruel beyond all limits permitted in any State penitentiary for grown men, that a crisis was inevitable. Governor Banks took the responsibility of discharging all seven of the trustees, excepting one, the son of the founder,- and appointing a fresh Board. A "school-ship" was established for the discipline of the older and more vicious boys, to train them in seamanship. The number and age of those to be sent to Westborough were limited by judicious rules; and preparations were made for the introduction of the "family system," which has proved so remarkable a success as an appendage to the central or congregate" department of the school. And these changes were presently followed by another, to which the completely altered character, prospects, moral life, and public estimate of the school, during the last six years, have been almost wholly due, -the appointment of the Superintendent, who has lately