Library Collections: Document: Full Text

"Without some experience no man can form an adequate idea of the difficulties to be encountered in the training and management of idiotic children. The task requires an unusual share of patience, perseverence -sic-, kindness, tact, and judgment. The means to be employed are widely different from the exercises in the ordinary educational system.

"Governor Hunt said it had been his intention to present some further views on the nature of the obstacles to be overcome and the benefits to be conferred by idiot education, but he was happily relieved from this part of his task by the presence of one far more competent to shed light upon the subject. He referred in terms of just acknowledgment to Dr. Seguin, the celebrated philanthropist and teacher, who first reduced the training of imbeciles to a system, in France.

"According to statistical returns, which, if not strictly accurate, are free from exaggeration, it is estimated that the whole number of idiots in this State is about 2,800, and of these, that about 700 are under fourteen, and capable of instruction. The importance of the subject will be more freely realized when we extend our view, and consider the number in the United States. It is a moderate calculation to assume that the country contains 20,000 idiotic persons, of different degrees of imbecility. Of these about 5,000 must be suitable subjects for discipline and education. It remains for the American people, through their State Legislatures, to determine whether this large class of human beings shall be permitted to remain in their present degraded and painful condition. Or will they adopt prompt and effective measures to raise them to their true position in the scale of beings? I trust the response to this appeal will be worthy of the national character for benovelence -sic- and humanity.

"The erection of this, the first State Asylum for Idiots, of which the foundation has now been laid, should be regarded, not as the consummation, but the commencement of a system to be prosecuted and extended by aiding or founding similar schools in other sections of the State, until all who need shall participate in the blessings of a generous public charity. We may also indulge in the hope that other States will esteem our example fit for imitation, until the wants of every portion of the Union shall have been fully supplied.

"The foundation of this Asylum is an event which will be hailed with joy by many sympathising friends. It will carry hope and gladness to many homes from which cheerfulness has been banished by the presence of the idiot child. It wilt be cherished in grateful memories, as the generous offering of a great and free State upon the altar of our common humanity. To behold a government exerting its ample energies to relieve the afflicted and exalt the lowly, is a spectacle of a high moral sublimity. When the civil power is thus displayed in efforts to elevate and improve the condition of man, it bears an impress almost divine, and may be regarded without irreverence, as the instrument, if not the representative, of Deity."

The following hymn was then sung:

O, spirit of the living God,
In all thy plentitude of Grace,
Grant here thine aid to bring to light,
The most benighted of our race.

To those who teach, give hearts of love,
That they to life the dead may bring;
Give power and unction from above,
That here the dumb thy praise may sing.

May darkness here be turned to light --
Confusion into order changed;
Souls without strength, inspired with might,
And idiots with thy children ranged.

The Hon. E. W. Leavenworth, Secretary of State, then came forward and remarked that it gave him great pleasure to introduce to the assembly a gentleman, who as the pupil of Itard and Esquirol, had been early imbued with the combined principles of science and philanthropy-whose name and works, and devotion to the cause, were well known wherever anything was known of the education of idiots; and he would also add, to whom was universally conceded the merit of first developing and establishing the principles which lie at the foundation, and first systematising the art upon which the education of idiots is based, and by which it is successfully conducted. This gentleman was Dr. Edward Seguin, of France. After the applause had subsided, that his presence had occasioned, and with an apology for his inability to do justice to his own feelings and to the subject, in a language, not his own, Dr. Seguin spoke as follows:

"God has scattered among us -- rare as the possessors of genius -- the idiot the blind, the deaf mute, in order to bind the rich to the needy, the talented to the incapable, all men to each other, by a tie of indissoluble solidarity. The old bonds are dissolving; man is already unwilling to continue to contribute money or palaces for the support of the indolent nobility; but he is every day more ready to build palaces and give annuities for the indigent or infirm-the chosen friends of our Lord Jesus.