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In conclusion, gentlemen, while I can congratulate you on the favorable auspices that have attended the opening of the institution over which you have the general supervision- while I can congratulate you on the relief it has already furnished to the parties sending pupils, and the high hopes of ultimate benefit it holds out to those pupils, I could not do justice to my own feelings without calling your attention to the inadequacy of the present State provision for the education of idiots.

The appropriation is inadequate because it only makes provision for 20 or 30 pupils when there are hundreds of idiots of a school-attending age in the State; inadequate, because with suitable buildings a moderate increase of the annual appropriation would extend the blessings of appropriate education to a quadruple number of State beneficiaries; inadequate, because the enlarged number would secure the advantages of classification, both with reference to the instruction and the association of pupils; inadequate, because a State provision of a more permanent character would constitute a nucleus around which would cluster the spontaneous offerings of private philanthropy, in behalf of a charity so novel and so delightful in its results and inadequate, comparatively, because while substantial and commodious buildings and liberal annual appropriations are provided for the insane, for the deaf-mute and the blind, multitudes of idiots equally susceptible of improvement in capacity for usefulness and happiness, (the director of those same charitable institutions themselves being judges,) are passing, for want of similar facilities for education and elevation, beyond the period of their existence when susceptibility to improvement gives place to confirmed and degrading habits.

The post of superintendent of such an institution as ours, is one of no ordinary responsibilities. To preserve and confirm the health of pupils entrusted to my care- many of them of imperfect bodily organization, to train and teach them in a manner best adapted to the peculiarities of each individual case, to supervise all those domestic arrangements equally essential to the best interests of the pupils and to the economical administration of the State charity, to keep the parents and friends of the pupils informed from time to time of their welfare and improvement, and finally to labor for the extension of correct ideas in the community of the objects and promise of our institution- all these duties will press with exceeding weight upon tiny single individual. Trusting, however, to your continued intelligent and hearty co-operation, and relying constantly upon the Divine blessing upon the labors of my assistants and myself, I shall hope in meeting those responsibilities to prove myself not unworthy of your kind selection and approbation.

H. B. WILBUR,
Supt. N. Y. Asylum for Idiots.