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To employ to the utmost the law of local sympathy, the disabled and invalid soldiers should be encouraged in every way to settle in the neighborhoods from which they came, and be thrown as much as possible on the fraternal responsibility of their neighbors for employment and sympathetic aid. A sense of local or communal responsibility to leave the light employments in every village or hamlet to these invalids, should be cherished. The emulations of towns could be depended upon for this, were a proper start given to it by a judicious amount of writing on the subject in the leading journals. In London, by some recent law, one-legged or one-armed men have some special privileges, as ticket-takers, parcel-bearers, messengers, &c. (I hope you will find out, when abroad, precisely what it is.) I am confident that if we begin right, we can induce a most extensive and most wholesome re-absorption of the invalids of the war into the civil life of the nation, to the actual advantage of its affections, its patriotism, and its honest pride. But the subject will need careful guidance.

After every thing has been done to discover and appropriate all light forms of industry, throughout the whole circle of trades suited to maimed and invalid men, there will still remain those whom the small support of a pension, eked out by home protection or local sympathy and co-operation, will not adequately care for. The large body of foreigners, the reckless and unrelated, those who have hitherto been afloat, with such as are most seriously disabled, or have least natural force to provide for themselves -- these must be collected in National Institutions. We don't want a vast network of soldiers' poorhouses scattered through the land, in which these brave fellows will languish away dull and wretched lives. Nor do we want petty State asylums, to be quarrelled about and made the subject of party polities. We want to economize our battered heroes, and to take care of them in such a way as to maintain the military spirit and the national pride; to nurse the memories of the war, and to keep in the eye of the Nation the price of its liberties. After reducing to the smallest number this class, to be kept in the hands of the State, how best to deal with it is the chief problem connected with this topic; and the principal sources of light are first, general principles, and next, the experience of other nations -- for we have had next to none in our own country.

Of the general principles, a few occur to me at once:

1. Justice and policy both demand that these Institutions should be National, and not State Institutions. A war against State pretensions should not end without strengthening in every way Federal influence. This war is a struggle for National existence. We have found a National heart, and life, and body. Now, let us cherish it. I know that desperate efforts will be made to build up State asylums for these invalids. Let us judiciously discourage the idea from the Start.

2. The Institutions should honor both military and civil life. They should be military in their organization, control, dress, drill, and maintain the antecedents of the war from which they spring. The care of the trophies, arms, cannon, &c., might be assigned to them. They should be made nurseries of our military glory, and should, in some way, be skilfully co-ordinated with the popular beart, so as to feel, and to animate, the national sentiment. At the same time they should be industrial -- encouraging and allowing such an amount and variety of labor as would discourage listlessness and monotony, and prevent the feeling of utter dependence.

How these institutions are to grow up, is doubtful; whether by degrees, as a necessity, or by bold legislation from the start. We have thought, as a Commission, of asking the Government for the control and care of disabled soldiers from the time they leave the Hospital as patients, and begin their convalescence, to the period when they are finally discharged; say four months on the average; then, to create special Hospitals (with Government funds) for these convalescents, of a temporary character; to find out the homes, and favor the establishment in their own local communities of all able to to be thus provided for; having an eye, through our village affiliated associations, to their well-being and future career, and aiding in every way the success of the just principles laid down in the earlier part of this letter.

Then, retaining, partly at our own expense, (that is, out of the spontaneous bestowments of the people,) all those disabled men who are the proper subjects for permanent asylums, finally to inaugurate a great asylum, with branches, partly under our own control and management, partly under that of the Government, which by degrees should embrace and embody every wise, humane, and patriotic idea suited to the case. Our dependence for success in such a scheme -- very crude as yet -- would be the possession of more a thoought, better and fuller information, a profounder and wiser plan -- such a plan as would recommend itself -- and which on statement would so engage the consent and affections of the people, as to secure its adoption by Congress.