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To Judge Byington

March 12, 1846.

DEAR SIR: -- You ask whether I think it expedient to have commissioners appointed by the State to ascertain the condition and capacities of the idiots who are supported at the public charge, and I answer that I think it not only a matter of expediency but of duty.

Every child in the State has a right to be taught at the public expense; and shall we overlook or neglect those who are helpless children all their lives long?

There are about six hundred idiotic children in Massachusetts, most of whom are born of poor and ignorant persons who can do nothing for them, and they soon become the children and the charge of the public. And what do we, whom God so freely blesses with mental capacities and means of happiness, -- what do we do with those helpless fellow creatures whom He throws upon our hands? We thrust them out of sight into the almshouses; we bury their one poor single talent, which He will require at our hands, we feed them indeed and care for them, as we do for our cattle, but like cattle we let them go down to the grave without trying to kindle within them the light of reason which may guide them on their way to eternity.

Whoever has been in the habit of visiting our almshouses must have been struck with the pleasing looks of those poor harmless beings, in whom a human soul seems struggling with the animal nature which overpowers it. They are almost always gentle and timid creatures capable of affection, and possessed of enough intellect to encourage any one who has the time and means for attempting their instruction to do so; but the task is so difficult that few ever assume it; and the almost universal lot of the idiot is to be left to bask in the sun in summer, and hang over the fire in winter, to indulge whatever natural or unnatural appetites he may have, and to pass through life without the consciousness that he has a human soul.

This neglect of idiots is not only a wrong to them and a betrayal of our trust, but it is sometimes the cause of their suffering grievous ill-treatment. This is not the place to relate the sad story of some of them; nor should I be disposed to harrow up your feelings by doing so if it were. I know very well that in most of our towns the overseers of the poor and the keepers of the almshouses are humane people, and disposed to be kind to their helpless charge. But I know too that their good intentions are sometimes defaulted, and that some idiots have been cruelly misused. Not only are they often made the sport of neighbouring children and the mockery of the thoughtless inmates of the almshouses, but sometimes the victims of evil-disposed persons.

Being helpless and unable to bear testimony against others, they have occasionally been treated with great inhumanity; idiotic males have suffered cruel oppression, and females have been shamefully outraged.

Nor is injury done to them alone; the community suffers on account of it, because the spectacle of degraded and despised humanity cannot be familiarly contemplated without harm; and every village which has an idiot or "silly person" who is made a butt of by the young and thoughtless, suffers therefor in its moral character. Man is made in God's image, and those who have not learned to respect humanity in every form will be wanting in due respect towards its great Prototype. Besides, the recoil of a wrong is more powerful than its stroke.

If it were not certain that the intellectual condition of idiots could be improved, still for humanity's sake it would be right to appoint commissioners to inquire into their physical condition and their actual treatment in order to ascertain whether their unhappy lot could not be lightened.

The State appoints commissioners to be the guardians of the sad and scanty relics of the Indian tribes, and to look after their rights and interests, and shall the six hundred children of our faith and race, who are far more helpless than the Indians, be left uncared for? The Mohammedans cherish the half-witted and regard their incoherent words as a sort of inspiration; and shall the benighted infidels be more charitable than the Christians of Massachusetts?

But it is not only possible that many persons who are now left to vegetate as hopeless idiots are capable of much intellectual improvement, it has now become a matter of certainty. Schools have been established for them in France and in Prussia, and in those schools the most degraded and apparently helpless idiots have been much improved.

I have myself known several cases in our neighbourhood of persons who had long been considered as hopeless idiots, but who, to an experienced eye, showed the marks of capacity for great improvement. Several children have been brought to me who not only were insane, and consequently fair subjects for treatment, but who had been considered as idiots and treated as such; they had been in fact educated to be idiots, for all treatment of children is education, be it for good, or be it for evil.