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REMARKS.

THE Second Annual Report of the Board of State Charities of Massachusetts, contains many interesting facts and suggestions concerning the various classes who are dependent upon the State. With all that is said on the undesirableness of great Alms houses, into which the poor of the State are to be gathered and permanently supported, we entirely agree. We doubt the expediency even of County Alms houses, but think it far better that the needy and dependent should remain in the places where they were born or have lived, and be aided by indvidual -sic- or associated charity, as may seem best.

It is a question of great practical concern, and one by no means easy of solution, whether in our efforts to reform the vicious, we shall collect them into institutions established for their benefit, or endeavor to obtain for them an entrance into families, where the interest shown, and the instruction given, shall be individual and personal, rather than in the mass. There are evils connected with all boarding schools, as they are called, where the children are necessarily separated from their homes, and brought into one body or family. "Morbid tendencies" are not peculiar to those who have lost a sense. The tendency to idleness and vice is in every breast, and requires constant vigilance and the most effective surroundings to counteract it. A greatly exaggerated effect seems to us to be assigned in the Report to the mere "congregating" of persons.

"The hideous evils growing out of the old system of keeping men in prisons, shut up without separation, and without occupation, are too well known to need mention here; but it is not enough considered that the chief evils arose not from the men being especially vicious or criminal, but from the fact of their being congregrated -sic- so closely together." (p. 47.)

We had never supposed that the Roman soldier, to whom the Apostle Paul was chained for three years, was especially injured by being so closely associated.

In speaking of Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb, and urging their undesirableness, the Report makes no mention whatever of the dangers incident to large public schools, of corruption of morals, but places its opposition wholly on the ground that the "morbid tendencies" of the deaf are intensified by associating with each other. In a supplementary pamphlet of nearly sixty pages, from the same hand which wrote the Report, this principle is insisted on with great earnestness, and especial credit claimed for its discovery. That we may understand ourselves, let us resolve the "principle" into its elementary parts. First, then, the deaf and dumb have morbid tendencies; and, second, these morbid tendencies are intensified by association with others of the same class. -- Have the deaf and dumb these morbid tendencies? and what are they?

"The lack of an important sense," says the Report, "not only prevents the entire and harmonious development of mind and character, but it tends to give morbid growth in certain directions, as a plant checked in its upward growth, grows askew. It would be a waste of words to prove this, because a denial of it would be a denial of the importance of the great senses." (p. 52.)

That which it would be a waste of words to prove, must, we suppose, be admitted. There is, then, we must suppose, a morbid tendency in the deaf and dumb. But what is it? After all these graceful generalizations, which seem to hide beneath their folds some most important reality, we get this: "To be mute, therefore, implies tendency to isolation."(p. 54.) Tendency to isolation? To be mute is isolation. Tendency, if words are to have any meaning, implies an inclination or impulse towards something not yet done. But the isolation of the mute is a completed fact. There is no tendency within him to aggravate this fact, but, on the contrary, a most wonderful tendency which prompts him to remedy it and overcome it. Denied by his infirmity the use of speech, his desire to escape from isolation is so strong that he is led even to invent a new language, and to teach it to others, that he may be restored to society. A tendency to isolation in the deaf, viewed as something apart from the fact, is pure fancy -- a dream of a dream. It has no corresponding reality in any deaf-mute mind, but, on the contrary, his whole nature is constantly struggling to break through his isolation, and come into communion and fellowship with those about him.

May it not, however, be true that these very yearnings for society which prompt the mute to do so much, under such disadvantages, to enjoy it, will make him quite satisfied with the society of his deaf-mute companions, and thus practically prevent him from holding intercourse with speaking and hearing persons? If we should answer this question in the affirmative, we should not, by so doing, admit the operation of any morbid tendency peculiar to the deaf and dumb. It would be simply admitting that a Frenchman or a German, thrown by circumstances among a foreign people, with whose language he was imperfectly acquainted, would prefer to associate with his own countrymen, and for the simple reason that he understood them better. But, to meet the question fully and fairly, would it be better for the deaf-mute, were it practicable, to impart to him a knowledge of language without his ever seeing or talking with a fellow mute? Observe, we do not insist on the impracticability of the scheme, as requiring a teacher for each deaf-mute child; we propose simply to consider how the mutes themselves would be affected by such a course of education. We will take the deaf child at his birth, and carry him through the successive stages of a public Institution for the deaf and dumb, and thus discover, if we can, whether he is benefited or injured by associating, during the period of his instruction, with other deaf-mutes.