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You will find this to have been a prevalent custom in New England, says a friend who resides in a neighboring town, writing to me some of these facts. 'About the time of my being appointed overseer of the poor, along with the selectmen, complaints began to arise against the high rates of taxes for the support of the poor. It costs too much to keep them -- we won't board them about here and there any longer, but will sell them off in a lump, and so they did. By a small majority they carried a vote to sell the poor -- not to the highest bidder, as our southern brethren sell their poor -- but to the lowest, i.e., to him, who for the smallest sum, would keep them a year and clear the town of all expenses on their account. This,' he says, 'was a course as revolting to myself and to others, as it was mortifying to the poor themselves. But a majority ruled and continued the practice, thinking it the cheapest course. It was repeatedly proposed by the few, to purchase a farm and put it in proper condition to give the paupers a home. But this was uniformly opposed by the many.' (10)

In the town of Crampton we have an average of fifteen paupers a year. Of these, ten are aged persons, male and female, from fifty to eighty years of age; some of them were reared in the best society and enjoyed a fine reputation. Circumstances, I cannot now detail, have made them poor. Their last years are periods of misery often indescribable. The men and women have little separate accommodations, and the vulgar, at pleasure, offend the modest and delicate. The younger portion mingle with the old and learn their evil ways. Together they go on in idleness, uncleanliness and vicious ways -- often little children are found there with the aged, the vulgar and wicked.

We have had one State pauper, a Mr. Boyce, a talented author, a foreigner among our poor, with a half demented intellect. He was removed by a friendly neighbor. His wife and child came from England to find him. Shocked beyond endurance at finding him as she did, the wife went into a decline herself, and both husband and wife died leaving an orphan daughter who has been reared in my own family as an adopted daughter, and is now in her seventeenth year.

We have now actually as a town pauper, an aged widow of one of the deacons of the church, a woman of remarkable scriptural knowledge, and of good sense on many subjects, who ought not to have been sent there, nor to be confined there a day longer. We are daily looking for the time when Captain Isaac Bunce, formerly the keeper of the town poor for several years, will be himself in that condition. I have, as many of you know, educated a young man from there, a relation of my wife, whose parents were of respectable families in this town. The young man has been through college. and will, I think, make his mark upon the world.

I shall close this essay, already too long, when I have mentioned some of the civil rights that paupers lose.

In the first place, They are not in all cases allowed to vote.

In the second place. They cannot act on a jury.

In the third place, They cannot, as paupers, own any property.

In the fourth place. They cannot direct in what manner they shall be supported.

In the fifth place, They cannot choose their own keepers.

In the sixth place. They cannot direct the care of their children, as

(a)whether they shall live with them.
(b)" " " go to school.
(c) " " " be bound out as apprentices.
(d)when " " be bound out, or to whom.

As long as they remain actual paupers, these rights are denied them.

They also lose their social and religious position. That is -- they go not into society; they seldom attend church; they seldom put on mourning for the dead; it is not customary to lift up prayers for them as a class in the pulpit; seldom do ministers preach about them or condemn the manner in which they are supported. Few of them if any are remembered when the church assembles at the table of the Lord. And rarely are there any contributions taken for their benefit, and even churches frequently allow their aged and infirm members to close their days in the poor-house. (11)