ess one design of Providence in suffering want and misery to exist
in the world, is that the benevolent virtues should be kept in exercise.
He who was benevolence itself, seemed thus to think, when he said: 'The
poor ye have always with you.' But man in his selfishness virtually says:
'The poor we will not have with us; we will put them out of our sight.'
For in many towns in New-England, and probably in other States, it is
customary to contract with some individual for their support; or, in other
words, to sell them by auction, to him who will support them by the year,
for the least sum per head. To illustrate some of the results of this
system, the following incidents are related from memory, having been
witnessed by me in my native place (an interior town in New-England) at an
age when the feelings are most susceptible. And so deep was the impression
then made on my mind, that I am enabled to vouch for the accuracy of the
details.

A meeting for the purpose of disposing of the poor of the town for the
ensuing year was held at the house of the person who had kept them the
previous year, (and where these unfortunates still were) as well because
it was supposed he would again bid for them, as that those who wished to
become competitors might ascertain their number and condition. It was in
the afternoon of a day in November, one of those dark and dreary days so
common to the season and climate, adding gloom to the surrounding objects,
in themselves sufficiently cheerless. The house was situated on an obscure
road in a remote part of the town, surrounded by level and sandy fields;
and the monotony of the prospect only broken by scattered clumps of
dwarf-pine and shrub-oak; a few stunted apple-trees, the remains of an
orchard which the barren soil had refused to nourish; some half ruinous
out-houses, and a meagre kitchen garden enclosed with a common rough
fence, completed the picture without.

Still more depressing was the scene within. The paupers were collected in
the same room with their more fortunate townsmen, that the bidders might
be enabled to view more closely their condition, and estimate the probable
expense of supporting them through the year. Many considerations entered
as items into this sordid calculation; such as the very lowest amount of
the very coarsest food which would suffice, (not to keep them in comfort,
but to sustain their miserable existence for the next three hundred and
sixty-five days, and yet