ical disease and debility! and how
necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a
willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent
the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and
the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing
loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the
restraints of the moral faculties! Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and
his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present
actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in
vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great
laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a
vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.

The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our
attention to a kindred institution of charity. The chief magistrate
congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and
heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals,
established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that,
when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime
punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by
imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or
justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such
imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is
placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy
thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in
the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal
law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at
their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any
boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age
of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.

It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in
piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular
course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such
other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment,
reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for
whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by
crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims ofte