rities to be more
liberal. This is easily explained, by the fact that, while the people of
New-York are behind none in thrift and virtue, the great commercial
capital has nevertheless more than twice as much pauperism and crime,
from emigration and importation, as any other city in the world.
Foreigners who come here of their own will, foreigners who pay their own
passages to our country, are always welcome; but those who are banished
from their native places for crime, or deported for idleness,
imbecility, or any cause that renders them a burthen to the public,
should be shut out from our ports by some more efficient means than have
yet been devised for the purpose. This class alone demands of the
organized and individual benevolence of New-York a larger amount of
money every year than is paid for the relief of human wretchedness in
any other city.

The benevolent institutions of New-York are remarkable for their number,
so that in no department does an establishment indicate the attention
given to the particular necessities to which it is devoted; and not only
do the Quakers and the Jews, as in other places, take care of their own
poor, but almost every church, no matter of what denomination, is here a
well organized society for the relief of the unfortunate among its
members, and to a degree, within the sphere of its influence. Where
wealth has been acquired by its possessor, there is apt to be a generous
consideration for the less fortunate, and no city had ever so many of
the philanthropic merchants, of whom the late Samuel Ward was a type,
who are as judicious as they are liberal in shielding the oppressed,
strengthening the weak, and guiding the unwary, in pointing out ways and
furnishing means to the young who seem born to the inheritance of
degradation, and in saving others from sufferings caused by improvidence
or inevitable misfortune.

We propose no account of the humane societies of New-York, but only a
brief mention of some few of those whose edifices are most likely to
arrest the attention of strangers, as from several directions they
approach the city.

The Institution for the Blind is in the square bounded by Eighth and
Ninth Avenues and by Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, and is
built of marble. The society was founded by Mr. Samuel Wood, aided
largely by Dr. Samuel Ackerley, and was incorporated in 1831. In the
spring of the following year the managers reported that they had made
arrangemen