The pauperism of the United States is, to the observation of a stranger, nothing at all. To residents, it is an occasion for the exercise of their ever-ready charity. It is confined to the ports, emigrants making their way back into the country, the families of intemperate or disabled men, and unconnected women, who depend on their own exertions. The amount altogether is far from commensurate with the charity of the community; and it is to be hoped that the curse of a legal charity, at least to the able-bodied, will be avoided in a country where it certainly cannot become necessary within any assignable time. I was grieved to see the magnificent pauper asylum near Philadelphia, made to accommodate luxuriously 1200 persons; and to have its arrangements pointed out to me, as yielding far more comfort to the inmates than the labourer can secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence. There are so many persons in the city, however, who see the badness of the principle, and regret the erection, that I trust a watch will be maintained over the establishment, and its corridors kept as empty as possible. In Boston, the principles of true charity have been better acted upon. There, many of the clergymen,—among the rest, Father Taylor, the seaman's friend,—are in possession of wisdom, derived from the mournful experience of England; and seem likely to save the city from the misery of a debasing pauperism among any class of its inhabitants. I know no large city where there is so much mutual helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other classes, as in Boston: and I cannot but anticipate that from thence the world may derive the brightest lesson that has yet been offered it, in the duties of the rich towards the poor. If the agents of the benevolence of the wealthy will but be scrupulously careful to avoid all that mental encroachment and moral interference, which have but too generally ruined the efficacy of charity, and go on to exhibit the devotion of the philanthropist, without the inquisitiveness and authoritativeness of the priest, they may deserve the thanks of the whole of society, as well as the attachment of those whom they befriend.
In Boston, an excellent plan has been adopted for the prevention of fraud on the part of paupers, and the mutual enlightenment and guidance of the agents of charity. A weekly meeting is held of delegates, from all societies engaged in the relief of the poor. The delegates compare lists of the persons relieved, so as to ascertain that none are fraudulently receiving from more than one society: they discuss and investigate doubtful cases; extend indulgence to those of peculiar hardship; and, in short, secure all the advantages of co-operation. Perhaps there are no cities in England but London too large for a somewhat similar organisation: and its adoption would be an act of great wisdom.
In the south, I was rather amused at a boast which was made to me of the small amount of pauperism. As the plague distances all lesser diseases, so does slavery obviate pauperism. In a society of two classes, where the one class are all capitalists, and the other property, there can be no pauperism but through the vice or accidental disability of members of the first. But I was beset by many an anxious thought about the fate of disabled slaves. Masters are, of course, bound to take care of their slaves for life. There are doubtless many masters who guard the comfort of their helpless negroes all the more carefully from the sense of the entire dependence of the poor creatures upon their mercy: but, there are few human beings fit to be trusted with absolute power: and while there are many who abuse the authority they have over slaves who are not helpless, it is fearful to think what may be the fate of those who are purely burdensome. I observed, here and there, an idiot slave. Those whom I saw were kindly treated, humoured, and indulged. These were the only cases of natural infirmity that I witnessed among the negroes; and the absence of others struck me. At Columbia, South Carolina, I was taken by a benevolent physician to see the State Lunatic Asylum, which might be considered his work; so diligent had he been in obtaining appropriations for the object from the legislature, and afterwards in organising its plans, with great wisdom and humanity. When we were looking out from the top of this building, watching the patients in their airing grounds, I observed that no people of colour were visible in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such insane negroes ever seen?—No one present had ever seen any.—Where were they then?—It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this: but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept in out-houses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing harm. No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of disease and suffering among slaves who cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners. The physician told me that it was his intention, now he had accomplished his object of establishing a lunatic asylum for the whites, to persevere no less strenuously till he obtained one for the blacks. He will probably not find this a very difficult object to effect; for the interest of masters, as well as their humanity, is concerned in having an asylum provided by the State for their useless or mischievous negroes.
The Lunatic Asylums of the United States are an honour to the country, to judge by those which I saw. The insane in Pennsylvania hospital, Philadelphia, should be removed to some more light and cheerful abode, and be much more fully supplied with employment, and with stimulus to engage in it. I was less pleased with their condition than with that of any other insane patients whom I saw. The institution at Worcester, Massachusetts, is admirably managed under Dr. Woodward. So was that at Charlestown, near Boston, by Dr. Lee; a young physician who has since died, mourned by his grateful patients, and by all who had their welfare at heart. The establishment at Bloomingdale, near New York, is of similar excellence. The only great deficiency that I am aware of is one which belongs to most lunatic asylums, and which it does not rest with the superintendent to supply;—a want of sufficient employment. Every exertion is made to provide a variety of amusements, and to encourage all little undertakings that may be suggested: but regular, important business is what is wanted. It is to be hoped that in the establishment of all such institutions, the provision of an ample quantity of land will be one of the prime considerations. Watchful and ingenious kindness may do much to alleviate the miseries of the insane; but if cure is sought, I believe it is agreed by those who know best, that regular employment, with a reasonable object, is indispensable.
The Asylum for the Blind at Philadelphia was a young institution at the time I saw it; but it pleased me more than any I ever visited: more than the larger one at Boston; whose institution and conduct are, however, honourable to all concerned in it. The reason of my preference of the Philadelphia one is that the pupils there were more active and cheerful than those of Boston. The spirits of the inmates are the one infallible test of the management of an institution for the blind. The fault of such in general is that mirth is not sufficiently cultivated, and religion too exclusively so. It should ever be remembered that religion comes out of the mind, and not in at the eye or ear; and that the truest way of cultivating religion is to exercise the faculties, and enlarge the stock of ideas to the utmost. The method of printing for the blind, introduced with such admirable ingenuity and success into the American institutions, I should like to see employed to bring within the reach of the blind the most amusing works that can be found. I should like to see it made an object with benevolent persons to go and give the pupils a hearty laugh occasionally, by reading droll books, and telling amusing stories. The one thing which the born blind want most is to have their cheerlessness removed, to be drawn out of their abstractions, and exercised in play on the greatest possible variety of familiar objects and events. They should hear no condolence: their friends should keep their sympathetic sorrow to themselves; and explain, cheerfully and fully, the allusions to visual objects which must occur in all reading and conversation. It grieves me to hear the hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of blind pupils, all full of lamentation and resignation about not seeing the stars and the face of nature. Such sorrow is for those who see to feel on their behalf; or for those who have lost sight: not for those who never saw. Put into their mouths, it becomes cant. When a roving sea-captain tells his children of the glories of oriental scenery which they are destined never to behold, does he teach them to sigh, and struggle to submit patiently to their destiny of staying at home? Does he not rather make them take pleasure in mirthfully and eagerly learning what he can teach? The face of nature is a foreign land to the born blind. Let them be taught all that can possibly be conveyed to them, and in the most spirited manner that they can bear. There is a nearer approach to the realisation of this principle of teaching the blind in the Philadelphia house than I ever saw elsewhere. It would be enough to cheer a misanthrope to see a little German boy there, picked up out of the streets, dull, neglected, and depressed; but within a few months, standing in the centre of the group of musicians, fiddling and stamping time with all his might, and quite ready to obey every instigation to laugh. Mr. Friedlander, the tutor, is much to be congratulated on what he has already done.
It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite for the acquisition of such philosophy. Scholars are embracing alternately the systems of Kant, of Fichte, of Spurzheim, of the Scotch school; or abusing or eulogising Locke asking who Hartley was, or weaving a rainbow arch of transcendentalism, which is to comprehend the whole that lies within human vision, but sadly liable to be puffed away in dark vapour with the first breeze of reality; scholars are thus labouring at a system of mental philosophy on any but the experimental method, while the materials for experiment lie all around and within them. If they object, as is common, the difficulty of experimenting on their conscious selves, there is the mental pathology of their blind schools, and the asylums for the deaf and dumb. I am aware that they put away the phenomena of insanity as irrelevant; but the same objections do not pertain to the other two classes. Let the closet speculations be pursued with all vigour: but if there were joined with these a close and unwearied study of the phenomena of the minds of persons deficient in a sense, and especially of those precluded from the full use of language, the world might fairly look for an advance in the science of Mind equal to that which medical science owes to pathology. It will not probably lodge us in any final and total result, any more than medicine and anatomy promise to ascertain the vital principle: but it will doubtless yield us some points of certainty, in aid of the fluctuating speculations amidst which we are now tossed, while few can be found to agree even upon matters of so-called universal consciousness. I should like to see a few philosophers interested in ascertaining and recording the manifestations of some progressive minds, peculiar from infirmity, for a series of years. If any such in America, worthy to undertake the task, from having strength enough to put away theory and prejudice, and record only what is really manifested to them, should be disposed to take my hint, I hope they will not wait for a philosophical "class to fall into."
I was told at Washington, with a smile half satirical and half complacent, that "the people of New England do good by mania." I watched accordingly for symptoms of this second or third-rate method of putting benevolence into practice. The result was, that I was convinced that the people of New England, and of the whole country, do good in all manner of ways; some better and some worse, according to their light. I met with pious ladies who make clothes for the poor, but who took work (her means of bread) out of the hands of a sempstress, (who had three children,) because her husband was in prison. They told me it would be encouraging vice to have anything to do with the families of persons who had committed offences: and when I asked how reformed offenders were to put their reformation in practice, I was told that if I would employ anybody who had been in prison, I deserved the censure of society. The matter ended in the sempstress (a good young woman) having to go home to her father's house. I met with others, both men and women, who make it the business of their lives, or of their leisure from yet more pressing duties, to seek out the sinners of society, and give them, not threats, nor scorn, nor lectures, but sympathy and help. So does light vary in this glimmering age; so eloquently does the conduct of Jesus speak to some, while to others it seems to preach in an unknown tongue. With regard to some methods of charity, nothing could exceed the ingenuity, shrewdness, forethought, and determination with which they were managed: in others, I was reminded of what I had been told about mania.
In regarding the Temperance movement, the word perpetually occurred to me. How the vice of intemperance ever reached the pass it did in a country where there is no excuse of want on the one hand, or of habits of conviviality on the other, was sometimes attempted to be explained to me; but never to my satisfaction. Much may be said upon it, which cannot find a place here. Certain it is that the vice threatened to poison society. It was as remarkable as licentiousness of other kinds ever was in Paris, or at Vienna. Men who doubted the goodness of the principle of Association in opposition to moral evil, were yet carried away to countenance it by seeing nothing else that was to be done. Some few of these foresaw that, as every man must be virtuous in himself and by himself; as the principle of temperance in a man is incommunicable; as no two men's temptations are alike; and as, especially in this case, the temptations of the movers were immeasurably weaker than those of the mass to be wrought upon, there could be no radical truth, no pervading sincerity to rely upon. They foresaw what had happened; that there would be a vast quantity of perjury, of false and hasty promising, of lapse, and of secret, solitary drinking; that if some waverers were saved, others would be plunged into hypocrisy in addition to their intemperance; that schisms must arise out of the ignorance of bigots, which would cause as much scandal to good morals as intemperance itself; and that, worst of all, this method was the introduction of new and fatal perils to freedom of conscience. A few foresaw all this; but a very few had strength to resist the movement. A sort of reproach was cast upon those who refused to join, like that which is now visited upon such as adhere to the principle on which they first joined;—a kind of insinuation that their temperance is not thorough.—What have the consequences already been?
The amount of visible intemperance is actually lessened prodigiously; perhaps to the full extent anticipated by the originators of the movement. Spirit-shops have been shut up by hundreds; some few drunkards have been reformed; and very large numbers of young men, entering life, are now sober citizens, who seemed in danger of becoming a curse to society. The question is whether the causes of the preceding intemperance have been discovered and obviated. If not, there is every reason to expect that the control of opinion over them will be but temporary; and that the late sweeping and garnishing will give place to a state of things at least as bad as before.