New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-03-26
The Legislative vi.i. TO Our CiG-The

The Legislature Of New York, for the
first time in many years, has formally Wis
tied our City, in compliance with an invi-
tation from her Municipal authorities, and
devoted three days to hurried inspection
of our Public Institutions. Our Prisons,
our Aims Houses, our Orphan Asylums-
our Institutes for the instruction and care
of the Deaf, the Dumb, the Blind-for the
mitigation of the dangers Of Insanity, of
the woes of Destitution and Disease, and
for the repression Of Crime-all have been
visited, inspected and commented on. So
with those of our sister City, Brooklyn
destined soon, we trust, to become in gov
errment, as she is in fact and essence, an
integral portion of this Emporium.
We DO not think this time has been i'll
spent, though we understand that the Mem
bers propose to make it up to their consti-
tuents by proloDging their Session for two
or three days after that on which their pay
is stopped by the Constitution. Those
who have looked through our criminal and
charitable establishments with observant
ewes, have doubtless learned what will
enable them to legislate enough more in
telligently and capable to pay the State
for the three days they have thus devoted;
while, if there be any that can t or won't
see, the lees law making they accomplish
the better for their constituents.
We are glad that the lawmakers have
thus walked through our Institutions. The
City of New York has great faults, and
these Institutions are full of abuses, yet
they could not be dispensed with. And it
is something to the credit of our City that
her annual expenses for the support of the
outcast, helpless and wretched-very few
oftbem her own children, and most of them
recently thrust upon our shores homeless
end ncspabe-amount to at least One
Million Dollars per annum. Add the offer?
ings of private charity, and this large sum
would be more than doubled.
But have our law makers scanned the
prisons, the hospitals and the alms-houses
of New-York with an eye to the great
moral lessons thence deducible-tO the
path of Duty they open and illumlne be-
fore the feet of legislators How many
of the Members, as they passed through
the prisons, refugees and pOor-houses, in
tently pondered this question: What can
we do to diminish the ever. increasing flow
of human beings toward these chamel
'houses of blasted hopes and wasted lives'
PREVENTION is the grand idea of our
age. Any rufIian can cut off a criminals
head, but it is far nobler as well as more
difficult achievement to transform and pu-
rify his heart. And, as general rule, the
amount of labor and expense required to
reform one criminal, to support one pau
per, would, if seasonably and wisely APP
piled, preserve at least three human beings
from becoming criminals or paupers. How
long must it be ere legislators generally
will realize and act upon this TRUTH
Our Aims House, our Prisons, are usu-
ally full TO OVERLOOKING, our streets, base
ments, alleys and rookeries are thrOnged
with future tenants Of one or both. These
are naturally no worse than most of their
fellow-beings; they are the victims of
temptations and necessities which they
were never constituted, trained nor enabled
TO resist. Land Monopoly-the stealing
Of the earth from the many by the few
is one great cause of this fearful complica-
ton of social ills. Thousand and thou
sands of virtual paupers are annually vom-
tied upon our shores in consequence of
the clearing of estates which these ex-
lies had in truth and justice more right
TO than the landlord who unfeelingly
decreed their ejectment in order to render
his domain more productive and his poor
rates less burthensome. Those poor ten
ants and their ancestors had inhabited that
soil from a period anterior to history-had
subdued, improved and cultivated it; while
the landlord has only royal title to it,
based on some modern drama Of violence
and confscation. Formerly, the rent was
nominal; but it has been doubled and
quadrursed until it now eats up all that
wretchedlyapplied labor and iguOrantthrift-
lessness can extract from it. Each acre is
drained by rent, tithes and other charges,
and the present cultivators have sunk into a
hopeless, senseless, ignorent, listless mass,
which the landlord clears of like weeds or