ndulgence, doing
it effectually and well, and rearing up well-taught families in
usefulness and comfort, to be the stay of the future, we see other men
yielding to the ignoble solicitations of appetite or of indolence, and
becoming worse than useless themselves, and the parents of ignorant,
immoral, and worse than useless families. The wandering vagrants of
Great Britain at the present time have been estimated at from fifteen to
twenty thousand souls; the hereditary paupers of England,--a vastly
more numerous class,--have become, in a considerable degree, a sept
distinct from the general community; and in all our large towns there
are certain per centages of the population,--unhappily ever increasing
per centages,--that, darkened in mind and embruted in sentiment, are
widely recognized as emphatically the dangerous classes of the
community. And let us remember that we are witnessing in these instances
no new thing in the history of the species: every period since that of
the vagabond Cain has had its waifs and stragglers, who fell behind in
the general march. In circumstances such as obtained in the earlier ages
of the human family, all the existing nomades and paupers of our country
would have passed into distinct races of men. For in the course of a few
generations their forms and complexions would begin to tell of the
self-induced degradation that had taken place in their minds; and in a
few ages more they would have become permanent varieties of the species.
There are cases in which not more than from two to three centuries have
been found sufficient thoroughly to alter the original physiognomy of a
race. "On the plantation of Ulster in 1611, and afterwards, on the
success of the British against the rebels in 1641 and 1689," says a
shrewd writer of the present day, himself an Irishman, "great multitudes
of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the south of Down, into
the mountainous tract extending from the Barony of Fleurs eastward to
the sea; on the other side of the kingdom the same race were exposed to
the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of
the human race. The descendants of these exiles are now distinguished
physically by great degradation. They are remarkable for open,
projecting mouths, with prominent teeth and exposed gums; and their
advancing cheek bones and depressed noses bear barbarism on their very
front. In Sligo and northern Mayo the consequences of the two centur