te
children in one building? Here there are thousands of homes awaiting the
foundlings, without money and without price, where the child would have
the best advantages the country could afford; or if it be too weak or
sick to be moved, or the managers fear the experiment of placing-out,
let some responsible nurse be selected in the country near by, and the
foundling boarded at their expense. The experience of the Children's Aid
Society is, that no children are so eagerly and kindly received in
country families as infants who are orphans. Let us not found in New
York that most doubtful institution--a Foundling Asylum--but use the
advantages we have in the ten thousand natural asylums of the country.

In regard to the question, how far the affording facilities for the care
of illegitimate children increases the temptation to vicious indulgence,
we believe, as in most similar matters, the true course for the
legislator lies between extremes. His first duty is, of course, one of
humanity, to preserve life. Whenever helpless or abandoned children are
found, the duty of the State is to take care of them, though this care
may, in certain cases, offer an inducement to crime. The danger to the
child, if neglected, is certain; that to the community, of inducing
other mothers to abandon their offering, is remote and uncertain. On the
other hand, the State is under no obligation to offer inducements to
parents to neglect their illegitimate children; it is rather bound to
throw all possible responsibility on those who have brought them into
the world.

The extreme French plan of presenting "turning-tables" to those who
wished to abandon their children, was found to increase the crime, and
the number of such unfortunates. It has been given up even in Paris
itself. The Russian Foundling Asylum in St. Petersburg found it
necessary to make its conditions more strict than they were in the
beginning as laxness tended to encourage sexual vice. The universal
experience is, that if a mother can be compelled to care for her infant,
during a month or two, she will then never murder or abandon it. But, if
she is relieved of the charge very early, she feels little affection or
remorse, and often plunges into indulgence again without restraint. By
requiring conditions and letting some little time pass before the mother
gives the child up, she is kept in a better moral condition, and made to
feel more the responsibility of her position, and is th