; it is never social; but
sometimes, though not often, it is hereditary. A family for many
generations seems to have a criminal tendency. Perhaps the members are
not in any generation guilty of great crimes, but often of lesser ones;
and are, moreover, in the daily practice of vices that give rise to
suspicion, neglect, and reproach. Here together are associated, and made
hereditary, poverty, ignorance, idleness, beggary, and vagrancy. Surely
these instances are not common, probably not so common as they were in
the last generation. But how is the boy or girl of such a family to rise
above these circumstances, and throw off these weights? Occasionally one
of great energy of character may do so; but, if the children of more
fortunate classes can scarcely escape the influence of temporary evil
example, how shall they who are born to a heritage of poverty,
ignorance, and ever-present evil counsel and conduct under the guise of
parental authority, pass to the position of intelligent, industrious,
respectable members of society? Some external influence must be
applied; by some means from without, the spell must be broken; the
fatal succession of vicious homes must be interrupted. The family has
here failed to discharge its duty to itself and to the state; and shall
not the state do its duty to itself, by assuming the paternal relation
under the guidance of that law of kindness, which we have seen effectual
to control the insane, and melt the hardened criminal? But in cities we
find vice, not only hereditary in families, but local and social; so
that streets and squares are given up, as it were, to the idle and
vicious, whose numbers and influence produce and perpetuate a public
sentiment in support of their daily practices. This phase of life is not
due to the fact that cities are wealthy, or that they are engaged in
manufactures or commerce; but to the single fact that they are
multitudinous, and their inhabitants are, therefore, in daily contact
with each other, while, in the country, individuals and families are
comparatively isolated. Yet some may very well doubt whether such an
institution as this, with all the benign influences of home which we
hope to see centred and diffusive here, will save a child of either sex,
whose first years shall have been so unfavorable to a life of virtue.

The answer is plain: as in other reformatory institutions, there will be
some successes and some failures. The failures will be reckoned