received into reputable families as servants, and placed, by a sense of their past misery, and present comfort, beyond the rational probability of relapse. There are at present twenty women in the house; and the frequent application for admission, from the most miserable objects possible, which the contracted state of their funds have compelled the Society to reject, has occasioned this appeal to the charity of the public.

It must not be dissembled, that there are some respectable, and well-meaning people unfavourable to this institution, from a conception that it encourages vice; that women, who have so far forgotten every principle of virtue, ought to be abandoned to their fate; and that to take so lively an interest in the situation, and circumstances of such depraved characters, is neither proper in itself, nor encouraging to those who are virtuous, and good.

But if it were true, that a facility to escape from the miseries of vice, operates as an inducement to crime, are we wholly to exclude all consideration for the individual

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sufferer, and render wretchedness coeval with life, for the sake of public example? Vice besides does not originate from computation of probabilities, and accurate adjustment of future good, and evil, but from ignorance, weak notions of duty, bad government of the mind, and dangerous situation. Let us advert to the real facts. A poor young creature, allured from the country, perhaps, by idle dreams of wealth, and ambition, is placed in the middle of a large town, far removed from her parents, and friends, and exposed to every temptation which the most infamous artifices can suggest: Bad must he be indeed, who would think to palliate a crime here in the face of God, and the people; but feeling, as I do most deeply for the poor women, whose cause I have undertaken, it is my duty to bring to your remembrance, those circumstances which fixed their ill-fated destiny, and made them what they are, the daughters of affliction; degraded; suppliants to God, and man: It is no imaginary picture I paint to you, but the crimes of real life; I repeat again, that the most atrocious artifices are

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daily put in practice against the lower class of women, and by men in whom religion, education, and rank in life, ought to have infused far other principles of honour, dignity, and compassion; who, besides all other considerations, ought to know, that he who sacrifices the innocence of a woman, who looks up to her character, and her labour for honest support, gives up a human creature to want, and to crime, to untimely depravity, and to early death.

The tender age of many of these poorcreatures, is a circumstance which pleads powerfully to your compassion. The necessary sacrifice of prudence to poverty, is the source of many vices, as it ought to be of much indulgence, to the lower classes of mankind. At the very period when the child requires most the advice, and vigilance of the mother, she is compelled to quit her home for new, and dangerous scenes, and is left to her own fatal guidance, at the most perilous-moment of life. There are women in this Society of fifteen, and sixteen years of age, fit objects truly of that pious

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compassion they have moved, and that fatherly protection they have received; thus, while the human body slowly toils on to its last stature, and the soul late unfolds its

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power, and its might, every bad passion is swift to increase, and before nature has finished her work, vice has sunk it to decay.

You feel less pity for these women, perhaps, because you associate to their former life, riot, extravagance, and mad luxury; rather associate to it the feelings of infamy, of hunger, of remorse, of houseless, friendless, and unpitied want: The sufferings of the respectable poor are bad enough; but if you will fathom to the lowest the misery of our nature, look to the union of poverty, and vice. Behold the dying prostitute, so joyous once, so innocent, and so good, behold her in some dismal recess of a crowded city, slowly yielding up her life to sorrow, and to pain. So lies this poor forgotten creature, without the blessing of parents, or the voice of kinsmen, or the sweet counsel of friends, and when you see her face pale with weakness, and her limbs withered with

disease, and her dwelling loathsome from want, forget not that she has yet a sorrow which no human eye can reach, the remembrance of a mispent life has broke her heart; and though she send forth no plaintive voice, and though she shed no idle tear, she is mastered by an unknown spirit within, and sinks sadly down to her long, and lasting home.

To such scenes as these, sound policy, and genuine piety, unite to call your attention; to educate, to reclaim, to diffuse morality, and religion, is the most comprehensive wisdom, and the truest philanthropy. If laws give efficacy to morals, morals give efficacy to laws; and it is rather, perhaps, in the disposition to obey, than in the power to enact, that the security for human happiness consists.

The number of these deluded women is so great, and their sufferings, in process of time, so lamentable, that, considered by themselves, they become an object of political interference, and christian compassion; considered as to its general effects, the in