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to the Executive, during the recess of the Legislature, and this
together with that for the current year in due time will be laid
before you. To these documents I would respectfully ask your
attention, as the best exposition of the object, the practical work-
ing, and the beneficial results of this wise enterprise of philanthro-
py. It affords me pleasure to commend the "House of Refuge?'
to the fostering care of the State, especially, as by your appro-
priation for its support, and the representation of the State in its
Board of Managers, it has been recognized as a State institution,
with the right of each of the counties to participate in its benefits.
Of no public institution within her borders may Maryland be
more justly proud, and I gladly embrace this opportunity to leave
on record my earnest commendations in its behalf, and to identify
myself among its warmest friends, and thus officially to express
my entire approbation of its aims, and best wishes for its success.

I do this the more unqualifiedly from having thoroughly wit-
nessed its operations, in its schools, its workshops, its discipline,
its conveniences and comforts, ail controlled by the law of kind-
ness and religious education. These things as thus seen leave in
my mind no room for doubt. The "Refuge as a Reform School"
I consider, no longer, an experiment; it is an established fact,
and one in whose accomplishment all good men must rejoice.

As to the reformatory results of such institutions in the United
States, I have been provided with information from authentic
sources, that the whole number of inmates under the care of
seventeen institutions, organized at various periods from 1825 to
1856, was 20,658; of whom 16,847 were boys, and 3,811 girls ;
of this number the average of reform has been about seventy five
per cent. Now, when the character of these delinquents is con-
sidered in connection with the pernicious influences upon society
of such a number left and uncared for to grow up year by year in
idleness and vice, and when we look at the statistics of our jails
and State prisons, and estimate their cost to the public treasury,
it needs no intricate calculations to sum up the beneficial results
of such institutions.

To say nothing of the young delinquent himself, what argu-
ment can be urged with greater impressiveness upon the legislator
as a question of mere political economy? Regarded simply in this
light, the "House of Refuge" wisely administered is in truth a
most profitable institution for the State. To the enlightened and
Christian philanthropist in all its bearings upon society it presents
a higher object of interest, pre-eminent in its claims, and demand-
ing the profoundest consideration.

Deaf and Dumb and Blind.—For the fiscal year 1856, there
was expended for the tuition of the Indigent Deaf and Dumb at
the Pennsylvania Institution the sum of $2,608.72, and for the
year 1857 $2,152.14.

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