"While this Association aims to promote the general welfare of the blind, it aims at promoting that welfare in a very specific manner and by well-determined means. It is not founded on the idea that the blind, because they have suffered a great and heavy visitation, are therefore to be the mere passive recipients of that which the liberality of their fellow-creatures may bestow. It does not proceed on the idea that because the blind are so, they have therefore ceased to partake in other respects in that mysterious nature of which we are all partakers, with its immense capabilities and powers, with its high hopes and great dangers. For in all other respects the blind continue to be sharers in every thing pertaining to us as men; and if I rightly apprehend the idea of this Institution, it is this, that while we minister to the wants of the blind in a specific manner, yet we still consider them as rational beings, as members of society, as capable of various purposes, as not intended to be sent into a corner, or to be excommunicated from us; but as intended to bear their part as citizens, as enlightened and civilised creatures, and as Christians. Employment given to the blind is a great source of happiness. The sentence which was termed the primeval curse, if on one side it presented the aspect of a curse, also presented on the other the aspect of a blessing,--the necessity, the condition of true happiness. Employment is a blessing for us all, but it is much more to the blind. Employment to the blind is the condition of mental serenity, of comfort and resignation. Employment to the blind is also the condition of subsistence,--that is, of honourable and independent subsistence. It is a great thing for an institution when we are enabled to say that its rules and practice are in harmony with political economy, for political economy is founded on truth. I believe that the rules of the Association are based on the laws which regulate the accumulation and distribution of the means of subsistence. In this Association we have the union of what the coldest prudence would dictate, and of what the most affectionate Christian heart would desire."