The conventional rules of society have formed a hedge about you, which renders any flagrant breach of morality very difficult,--in some cases almost impossible. From infancy the dread commandments have been sounding in your ears,--"Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery!"--and the awful mandate has been strengthened by the admonitions of pious parents and good ministers, all anxious for your eternal welfare. You may well be honest; for all your wants have been supplied, and you have yet to learn that where no temptation exists, virtue itself becomes a negative quality. You do not covet the goods which others possess. You have never looked down, with confusion of face and heartfelt bitterness, on the dirty rags that scarcely suffice to conceal the emaciation of your wasted limbs. You have never felt hunger gnawing at your vitals, or shuddered at the cries of famishing children, sobbing around your knees for bread. You have dainties to satiety every day, and know nothing of the agonies of sacrificing your virtue for the sake of a meal. If you are cold, you have a good fire to warm you, a comfortable mansion to protect you from the inclemency of the weather, and garments suitable to every season of the year. How can you be expected to sympathize with the ragged, houseless children of want and infamy! You cannot bear to have these sad realities presented to your notice. It shocks your nerves. You cannot bring yourself to admit that these outcasts of society are composed of the same clay; and you blame the authors who have dared to run a tilt against your prejudices, and have not only attested the unwelcome fact, but have pointed out the causes which lead to the hopeless degradation and depravity of these miserable fellow-creatures. You cannot read the works of these humane men, because they bid you to step with them into these dirty abodes of guilt and wretchedness, and see what crime really is, and all the horrors that ignorance and poverty, and a want of self-respect, never fail to bring about. You cannot enter into these abodes of your neglected and starving brothers and sisters--these forlorn scions of a common stock--and view their cold hearths and unfurnished tables, their beds of straw and tattered garments, without defilement--or witness their days of unremitting toil, and nights of unrest; and worse, far worse, to behold the evil passions and crimes which spring from a state of ignorance, producing a moral darkness that can be felt.