You are insulted and offended at being seen in such bad company; and cannot for a moment, imagine that a change in your relative positions might have rendered you no wiser or better than them. But, let me ask you candidly, has not the terrible scene produced some effect? Can you forget its existence,--its shocking reality? The lesson it teaches may be distasteful, but you cannot shake off a knowledge of its melancholy facts. The voice of conscience speaks audibly to your heart; that still small voice--that awful record of himself that God has placed in every breast (and woe be to you, or any one, when it ceases to be heard!)--tells you that you cannot, without violating the divine mandate, "love thy neighbour as thyself," leave these miserable creatures to languish and die, without making one effort to aid in rescuing them from their melancholy fate. "But what can I do?" I hear you indignantly exclaim. Much; oh, how much! You have wealth, a small part of which cannot be better bestowed than in educating these poor creatures; in teaching them to recognise those divine laws which they have broken; in leading them step by step into those paths of piety and peace they have never known. Ignorance has been the most powerful agent in corrupting these perishing criminals. Give them healthful employment, the means of emigrating to countries where labour is amply remunerated, and will secure for them comfort, independence, and self-respect. In Canada, these victims of over-population prove beneficial members of society, while with you they are regarded as a blight and a curse. Numbers of this class are yearly cast upon these shores, yet the crimes which are commonly committed by their instrumentality in Britain, very rarely occur with us. We could not sleep with unfastened doors and windows near populous towns, if the change in their condition did not bring about a greater moral change in the character of these poor emigrants. They readily gain employment; their toils are amply remunerated; and they cease to commit crime to procure a precarious existence. In the very worst of these people some good exists. A few seeds remain of divine planting, which, if fostered and judiciously trained, might yet bear fruit for heaven. The authors, whose works you call disgusting and immoral, point out this, and afford you the most pathetic illustrations of its truth. You need not fear contamination from the vices which they portray. Their depravity is of too black a hue to have the least attraction, even to beings only removed a few degrees from the same guilt. Vice may have her admirers when she glitters in gold and scarlet; but when exposed in filth and nakedness, her most reckless devotees shrink back from her in disgust and horror. Vice, without her mask, is a spectacle too appalling for humanity; it exhibits the hideousness, and breathes of the corruption of hell.