If you go back one hundred years, I think you will find that, in proportion to the population and wealth of this town or this State, there was considerably more suffering from native poverty then than now. I have not, however, before me the means of absolute proof of this statement; but this is plain, that now public charity is more extended, more complete, works in a wiser mode, and with far more beneficial effect; and that pains are now taken to uproot the causes of poverty--pains which our fathers never thought of. In proof of this increase of charity, and even of the existence of justice, I need only refer to the numerous benevolent societies of modern origin, and to the establishment of the ministry at large, in this city--the latter the work of Unitarian philanthropy. Some other churches have done a little in this good work. But none have done much. I am told the Catholic clergy of this city do little to remove the great mass of poverty, intemperance, and crime among their followers. I know there are some few honorable exceptions, and how easy it is for Protestant hostility to exaggerate matters; still, I fear the reproach is but too well founded, that the Catholic clergy are not vigilant shepherds, who guard their sacred flock against the terrible wolves which prowl about the fold. I wish to find myself mistaken here. Some of you remember the "Old Almshouse" in Park-street; the condition and character of its inmates; the effect of the treatment they there received. I do not say that our present attention to the subject of poverty is any thing to boast of--certainly we have done little in comparison with what common sense demands; very little in comparison with what Christianity enjoins; still it is something; in comparison with "the good old times," it is much that we are doing. There has been a great change for the better in the matter of intemperance in drinking. Within thirty years, the progress towards sobriety is surprising, and so well marked and obvious that to name it is enough. Probably there is not a "respectable" man in Boston who would not be ashamed to have been seen drunk yesterday; even to have been drunk in ever so private a manner; not one who would willingly get a friend or a guest in that condition to-day! Go back a few years, and it brought no public reproach, and, I fear, no private shame. A few years further back, it was not a rare thing, on great occasions, for the fathers of the town to reel and stagger from their intemperance--the magistrates of the land voluntarily furnishing the warning which a romantic historian says the Spartans forced upon their slaves.