[23] Besides the Fragment Society, the Children's Mission, and the Boston Provident Society, already mentioned and still vigorously at work, several other societies are wholly supported by Unitarians. Of these may be named the Howard Benevolent Society in the City of Boston, organized in 1812, incorporated in 1818; Young Men's Benevolent Society, organized in 1827, incorporated in 1852; Industrial Aid Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, organized in 1835, incorporated in 1884. [24] Alfred Manchester, Life of Caleb Davis Bradlee, 8; First Anniversary, address before the Boston Young Men's Christian Union by Rev. F.D. Huntington, Appendix. [25] Personal letter from Mr. H.B. Frissell. [26] Edwin James, A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during Thirty Tears' Residence among the Indians of North America. (John Tanner was the father of James.) [27] Quarterly Journal, II. 326, 344; III. 64, 257, 449, 625. XVI. UNITARIANS AND REFORMS. The belief of Unitarians in the innate goodness of man and in his progress towards a higher moral life, together with their desire to make religion practical in its character and to have it deal with the actual facts of human life, has made it obligatory that they should give the encouragement of their support to whatever promised to further the cause of justice, liberty, and purity. Their attitude towards reforms, however, has been qualified by their love of individual freedom. They have had a dread of ecclesiastical restriction and of any attempt to coerce opinions or to establish a despotism over individual convictions. And yet, with all this insistence upon personal liberty, no body of men and women has ever been more devoted to the furthering of practical reforms than those connected with Unitarian churches. No one, for instance, was ever more zealous for individual freedom than Theodore Parker; but he was essentially a reformer. He was a persistent advocate of peace, temperance, education, the rights of women, the rights of the slave, the abolition of capital punishment, reform in prison discipline, and the application of humanitarian principles to the conduct of life. [Sidenote: Peace Movement.] "It may be doubted whether any man who ever lived contributed more to spread just sentiments on the subject of war and to hasten the era of universal peace," said Dr. Channing of Noah Worcester, who has been often called "the Apostle of Peace." It was the second contest with Great Britain that led Dr. Worcester to consider the nature and effects of war. In August, 1812, on the day appointed for a national fast, he preached a sermon in which he maintained that the war then beginning was without sufficient justification, and that war is always an evil. In 1814 he further studied the subject, with the result that he wrote a little book which he called A Solemn Review of the Custom of War.[1]