lieved-and an important amelioration of morals and manners be produced, if funds enough can be raised, in the commencement, to compensate a suitable person for employing his time for the purposes above stated. A suitable person may at present be had, who, for about 500 dollars per annum, will undertake to devote the chief part of his time to this important object. He is a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, well known in this city for his benevolence and religious habits, and is eminently calculated for the purpose. A recapitulation of his imperative duties, for the punctual performance of which he will solemnly pledge himself, may be proper. He will 1. Inculcate on the poor the necessity and advantage of habits of order, regularity, cleanliness, and industry; 2. Urge them to send their children to infant or public schools; 3. Demonstrate the pernicious consequences of habits of intemperance, as invariably leading to poverty and wretchedness-almost invariably to crime-often to murder and suicide; 4. Counsel and comfort them in their distress, and make known to charitable persons the cases of those who are peculiarly entitled to pecuniary relief; 5. Give them moral and religious instructions and exhortations and advice--at the same time refraining from any attempt to make proselytes of persons belonging to other religious societies to whom all his exhortations are to be confined to those doctrines on which all religious denominations agreesuch, in a word, as are to be found in the divine sermon on the mount, and elsewhere in the admonitions and precepts emanating from the same venerated source, and spread through the gospels; 6. Earnestly urge those to whom he devotes his time and attention, to go regularly to the places of worship to which they respectively belong, and to be punctual in the performance of the duties their religion prescribes. 7. Should funds sufficient be placed in his hands, as it is hoped will be the case, he will distribute them conscientiously to the most deserving and the most necessitous. Of the utility of this project, no doubt can be reasonably entertained. If successful, it will produce a great mass of good to society, at a very moderate comparative expense. Fifty subscribers, at ten dollars each, payable quarterly, will be sufficient to make a commencement-and it would be a libel on the city to suppose that such a subscription could not be procured for such an important object. The subscription here stated has been adopted after most mature deliberation, as more likely to raise the requisite salary, among wealthy and liberal people, than the same amount in smaller sums, and depending on one or two hundred persons. Should members of other religious denominatious be jealous of this plan, because it is to be confided, in the first instance to a Protestant Episcopalian, perhaps they might organize similar associations among their own individual societies. There are few of them, within the bosom of which there are not sufficient materials for such an establishment, so far as regards physical and moral wants, on the one side, and means, if proper disposition be found on the other, to afford ample relief. In the mean time, it is confidently hoped that the pledge above stated will be abundantly sufficient to tranquilize the minds of the most zealous members of other denominations, and that the good work will not be prevented by unfounded or sectarian jealousies. As soon as thirty subscribers are procured, it is proposed that they organize themselves into a society, to be styled, "The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor," depending upon public liberality for the completion of the requisite number.* N. B.-Two considerations demand attention. One, that the saving in the poor taxes by the establishment of this society, will probably exceed the amount of the salary tenfoldthe other, that no person is to be considered bound for more than a year, should he disapprove of the execution of the plan. It has been already stated that this plan has been carried into operation. A society has likewise been organized for "Bettering the Condition of Indigent Roman Catholics of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia." ON THE EXTINGUISHMENT OF FIRES. It is probable that there never was an instance of a simple, cheap and efficacious plan of accomplishing an important object, so often fruitlessly urged on the public attention, as the mode of preventing the extension of fires by providing a sufficient supply of coarse cloths to spread over the roofs of houses near such as are in flames. It was first suggested in the Port Folio, about the time of its commencement, in the year 1809; and has been since urged above a dozen times in various papers in the United States-but hitherto in vain. I annex the plan: "Procure as many coarse and thick cloths, of suitable lengths, as will suffice to cover the roofs of ten or a dozen houses; and as soon as a fire breaks out, spread them over the roofs of the circumjacent houses, keeping them constantly saturated with water by means of engines. Two engines would, in such cases, afford more effectual protection against the spread of fires, than six or eight playing on the naked roofs. For however numerous the engines may be, and however great the quantity of water they discharge, the roofs in five minutes after the engines cease, become as combustible as before they began. Whereas, a single engine, playing moderately on roofs covered with cloths, would afford protection to the houses on each side of the one in flames, however violently they might rage. "Although this plan would be highly beneficial every where, it is peculiarly important in places where water is scarce, as is the case in various towns and cities of the United States, particularly to the southward." So far as regards expense, it is probable that the cost of a single engine would purchase cloths enough for the largest city in the union; and if this plan were adopted, half the engines now in use would be sufficient. It might have been supposed that the benefit derived from the use of a few blankets, collected occasionally from beds, in arresting the career of the devouring flames, would have removed all doubt as to the efficacy of the cloths in question, which would be far superior to common blankets, by covering at once the entire roofs of houses, independent of being at all times ready to be conveyed to the scene of destruction with the engines. I have seen three buildings at the corner of a street, in Newburyport, the roofs of which had been covered with blankets, preserved from injury, while the houses on both sides were burned to the ground, and the flames were frequently blown by a high wind, over the blankets, which were preserved in a state of saturation, and thus arrested the progress of the flames. It appears that from the 1st of January, to the 3d of December, 1828, there were 131 houses injured or totally destroyed by fire, in New York, the loss estimated at the enormous sum of $680,000. From the salutary effects of blankets, used for the purpose of preventing the spread of fires, it is probable that the use of the cloths in question, would have saved two-thirds, or at least one-half, of this sum-but say only one-tenth, or $68,000 -what an immense saving for so small an expenditure as would be necessary! To any single office insuring houses, it would have been well worth while to pay ten-fold the sum necessary for the purpose. This plan has been before the public about nineteen years. Suppose the annual loss throughout the United States, to be only equal to that experienced in New York alone, as stated above, from January 1, to December 3, it would make a total of about $13,000,000, a sum not beyond probability, when we consider the great frequency of fires, and the extent of the ravages in many instances-30, 40, 50 and 100 houses at a time. It would be a curious calculation to try to ascertain how much of this loss might have probably been prevented, by the adoption of the plan in question. By the recent fire in Augusta, it is stated that between three and four hundred houses had been consumed-half a million of property destroyed-and two hundred and fifty families reduced to poverty! It is more than probable that the plan proposed, had it been adopted and acted upon, would have prevented twothirds or more of the destruction. Philadelphia, April 15, 1829. Dedication of the Religious Olive Branch." TO THE RISING GENERATION, THE RELIGIOUS OLIVE BRANCH IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. that the dire insanity and atrocious wickedness of punishing the body by stripes, cropping, hanging, drawing, quartering, for the errors of the mind, real or supposed, have been confined to no denomination of Christians; but that nearly all of them, when in power, have by the perpetration of this most foul, most hideous crime; and that most of those who made the loudest outcries against the scorpion sting, became remorseless persecutors themselves, It is, moreover, intended to prove, that opinion being beyond human control, Its ill-fated victims are either hypocrites or martyrs. Reader, in perusing these heart-rending and odious details, let scalding tears freely flow over poor, proud, pitiless, profligate manAnd learn the solemn truth, that in the unerring registers of heaven, religion by restrictions or disqualifications, is recorded tyranny; and by the axe, the gibbet, or the flames, Learn further that the Living God has accorded to none of the sons of men the tremendous power of controlling or punishing religious opinions; Jan. 2, 1817. and that the attempt is a blasphemous invasion of the prerogatives of the Creator of the universe This work was never completed |