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Is there any objection on the part of the Directors or Teachers of the American Asylum, to the establishment of a new Institution for the deaf and dumb in Massachusetts, or in any other New England State? None, certainly, on pecuniary grounds. The Asylum, though located in Connecticut, is, as we have seen, a National Institution. Its funds cannot be transferred to other schools, but must be used where they are. Suppose that the Asylum, just as it now is, were in Massachusetts, instead of Connecticut, would it be wise, in that case, for the State to withdraw from it its deaf-mute children, and place them in a new Institution, to be built and supported by the State? Is the number of pupils at Hartford already too large for the purposes of instruction, and the best arrangement of classes? It is not. On the score of economy of instruction and general management, an Institution for 250 or 300, has great advantages over smaller schools. In the last ten years, the average number in the Asylum has been 215. Are the buildings at Hartford too narrow, or incommodious for the accommodation of the present, or a greater number of pupils? They have not been so pronounced by those from other States, whose duty it was to examine them. Could the mute children of Massachusetts be better taught or cared for in a new Institution? They could not. It is to be added, that, if half the pupils should be withdrawn, not only would they forfeit their portion of the common fund, but the present buildings would be left, in part, deserted and useless. To what purpose this increase of expense, on the one hand, and this waste, on the other?

But will not a new Institution become necessary, at some future time, by the natural increase of population, and a corresponding increase in the number of mutes? According to the Report of the Board of State Charities, we are encouraged to hope that no such increase in the number of mute children will occur; more than this, that the time is coming when this unfortunate class of our population is wholly to disappear.

"The important points, however, are, that these abnormal conditions of parentage are not essential ones; that some of them are cognizable; that with wider diffusion of popular knowledge, more of them may be known, and that by avoiding them, the consequences may cease, and the classes themselves gradually diminish, and finally disappear. We have no deaf or blind domestic animals; and the generations of men need not forever be burdened with blind and deaf offspring." (p. 61.)

With such cheering prospects of the disappearance of the whole class, what shall be thought of a proposal, from the same prophet who foretells this millennium -sic-, for enlarged means, and greatly increased expenditures for the establishment of a new Institution for their benefit?

But a more serious objection to present action in relation to a new Institution in Massachusetts, is the utterly confused and unsettled and diverse views of those who are moving in the matter, as to the methods by which the deaf and dumb should be taught. The most prominent and persistent among those who desire a new Institution for deaf mutes in Massachusetts, is Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the Chairman of the present Board of State Charities, and Principal of the Institution for the Blind. For many years he has agitated this question. The successive Principals of the Asylum have formed with him a most intimate acquaintance, for almost every year they have been accustomed to meet him before the Legislature of Massachusetts as chief petitioner, or special advocate, for some plan by which the deaf and dumb might be withdrawn from the American Asylum. Some few years ago he was a petitioner, and a most active advocate, for a plan of collecting the deaf mutes in a village where they might be taught and enjoy religious worship by themselves. In his Report, as the Chairman of the Board of State Charities, he refers to this very movement as absurd, and imputes it to the method of instruction pursued in the American Asylum! In his anxiety to establish general principles, he condemns a custom of two or three years standing, by which some twenty or thirty deaf mutes natives and residents of Boston, assemble together on the Sabbath for religious instruction, and worship in the sign language, imputing this movement, not to a desire for religious instruction, but to a morbid tendency among the mutes to separate themselves from the society of speaking people. Dr. Howe says this without seeming to be at all aware that, even if all these mutes had an absolutely perfect knowledge of language, a public lecture given by spelling, would be most wearisome, both from its slowness, and the close attention required from the eyes. To writing on a large black-board, there would be the same objection. Why, then, should they be cut off from the enjoyment of that wonderful magnetic power which the human countenance, and attitudes in connection with descriptive signs, are able to give? Said a friend, the other day, who had been to see Ristori, and who understood not a word of Italian, "The expression of her face was the best of sermons." But Dr. Howe, in his zeal for principles, and in his desire to counteract "morbid tendencies," would cut off the deaf and dumb from this high pleasure, and, to them, most important means of religious improvement. Why do they wish to come together in this most unphilosophical manner? Because, he informs us, they have been taught in the American Asylum! There they were "congregated," here, in consequence, they "segregate." The opportunity to give, in his official capacity, a blow at the method of instruction pursued at Hartford, could not, it seems, be passed by: