Now, let any man consider for a moment what a large, interesting, and annually-increasing portion of our population there is, who, from certain peculiarities attending their early condition, have never been blessed with relatives or kindred--who, having no available father and mother, have consequently no uncles, aunts, or cousins, nor any good friends. Here the law presses with a fearful severity upon the suffering and the afflicted, not upon the guilty and offending. The state has provided no possible contingencies by which such persons are to escape. A man can no more create a paternity than he can make a new planet. I have already said that with wealth at his disposal, ancestry and forefathers are easily procured. He can have them of any age, of any country, of any condition in life--churchmen or laymen--dignitaries of the law or violators of it;--’tis all one, they are made to order. But let him be in ever such urgent want of a near relative; let it be a kind and affectionate father, an attached and doting mother, that he stands in need of--he may study _The Times_ and _The Herald_--he may read _The Chronicle_ and _The Globe_, in vain! No benevolent society has directed its philanthropy in this channel; and not even a cross-grained uncle or a penurious aunt can be had for love or money.
Now this subject presents itself in two distinct views--one as regards its humanity, the other its expediency. As the latter, in the year of our Lord, 1844, would seem to offer a stronger claim on our attention, let us examine it first. Consider them how you will, these people form the most dangerous class of our population--these are the “waifs and strays” of mankind. Like snags and sawyers in the Mississippi, having no voyage to perform in life, their whole aim and destiny seems to be the shipwreck of others. With one end embedded in the mud of uncertain parentage, with the other they keep bobbing above the waves of life; but let them rise ever so high, they feel they cannot be extricated.
If rich, their happiness is crossed by their sense of isolation; for them there are no plum-pudding festivals at Christmas, no family goose-devourings at Michaelmas. They have none of those hundred little ties and torments which weary and diversify life. They have acres, but they have no uncles--they have gardens and graperies, but they cannot raise a grandfather--they may have a future, but they have scarcely a present; and they have no past.