It is also not to be doubted, that a large proportion of this excess of State’s poor, more or less assisted during the year, consist of those who are called in the statements herewith presented, “wandering or travelling poor.” The single fact of the existence among us of this class of fellow-beings, especially considered in connexion with the facts, that nearly all of them are State’s poor, and that, to a great extent, they have been made what they are by the State’s provision for them, brings the subject before us in a bearing, in which we scarcely know whether the call is loudest to the pity we should feel for them, or the self-reproach with which we should recur to the measures we have sanctioned, and which have alike enlarged their numbers and their misery. Nor is it a matter of mere inference from our tables, that the number is very large of these wandering poor. To a considerable extent, and it is now regretted that it was not to a greater extent, the inquiry was proposed to overseers of the poor, “How many of the wandering, or travelling poor, annually pass under your notice?” And the answers, as will appear in the statements, were from 10 to 50, and 100 to 200. Nor is there a more abject class of our fellow-beings to be found in our country than is this class of the poor. Almshouses, where they are to be found, are their inns, at which they stop for refreshment. Here they find rest, when too much worn with fatigue to travel, and medical aid when they are sick. And, as they choose not to labour, they leave these stopping places, when they have regained strength to enable them to travel, and pass from town to town, _demanding_ their portion of the State’s allowance for them as _their right_. And from place to place they receive a portion of this allowance, as the easiest mode of getting rid of them, and they talk of the allowance as their “rations;” and, when lodged for a time, from the necessity of the case, with town’s poor, it is their boast that they, by the State’s allowance for them, support the town’s inmates of the house. These unhappy fellow-beings often travel with females, sometimes, but not always their wives; while yet, in the towns in which they take up their temporary abode, they are almost always recognized and treated as sustaining this relation. There are exceptions, but they are few, of almshouses in which they are not permitted to live together. In winter they seek the towns in which they hope for the best accommodations and the best living, and where the smallest return will be required for what they receive. It is painful thus to speak of these human beings, lest, in bringing their degradation distinctly before the mind, we should even for a moment check the commiseration which is so strongly claimed for them. We feel bound therefore to say, that bad as they are, they are scarcely less sinned against in the treatment they receive, than they commit sin in the lawlessness of their lives. Everywhere viewed, and feeling themselves to be outcasts; possessed of nothing, except the miserable clothing which barely covers them; accustomed to beggary, and wholly dependent upon it; with no local attachments, except those which grow out of the facilities which in some places they may find for a more unrestrained indulgence than in others; with no friendships, and neither feeling nor awakening sympathy; is it surprising that they are debased and shameless, alternately insolent and servile, importunate for the means of subsistence and self-gratification, and averse from every means but that of begging to obtain them? The peculiar attraction of these unhappy fellow beings to our Commonwealth, and their preference for it over the States to the south of us, we believe is to be found in the legal provision which the State has made for them. Your Commissioners have indeed but a small amount of direct evidence of this; but the testimony of the chairman of the overseers in Egrement to this fact, derived from personal knowledge, was most unequivocal, and no doubt upon the subject existed in the minds of the overseers in many other towns. But shall we therefore condemn, or even severely blame, them? Considered and treated, in almost every place, as interlopers, strollers, vagrants; as objects of suspicion and dread, and, too often, scarcely as human beings; the cheapest methods are adopted of sending them from town to town, and often with the assurance given to them that _there_, and not _here_, are accommodations for them, and that _there_ they may enjoy the bounty which the State has provided for them.