SECRETARY'S REPORT. PRELIMINARY. To the Board of State Charities. GENTLEMEN:-In submitting to you my fifth and last Annual Report, you will permit me, I am sure, to vary a little from the usual custom, and not only to give a summary of the work done and the expenses incurred in my department during the year just ended, but also to review, briefly, the results of the last five years, during which I have had the honor to hold, and, under your direction, to exercise the office from which I now retire. I received my appointment from the hands of the late and sincerely lamented Governor Andrew, whose efforts had so much to do with the creation of the office, and who was so profoundly interested in the subjects with which your Board deals. Placed at the helm of affairs, when the stress of war and revolution demanded all his great energies, he could spare little time or thought for the details of charitable administration, which yet he did not neglect. Of the original members of your Board only two (Messrs. ALLEN and EARLE,) now remain in office, and of the nine appointments made by Governor Andrew and accepted, all but three (Messrs. ALLEN, EARLE and BLAISDELL,) have been given up by resignation; a fact which testifies among other things to the difficulties encountered in this branch of the public service. Upon none of our members have these difficulties pressed more heavily than upon the late General Agent, Mr. Wheelwright. He had come much earlier to an experience of these duties as Chairman of the Board of Alien Commissioners, of which he was the most efficient member. He had learned how exacting, how unremitting, how thankless they were; but he had so performed them as materi SECRETARY'S REPORT. ally to lighten the labors of his colleagues on the Board of Charities. And we all, I think, owed much, especially in the first years of our work, to his clear intelligence, remarkable activity, and unsparing patience of toil and thought. Nor is it easy to see how the system of our pauper laws and state charities could have been brought into its present admirable form, but for the extraordinary powers and the public spirit which he devoted to his work and to ours. For my own part, I desire to put on record that I owe to him more than to any other man,more, indeed, than to all men,-the humble measure of success which has attended my own labors in this department, deeply indebted as I have been to my other colleagues and to many other persons for their advice and assistance. What of order or co-ordination existed in the working of our charitable system as a whole, five years ago, was due very much, in my opinion, to Mr. Wheelwright's efforts. The excellent features of particular laws and institutions were not his, for the most part, but these institutions were then, far more than now, out of relation and conflicting with each other. It became the work of the Board of Charities to co-ordinate them and bring them into harmony with each other, and with the general, but, as yet, ill-defined policy of the State. It has been my duty, more than that of any of my colleagues, to record and chronicle the progress made in this, and you must pardon me if I here recapitulate it. Our first object was to ascertain the condition, workings and existing necessity for the many state and county Institutions which came under our inspection. This was done in the first year, and the results of the inquiry were laid before the public in the First Annual Report of the Board and its executive officers, in the Special Report on State Almshouses, (Senate Document, No. 28, 1865,) and the Special Report on Prisons, (Senate Document, No. 74, 1865.) In the course of these investigations, the policy of the Alien Commissioners in the matter of immigration, and the removal from the State of paupers belonging elsewhere, was examined and confirmed, and there is no reason to suppose that Massachusetts will ever depart from it. It was found, on the other hand, that the |