$288,141 05-exceeding the aggregate deficit by the sum of $14,739 52. And, as I have already said, the whole deficit for the ten years (incurred for the benefit of others) has been made up by a sale of real estate, and is to that extent a consumption of principal.

Several of the witnesses have testified that in granting aid to other churches the Vestry have acted under the influence of party feeling, refusing assistance to those who differ with them in opinion, and granting it freely to those whose views are in accordance with their own. I feel it to be my solemn duty to repel this imputation by stating my own experience. I have been more than seven years a member of the Vestry, and have been on terms of the most unreserved and confidential communication with my associates. I have discussed with them the propriety of granting and declining applications for aid, not only at nearly all the meetings of the Vestry, but in many cases in private interviews; and no reference has ever been made by me or by any one of them, at any meeting, official or private, to the party views of any of the Rectors or religious societies presenting such applications. The party divisions which have existed for several years in the Episcopal Church, and which have not only impaired its capacity for doing good, but dishonored those on both sides who have been active in keeping them alive, have never been a subject of discussion at any meeting of the Vestry which I have attended, nor have they been alluded to in connection with applications for aid. I have taken a deep interest in several applications myself, and have, perhaps, had some influence in securing grants of money to the applicants; and in no instance have I inquired what were the particular views of the Rector or the parish to which they belonged. I do not even know to this day whether they are High Church or Low Church. The only inquiries I ever made were in regard to their pecuniary and social condition, and their need of assistance; and these considerations, together with the ability of Trinity Church at the time to make the grants asked for, and the probability that the grants would be effective for the objects in view, have been the only ones which have guided me in my votes. I believe the other members of the Vestry have been equally free from the influence of party motives. My belief is founded upon my knowledge of them as enlightened, conscien

tious, and liberal men, and upon all they have said and done in my presence through a familiar association of seven years. I cannot be supposed to have been deceived in regard to their principles of action but upon the hypothesis of a depth of dissimulation on their part, and an obtuseness of perception on my own, too gross for the largest credulity.

I can say with the same confidence that I do not believe those who have the management of the affairs of Trinity Church have sought, during the period of my connection with them (a period of a good deal of excitement), to influence Rectors or parishes on any question in the diocese through the instrumentality of her donations. It is due to others to add that I have for several years attended the conventions of the diocese, and become acquainted with a large number of the clergy. I have rarely met a more intelligent or independent body of men; and I regard the intimation that they would be governed in the doctrines they teach, or in the official acts they have to perform, by considerations arising out of the pecuniary aid their parishes may have received from Trinity Church, as alike ungenerous and unjust.

In a word, I consider all these imputations of influence on the one hand, and of subserviency on the other, as the offspring of mere groundless suspicion; and they are, in some instances, so loosely hazarded as to make it the part of charity to refer them to the same narrow and distempered views of duty which are falsely imputed to the Vestry of Trinity.

I have thus laid before the Committee with entire frankness a statement of my connection with Trinity Church, and the part I have borne in the management of her financial affairs, and the great scheme of religious and temporal ministration which I desire to see carried out, under her auspices and through the aid of her endowments, in the lower districts of the city. I do not believe the importance of giving effect to this plan can be overstated. The funds of Trinity Church are the only resource for accomplishing it: she must execute it, or it will fall to the ground, and the district in which three of her church edifices stand become nearly desolate for all spiritual purposes. The prosperity of the city is deeply involved in it. Destitution, temporal and spiritual, goes hand in hand with crime; and when even now the spirit of acquisitiveness, which is characteristic of

the age and has become its greatest scourge, is dishonoring it by forgeries the most barefaced, and staining it by murders the most foul, what shall be our social condition if, in a large portion of the city, destitution and spiritual neglect shall combine with cupidity to arm the hand of violence, and stimulate it to still grosser outrage? What higher office can Trinity Church fulfil, what higher benefit can she confer on the classes which have the deepest stake in the security of property and life, than by devoting herself, as she is now doing, to make the lessons of religious and social duty familiar to those who, under the pressure of their physical wants, have the strongest temptation to forget them? In the upper districts the possessors of nearly the whole private wealth of the city have become domesticated. There is more than one congregation the individual possessions of which are believed to exceed in value, with the largest estimate ever put on it, the entire property Trinity Church holds for the support of her four congregations. Those whom Fortune has thus overburdened with her gifts should be willing to leave unimpaired the endowments of Trinity Church, that she may make suitable provision for the poor whom they have left to her care. And whatever may be the narrowness of spirit which presides over particular circles, no doubt is entertained of the generous and catholic feeling, which pervades the great body of the opulent classes. No city has more cause to be thankful for the munificence with which some of her richest men have contributed to great objects of social improvement within her limits; and it is most gratifying to add that in more than one instance the wealth which exists in the largest masses has been poured out with the noblest profusion to build up literary and charitable institutions for the common benefit. To such a spirit of munificence no appeal to relieve the destitution which hangs upon the outskirts of the upper districts need be addressed in vain. If among those to whom Providence has committed the spiritual guidance of these favored classes there are any who seck to compel Trinity Church to scatter her endowments broadcast over the city, and thus disqualify herself for the great work of charity devolved on her in the district in which her lot has been cast; if there are any who are engaged in inculcating an antiphonal beneficence the utterances of which are to be given only in response to those of Trinity, it is sug

gested, with the profoundest deference, whether a nobler field for the exercise of their influence does not lie directly before them-whether the great ends of their calling will not be better subserved by laboring to infuse into surrounding atmospheres, overcast with penury and want, some of the golden light which irradiates their own.

The State, nay, the whole country, has a deep interest in this question. The city of New York, embodying as she does, to a great extent, the commercial and financial power of the Union, must exert a sensible influence upon the moral and intellectual character of all with whom she is brought into association. The slightest agitations on her surface undulate in all directions to the great circumference of which she is the centre. On Trinity Church are devolved, in the order of events, the spiritual instruction and guidance of the district by which she is brought most directly into contact with all that lies beyond her limits. If this duty is not faithfully performed, no voice should be raised in palliation of the delinquency. On the other hand, if any of those who have withdrawn from this part of the city the wealth which Providence has, in such disproportion, bestowed on them shall seek to deprive the destitute whom they have left behind of the sole resource for spiritual instruction and for the alleviation of temporal want-if they shall succeed, by misstating the condition and unjustly impeaching the motives of Trinity Church, in defeating her efforts to carry out the great system of labor with which she is occupied, they will incur the gravest and most odious of all responsibilities: that of consigning one of the most important districts in the emporium of the Union to an intellectual and spiritual death.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN A. DIx.

XVI.

(Vol. II., page 209.)

GENERAL DIX ON SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EVILS.

The following is the address, on Social and Political Evils, delivered by General Dix before the New York Association for the Advancement of Science and Art, and referred to in the text:

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN,-It would have been very gratifying to me if I could have come before you, at the beginning of the Centennial Year, to discourse of the wonderful progress our country has made in population, wealth, and the arts of civilization. But it would have been an ungracious encroachment on the province of the distinguished orator who has been chosen to perform this service at the close of the first century of our national existence, in the Hall where our Independence was proclaimed to the world. And yet I feel that it is an ungrateful task to speak of social and political evils before the sounds of rejoicing with which the new year was ushered in have become faint upon the ear. But there cannot, perhaps, be a more appropriate season for looking our failures boldly in the face, and considering how we may convert them into future triumphs. It was thought by others that some profit might be gleaned from the discussion, connected as I have been from time to time with public affairs; and I have yielded to their opinion, though without much hope of justifying it, from the desultory nature of my subject, which, I have to say, will necessarily be discursive; and it can hardly be expected to rise to the level of an orderly arrangement, much less to the rank of a formal discourse; and I am apprehensive that the fairer portion of my audience will derive little gratification from a very plain treatment of a very unattractive theme. But if the State of New York should ever have the gallantry to confer on them the right to the ballot, they may possibly be benefited by some of my suggestions.

It is certainly a marvel that the framers of the Constitution of the United States should have succeeded in framing and agreeing upon a form of government so free from imperfections, and that, after the lapse of more than three-quarters of a century, and with a population essentially modified in material as well as ethical characteristics, so little cause should be found for changes in its structure. But there is a defect of administration which it will be difficult to remedy without an amendment by the concurrent action of Congress and three-fourths of the States. The defect is functional, and yet it seems only susceptible of cure by an organic change. I allude to the immense number of appointments made by the Executive Department. This patronage, as it is called, is usually regarded as a source