Excerpt from Remarks on Some of the Provisions of the Laws of Massachusetts, Affecting Poverty, Vice, and Crime: Being the General Topics of a Charge to the Grand Jury of the County of Suffolk, in March Term, 1822 Poverty, vice and crime, in the degree in which they are witnessed in our day, are, in fact, in some measure the necessary consequences of the social state. Just in proportion as the higher and happier parts of the machine of society are elevated and enlarged, those parts, which are, by necessity or accident, beneath and below, become sunken and depressed. Laws themselves are, in some cases, unavoidably the causes of the crimes, which they punish. And the instruments, which society employs in its lower departments, for the administering or the execu ting of those laws, are Often not a little responsible for the guilt, which they detect, or seize. Reflections, therefore, on the effects of the laws, on the classes of society to which I have alluded, can never be untimely or unsuitable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.