Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/132

128 speech? Thou you are very young, and know little of the tyranny of public-opinion, and the power of money to silence speech, while justice still comes in, with feet of wool, but iron hands.

There is yet another witness to the moral condition of Boston. I mean crime. Where there is such poverty and intemperance, crime may be expected to follow. I will not now dwell upon this theme; only let me say, that in 1848, three thousand four hundred and thirty-five grown persons, and six hundred and seventy-one minors, were lawfully sentenced to your gaol and house of correction; in all, four thousand one hundred and six; three thousand four hundred and forty-four persons were arrested by the night police, and eleven thousand one hundred and seventy-eight were taken into custody by the watch; at one time there were one hundred and forty-four in the common gaol. I have already mentioned that more than a thousand boys and girls, between six and sixteen, wander as vagrants about your streets; two hundred and thirty-eight of these are children of widows, fifty-four have neither parent living. It is a fact known to your police, that about one thousand two hundred shops aro unlawfully open for re-