You do now attend to receive that REWARD for your good conduct, and that TESTIMONIAL of it under the seal of this Corporation, which the governors are persuaded you are intitled to, not merely from the certificate of your master or mistress, but from their own knowledge of your conduct and behaviour, during the period of your apprenticeship. The bestowing, however, of that reward, and the sign. ing of that testimonial, would afford but a small and imperfect mark of the interest which they take in your welfare, without the addition of ADVICE and INSTRUCTION, with regard to your future conduct through this world, to a happier and more perfect state of existence.

It should be your FIRST OBJECT in life, to have a conscience void of offence towards GOD, and towards man;-your second, to maintain and support yourself by your own industry and exertions; and to preserve, by decency, civility, and propriety of behaviour, that unblemished character, which you are, at present, so fortunate as to possess.

As to your primary and your pre-eminent duty, we exhort your always to bear in mind, that, in this world of trial, if GOD be for us,

we need not mind what man shall say, or attempt to do, against us. If He is our protector, we may pass with security and peace through the valley of the shadow of death, and through every scene of danger or difficulty. If, on the contrary, HE casts us off, we have no other power to look to for succour and protection, To HIM, therefore, address yourself, in fervent and frequent prayer, not only in the church, but in your chamber; and look to him with faith, knowing that his mercy never was withheld from those, who sought him with piety and humility, and who relied on his pro

tection.

If you are duly impressed with your duty to God, you will never fail in the performance of your duty to your neighbour. He who loveth God, will love his brother also:-and he who is obedient to the divine commands, will possess HONESTY, SOBRIETY, INDUSTRY, PRUDENCE, KINDNESS and FORBEARANCE; virtues, which are not only essential to your duty to GOD and to your neighbour,-but, as we shall endeavour to explain to you, of the most important and immediate consequence to your present welfare here, as well as to your eternal happiness hereafter.

Without HONESTY, which includes a strict adherence to TRUTH, you must not only relin quish the hope of thriving and being successful in your station of life, but you must look for ward to disgrace and punishment, and probably to an ignominious end.-THE MOST ABAN

DONED VILLAIN NEVER BEGAN HIS CAREER

WITH ATROCIOUS GRIMES.-It is from petty and uncorrected habits of pilfering and falsehood,-it is from allowing our wandering desires to covet some little portion of our neighbour's goods, and then attempting to avoid detection by falsehood or prevarication,-that the foundation of principle in the human heart is corrupted and undermined,-the impression of religious and moral habits gradually effaced, -and the hardened and abandoned criminal, at length, left to expiate, by a public and igno minious death, the crimes which he has perpe trated against his fellow creatures.

The blessing of honesty (like that of every other virtue) returns with accumulated advantage to the possessor: the influence, however, is directed in its more immediate effect, to others.-SOBRIETY, the virtue which we have next to observe upon, is an act of self preser vation; and looks almost exclusively to our

t

own health and happiness. In its more enlarged sense, it includes an abstinence from every personal irregularity of conduct; and, among other irregularities, from that, against which, with your early instruction and subsequent habits, we trust it will be unnecessary to forwarn you. We mean that vice, which in young men leads them into improper and criminal connections, and in women is generally attended with every species of degraded and prostituted depravity. Of the victims of unregulated passions, you will find a melancholy list in the annals of Newgate, and you will see many wretched females in the public streets. Happily for you, we repeat, with early religious instruction, and with subsequent care

• The preserving and educating of so many children, which without the Foundling Hospital would have been lost to that society of which they are calculated to become useful members, is certainly a great and public benefit. The adoption of an helpless unprotected infant, the watching over its progress to maturity, and the fitting it to be useful to itself and others here, and to attain eternal happiness hereafter, these are no common or ordinary acts of beneficence ;-but their value and their importance are lost, when compared with the benefits which (without any prejudice to the original objects of the charity) the mothers derive from this Institution as it is at present conducted. The preserving the mere vital functions of an infant, cannot be put in competition with saving from vice, misery, and infamy, a young woman, in the bloom of

and good habits, you have hitherto been preserved, through a period, when youth and inexperience are most endangered.-May the DIVINE MERCY still preserve and protect you!

In its limited sense, SOBRIETY means an abstinence from the intemperate use of spiri tous liquors. From the miserable and disgusting examples, which this great metropolis affords, let us warn you-and let us intreat you to avoid with abhorrence, the destructive and abominable sin of dram drinking. Every indulgence in this vice, however trivial, however venial, such indulgence may appear at first, -leads, through hopeless misery, to the gates of death. That which commenced in accident, or in thoughtlessness, is soon confirmed by habit, and called for by the cravings of disease.

life, whose crime may have been a single and solitary act of indiscretion. Many extraordinary cases of repentance, followed by restoration to peace, comfort, and reputation, have come within the knowledge of the writer of this note. Some cases have occurred, within his observation, of wives happily placed, the mothers of thriving families, who, but for the saving aid of this Institution, might have become the most noxious and abandoned prostitutes. Very rare are the instances, none has come within notice,—of a woman relieved by the Foundling Hospital, and not thereby preserved from course of prostitution,-B. 31st Dec. 1803.