That  branch  of  the  medical  art,  thanks  to  the  great  men  of
our  own  time,  is  rapidly  becoming  an  exact  science,  for  nhidi
the  thinking  people  should  have  nothing  but  deep  admintton
and  giatitudc,  and  the  benefit  of  which  ia  now  accessible  lo
substantially  all  people,  at  least  here  in  Boston  and  throughoat
New  England.  Nevertheless  we  shall  always  have  the  bhnd
with  us,  and  we  must  face  the  problem  of  which  they  are  the


From  what  is  due  to  the  blind,  and  far  more  from  wbat
society  owes  to  itself,  the  policy  may  be  laid  down  that  the
blind  should  be  enabled  to  compete  with  seeing  people  on  some-
thing like  etjual  terms.  This  is  uot  a  matter  ot  charity,  but,
as  Or.  Samuel  G.  Howe  and  his  successor  have  not  failed  tu
point  out,  a  matter  of  right.  In  our  social  intercourse  with
the  blind  it  is  not  quite  civil  to  remind  them  of  what  to  ns  looks
like  a  defect,  though  to  some  of  them  a  state  different  fruin
their  own  is  scarcely  imagined,  much  less  estimated  as  it  is  l>j
ourselves.  But  the  ease  involves  rather  more  than  mere  cour-
tesy or  what  the  world  has  learned  from  the  New  Testament  lu
call  by  the  sweet  name  of  "charity,"  The  question  is  one  of
statute  law  and  political  economy,  and  I  shall  have  failed  in
my  little  endeavor  if  I  do  not  justify  our  object  to  your  sens*
of  right  as  well  as  to  youi-  conception  of  a  sound  public  policy.
