that time there was a steady rise year by year until the year 1888, when the total stood at 4,002. The variations in these figures are indicative of the varying conditions of the Province from prosperity to depression, and vice versa, in common with the other parts of the Colony. Times of depression are always marked by dearth of employment, when there is a necessity for charitable assistance, more or less, to those in enforced idleness. But the extraordinary increase in the number of recipients of aid from the Institution indicated in the foregoing statement was, no doubt, in the first instance chiefly due to the importation from the Home Country of many unsuitable and undesirable immigrants during the operation of the Public Works and Immigration Scheme. Drunkenness and the desertion of wives and children were also prolific causes of family distress; and during the whole history of the Institution scarcely a report was submitted to the subscribers without strong reference being made to the shameful conduct of dissolute husbands and fathers. Disabling and fatal accidents to labourers, while the railways were in course of formation, were also fruitful in adding to the number of the destitute. It is surprising to find that in the fifteenth year of the Institution there were no fewer than 80 widows and 266 fatherless children receiving relief, and that these numbers rose in the year 1883 to 167 and 448 respectively. In the second instance however, the alarming increase in the number of recipients was the very natural consequence of the passing of the "Hospital and Charitable Institutions Act, 1885."
All things considered, the Institution has, from the first, well fulfilled its functions, and now, besides affording out-door relief (as per report for 1888, the latest published) to 4,050 persons, all told, it gives an Asylum to about 180 men and women disabled by age, disease, or accident, and some 60 homeless children, and, in addition, it provides all the benefits of a maternity hospital to women too poor to pay for medical attendance and nursing in their own homes.
Financially, the Institution from its inception had a somewhat hard struggle, and more than once, by reason of the bleak look out, owing to the many calls for assistance and the lack of funds, its conductors seriously entertained the thought of closing the door, but they nevertheless succeeded wonderfully, and far
