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individuals present themselves every day here, number in all one hundred thousand persons.

Possibly, however, the State might have cared for them in some sort if a crop had been made last year, as was the case in Georgia and Tennessee.  But the very late occupation of Alabama prevented the seasonable resumption of agricultural labor, and this cause with the terrible drought which supervened, have so far as I can judge, placed this State nearly a year behind any of its neighbors.  This phase has, however, been often enforced and illustrated to you.

Amid such vast need, all that the Government can do is to select and care for those actually ready to perish. And this could only be done wisely through some system which could avail itself of persons of neighborhood reputation and acquaintance.

To provide this, a commissioner was sometime since authorized by the Legislature and appointed by