PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.
By J. A. Torrance.
OTAGO BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION.
HE old familiar averment, "The poor ye have always with you," has formed the basis of many appeals on behalf of the poor and needy, and the stern fact of which it takes cognizance—a fact that has asserted itself in every community throughout the civilized world—has led to the formation of those charitable institutions whose name is legion. In the very early days of the Province of Otago poverty in the strict acceptation of the term was unknown. The first immigrants were by no means in affluent circumstances; they were simply a body of respectable and industrious Scotch working people who had the hardihood to launch out from the crowded home of their fathers to make for themselves a home in the Britain of the South. After the first period of inconvenience arising from the complete change from the crowded cities and cultivated districts of Scotland to an uncultivated country still lying in its primitive wildness, the pioneers had at least a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. Their wants were few, their mode of life simple, and delicacies and "appearances," such as prevail in older communities, were not thought of by them. It is true that as time passed by, and the number of immigrants increased, the young settlement once or twice passed through a painful experience. The early settlers had no foe in the shape of a warlike savage to contend with, but they had their sorrows and difficulties and dangers nevertheless. On two or three occasions, owing to the non-arrival of vessels with supplies, the worst of all foes—starvation—cast its dark shadow over the place, some of the necessaries of life being absolutely unattainable. Salt could be, and was, extracted from
