It is proper to state that in many townships, and in some counties, there are no almshouses; the poor are put up at "public cry," and the right of keeping them. sold to the lowest bidder. The possibility of evils resulting from such a course is terrible; it does not follow that all thus purchased are badly treated, but it is likely that some are, and possible for all to be.

THE INSANE.

We start with pain and mortification at the report which Mr. Dickenson makes of the treatment of the insane pauper and the insane prisoner. It is a horrible calamity to be deprived of reason in any degree; but that calamity is doubled when the situation of the suf ferer is such as to comprehend the cruel nature of his treatment, with some appreciation of its cause, yet without a sufficient command of reason to escape the punishment for insanity.

"It is as if the dead should feel

The icy worm around him steal."

In some counties the insane are sent to the prison to be kept because of a want of a better place; and the prison has nothing but a cold cell and chains to hold the insane.

"Indiana County has no almshouse, its poor in the several townships are let out to the lowest bidder, and the insane sent sometimes to the miserable jail that disgraces this County."

One miserable object who had a mania for setting

things on fire, was put into a coffin-shaped box and fastened close, with enough of the cover off to expose his face. Once a day the insane man is taken out of his box for air and exercise. Now the Sheriff is a kind-hearted man, and did perhaps the best he could with his means. But assuredly the State of Pennsylvania will not suffer much longer such a disgrace to humanity.

In Franklin County, one man David Wagamer, a native of the County, eighty years of age, has been an inmate of this almshouse for twenty years, and in all that time has been chained.

Speaking of the place of confinement for the insane in the Adams County Almshouse, Mr. Dickenson says: "This is a horrible hole for insane persons, and aught to be abated as a nuisance." I saw in the almshouse proper, a man said to be insane, who was chained fast to a fifty-six pound weight, which he is obliged to drag about with him when he moves. In the insane department of the house, there was found another man who was held by an enormous chain to a heavy weight brightly polished by long and constant use.

"In a row of badly constructed cells divided by board partitions, I found men and women, some of them chained down to the floor, with chains heavy enough to secure an ox, all of these chains polished brightly by long use, through years of horrible torment. Some of these poor creatures have been confined in these wretched dens for more than twenty years-as the Steward believes, though there was no record of proceedings; all was traditionary, no one knew or cared for the wretched creatures.

Mr. D., was taken to the cell of a poor crazy women, who was declared to be the worst patient-she had had in prison, the insane woman had had several illegitimate children, she is white, about thirty five years of age. Two of the children were mulatto, a colored man drives the team of the place, she had others by white men.

An idiotic woman was pointed out who had lately given birth to a child; when asked who was the father, the Steward said he could not tell, but supposed it was somebody who came in off the turnpike.

We should hesitate about presenting such details if we were not seeking to show the necessity of a change by exhibiting the evils of existing want of system. But, oh! what a state of things for Pennsylvania men and women to contemplate!

Mr. Dickenson thus concludes his remarks upon this subject:

There can be no remedy for this but the erection of an Asylum by the State, where a sufficient number of the class of insane patients considered incurable can be accommodated, to warrant the employment of physicians and nurses who understand the treatment of such people, then they could be properly classified and rendered comparatively comfortable and many of them happy.

Those now confined in gloomy prisons and basements of County Poor Houses, and "pens not fit for the habitation of a brute, could be taken care of and some even restored to reason. A State Institution should be erected at once, where the counties that have not a sufficient number of insane and idiots to have a separate institution

for their treatment, could send them, where they would have better care, and the item of cost would not be greater than keeping them in the County Jail or Poor House.

Of course we only give a glance at Mr. Dickenson's report. In looking over its varied statements we are struck with the vast importance of the work in which he has been, and indeed now is engaged, and we are more and more confirmed in those views which we have for several years past expressed on the importance of a prison and an almshouse system for the State,

The office which Mr. Dickenson now holds was created in consequence of the efforts made by this Society. We hope it will be continued, and it is solely with a view to the public good that we express a hope that it will, with a remunerative salary, be continued in the person who now so ably discharges that portion of its duties. which have thus far been developed. Duties, the faithful discharge of which show how much has been left undone, and how the crime of the felon has been perpetuated by the poor means adopted for its punishment, and how the miseries of the unfortunate have been augumented by the maladministration of the means provided for their melioration. How the wandering mind is fixed in insanity, and how the impression that insanity is a disgrace and must be treated like a crime, is deepened and made ineffaceable.

RESPONSIBILITIES.

Mr. Dickenson in his visitation to the several prisons and almshouses, gathered views of the importance of a direct responsibility of the principal officer of those institutions, which he thus expresses:

In some of the States of the Union there is a system established by law, which includes under one central commission, the means of knowing how much each penal and charitable institution in the State costs and effects. And by this means each is kept up to its work, and each is benefitted by the improvement in the management of any other, while the report of each one to the Central Board enables that body to inform the community of the condition and progress of all the institutions in the State, and to propose alterations and improvements suggested by successful experiments elsewhere.

SEPARATE CONFINEMENT-PENNSYLVANIA

SYSTEM.

We cannot forbear to notice one grand conclusion at which Mr. Dickenson has arrived, after a survey of the two Penitentiaries and nearly all the County Prisons of the State, viz. that the Pennsylvania system of separate confinement as administered in the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia, is the true, and as yet the only one by which the end of improving as well as punishing the