by any effort at improvement, though they must be met in time by the rising tide of public philanthropy.

In some things the law is far ahead of practice, in others the practice leads legislative action.

The law is explicit as it regards the separate confinement of convicts, yet three and four convicts are found. in the same cell in our county prisons, and two at least in the Eastern, more, perhaps, in the Western Penitentiary. The law rather permits than provides means for ameliorating the condition of prisoners. Private and associate efforts are doing much in that direction, and are only hindered by the inability to reach effectively the prisoner. But the primary place of justice, the magistrate's office, is the same. The man is by election made a magistrate that he may enjoy the profits of the office. The honors are not now very considerable. And when he has incurred the expense of preparing his "office-room," and taken upon himself the weight of "rent," and perhaps relinquished some moderately remunerative trade or pursuit, he naturally-he necessarily, perhaps, looks around to see how these expenses are to be met, and himself and family maintained. The way is before him-he must have official business-he must commit, not settle-he must have costs as he has no salary, and it is rather more than most people can be expected to do, to send away the complaint without the fee or to settle a case without costs, when both fee and costs are legal.

We are not of those who think that the aldermen are censurable for taking costs, and "binding over," or "committing;" they have the oath, which certainly jus

tifies, if indeed it may not enjoin this action. Many of the aldermen are respectable and humane citizens. They do less evil and more good than would many others who condemn their conduct and would occupy their places. But some of them, respectable and humane as they are, perpetuate the evil, of which so much complaint is made. They have a right to fix the costs, &c., the law allows and their families require it. The law should not allow them to have costs. The remedy is difficult and remote-the evil lies chiefly in the Constitution of the State. But correction is possible, and when a few respectable and humane citizens, of sound judg ment and good discretion, can be commissioned to take charge of the police stations, and hold there or somewhere else their courts, with some discriminating powers, and a good, living salary, without a single cent derivable officially from any other source, then we may hope to see the great evil remedied.

It is generally supposed that men of less mental power would answer the purpose of police magistrates, than are required for judges of the Court of Sessions. We scarcely agree in that opinion. Less law is needed. We do not know that a police magistrate need be what is termed "learned in the law :" therein he must rank below the Judge-but the police magistrate must add to a habit of discrimination, an ability to judge of the character of his prisoner, and a sound, extraordinary discretion, to discriminate between the habits, condition and circumstances of those before him. If guilty, the Judge must pronounce a sentence, mitigated, of course, by circumstances, but even when the magistrate believes

the prisoner guilty of the particular act charged, he ought to be able so to arrange his decision as to avoid, if that is best, the severest action which the prosecutor invokes.

OBITUARY.

ISAAC BARTON.

In our last year's number we expressed a confidence that the future numbers of this Journal could scarcely fail of an obituary record, and we are not likely to fail in our prediction. Death has within the year of which we record our doings and our sufferings, taken from us a member who seemed moulded to the most gentle uses of his kind, and qualified by nature and by grace for the labors of the best branch of our duties.

ISAAC BARTON, a merchant of this city, and long a useful and respected member of this Society, died in the month of April, 1868. His life was one of gentleness and usefulness. As a merchant, as a citizen, and as a philanthropist, he was successful in acquiring wealth, respectability, and gratitude. He died peacefully-hopefully, and his bequests to the Society showed how much he was attached to the principles upon which it was founded, and how practicable he regarded its plans of usefulness. The Society made a record of its appreciation of its loss in the death of such a member,

and while it gratefully receives his legacy of money, it valued greatly his encouraging presence, and esteems of unspeakable price his legacy of approbation of its plans and labors.

We subjoin a record of proceedings:

At a stated meeting of the Acting Committee, held Fifth Month 21st, 1868, the following memorial and resolution, in relation to ISAAC BARTON, offered by Joseph R. Chandler, was unanimously adopted.

It is a part of the providence of God that in the midst. of our pursuits, whether of business or of philanthropy, we should be occasionally aroused to the solemn truth that our lives are held by a feeble and constantly weakening tenure; and the labors in which we are engaged are of little consequence to us, unless they may, by their consequences be connected with that state in which the tenure of existence is fixed and permanent.

Such a monition the members of this Society have had in the recent death of Isaac Barton, whose presence in our midst was wont to be an encouragement to additional good resolves, and whose services were always examples of cheerful sacrifice and faithful labor in the cause of pure humanity.

Mr. Barton was for many years a member of this Society, to which he was attached less by his love of social intercourse than by his deep practical sympathy in the motives of the Association, and his hearty assent to the plans and means by which the Society seeks to secure its ends.

Mr. Barton was known in the circle of commerce as a business man of that sound discretion and consistent

devotion that seldom fail of success; and especially of that strict integrity which makes success valuable to Society by illustrating the dependence of permanent success upon established integrity.

To Mr. Barton's fair standing in Society it is not necessary now to refer, excepting as that good standing reflected credit upon all his associations, and served to show how compatible is active Christian philanthropy with prosperous business pursuits. But it is of Isaac Barton as a member of this Society that it is proper at this time and in this place to speak; and it is our loss in his death that we have to lament. A loss not only of the pleasure of personal intercourse with one so gentle and so devoted, but especially the loss which the cause of sound philanthropy and the direction of prison discipline sustains in the withdrawal of his co-operation from the good work, and of the encouragement of his approval which lightened the labors of his co-workers.

Most of us remember the moderate counsels of our deceased member, and his gentle but effective advocacy of measures that he regarded as right-right, not always from his own experience, but often because they were recommended by those whose services he honored, and whose integrity of purpose warranted the confidence which he reposed in their greater experience, even to the relinquishment of his own propositions-for Isaac Barton was not only a philanthropist and an honest man, but he was, in the fullest sense of that word, a modest man. Fixed and sincere in his principles, but yielding and compliant in their application, gentle in the advocacy of his views, earnest and energetic in the execution