1857.

No. 13.

[ No. 13.]

REPORT of Special Committee on State Asylums. Mr. President:

The committee on Asylums, to whom was referred the report of the Trustees of State Asylums, and so much of the Governor's Message as relates thereto, have had the same under consideration, and find that they justly and unqualifiedly claim the patronage of the State.

It appears that that most unfortunate class in community, the insane, are already numerous in this State, that many of them are confined in jails, pauper houses and other places equally unadapted to their condi tion, and which consigns them to an almost hopless insanity, that many hundred, whose lives might probably have been spared, had there been certain establishments adapted to their peculiar condition, and that friends and families are bearing overwhelming burdens which the State ought either to bear, or for which provide a remedy.

Your committee find the asylum for deaf mutes and the blind, to be in a highly prosperous condition, one wing of the contemplated buildings is completed, and is already crowded with pupils. A future increase cannot be avoided, and unless the State provides apartments for their accommoda ion, they must be denied the privileges of instruction and consigned to hopeless ignorance and degradation.

Having commenced these asylums and sustained them thus far, the

State cannot now abandon them, and no claim can be now more worthy or more justly claim the fostering care of the State.

The elaborate report of the Board of Trustees, submitted to this body, renders it unnecessary for your committee to enter into a minute account of their present condition, but in accordance to suggestions therein contained, the committee ask leave to report the accompanying bill.

1857.

No. 12.

[ No. 14.]

MEMORIAL of the members of the Detroit Bar relative to the payment of the traveling and other expenses of the Judges of the Supreme Court, and for an amendment of the Constitution relative to an increase of the salaries of the Circuit Judges; reported by a committee for that purpose appointed, and formally adopted on the 15th day of January, 1857.

To the Hon. the Senate and the House of Representatives of the State of Michigan.

The undersigned, members of the Detroit Bar, beg leave to present to your honorable body the following Memorial, earnestly asking in view of the facts it presents, that the requests therein made be granted, and that appropriate legislation be had by your honorable body, during its present session, to give them effect.

In this connection your memorialists do not deem it necessary to remind your honorable body, that by far the most important branch of a free government, and that which should be most carefully protected, and tenderly guarded, is the Judiciary, that the most intimate relations necessarily subsist between the Bench and the Bar, and that just as the former depreciates in learning and integrity, the latter is apt to degenerate into all the immoralities of chicanery and dishonest practice. The Bench is eminently the seat of power among a free people, and wisdom and integrity combined can alone pronounce aught the decrees of justice. Under our form of government the safety of the Constitution and the