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ter opportunity would likewise be afforded of varying the grades of punishment so as more fully to meet the different degrees of guilt, and of adapting imprisonment in the several county gaols, by a proper classification, to the characters and circumstances of the prisoners remaining therein. The contaminating influence of corrupt society is such as to render it manifestly improper to confine the suspected, held for trial only, in the same apartment with the convict. If uncorrupted, he ought not by compulsion to become an inmate with the hardened felon, whose influence, under such circumstances, would be demoralizing to the purest mind. If he be an initiate in vice, the instructions of an abandoned companion would prepare for still greater crime. Yet this cannot be avoided in county gaols with few apartments, all crowded, and without the necessary means of classification. Our constitution guarantees to the accused a "speedy, public and impartial trial"; but in consequence of the present state of our prisons, and the arrangement of the courts in some of the counties, the accused, previous to trial, if unable to furnish bail, may, for more than eleven months be subjected to the highest punishment, not capital, now inflicted upon the most abandoned offender; and moreover, after having suffered this punishment, more severe, perhaps, than the law denounces against the offence with which he is charged, may be proved and adjudged to be innocent. The possibility of such an occurrence calls for legislative attention. It is necessary for the security of society that the guilty be visited with that punishment, however severe, which will be effectual to deter, correct and reform, but, it is a violation of natural right for punishment