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ment to precede trial. The accused must unavoidably submit to such restraint as will ensure his answering the accusation, and abiding the issue; but this restraint should never, either in discipline or diet, unnecessarily partake of the nature of punishment, and its continuance ought to be limited, or its character changed by a "speedy trial". To provide for the punishment of offences, is the most unpleasant duty which the humane legislator is required to perform; but from which he cannot shrink, unless regardless of the obligations he owes to those for whom he legislates. If we have laws, there will be violations; if there be crimes, there must be punishments. The honest and industrious portion of society have a claim for protection against the depredations of the lawless. This was the great object for which government was instituted; for this it is supported; for this taxes are levied; and to this the constitution directs our first attention. The maxim that mercy to the criminal is cruelty to the State, has been said by some never to have been more fully illustrated than in this country within a few of the past years. Although its assertion is unquestionably too strong, yet it is beyond a doubt that imprisonment in some of the State penitentiaries has become altogether ineffectual either for the purposes of prevention or reform. And what better effect could have been expected from the crowded state of the prisons; from an indiscriminate intercourse among all classes of offenders, constituting a society suited to their dispositions, supplied by the government with better food, and more comfortable clothing than they had ever provided for themselves, and living in every respect better, and performing less labor than a great proportion of the virtuous