In our Report last year, we informed that the Quarterly Journal, which had been published by the Society for a number of years, was discontinued, and an Annual Report and Journal substituted for it. The principal reason then assigned for the change was, the large absorption of our funds which its publication occasioned, while our means for aiding discharged prisoners and sustaining other objects of practical benevolence in carrying out the original object of our organization, that of “Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” were entirely too limited. The result, we think, has already confirmed the propriety of the course then adopted. Our financial condition has considerably improved, and our appropriations in 1862, in aid of discharged prisoners, were upwards of fifty per cent. greater than in 1861. EDWARD H. BONSALL, } JOSEPH R. CHANDLER, } Committee on TOWNSEND SHARPLESS, } Annual Report, &c. CHARLES C. LATHROP, } ALFRED H. LOVE. } PHILADELPHIA, _1st Mo. (Jan.) 15, 1863_. For the Prison Journal. MAGISTRACY. The Magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority.--BURKE. Moses, in reply to the question of his father-in-law, “Why sittest thou thyself alone and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?” said, “Because the people, when they have a matter, come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God and his laws.” In him we have a model magistrate. But finding the labor “too heavy” for him, by the advice of Jethro, he confined his duties in this respect to those of an appellant judge, to be for the people “Godward,” to “bring the causes unto God,” and to hear “every great matter,” and he did “provide out of all the people, _able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness_, and placed such over them to be rulers,” or minor magistrates, “and made them heads over the people,” “and they judged the people at all seasons; the hard cases they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.” In this record of the first institution of the office of the magistrate, and the qualifications considered as requisite in the man to fill the position, we have a lesson that it becomes us diligently to consider at the present day. If there has been degeneracy of the world since the days of Moses, in no respect perhaps has it been more forcibly felt, than in the mode of administering justice, (or as it would be more properly termed _in_justice,) at the present day, by the police or committing magistrates. The evils resulting to the community, the cruelty done to the unfortunate being who falls into their hands, by the system prevailing and carried out by many of the magistrates, especially of this city, have become so aggravated as to demand a thorough reformation. “Moses chose _able_ men,” whose qualifications were known “out of all Israel.” Men who acted in the