The “Station-House” and the County Prison are crowded with persons who do not feel that they have done an injury to others, or at most, they think their offence is of a most venial kind. The offence of “vagrancy” is so undefined, that it is easy to commit almost any idle person upon such a charge, and equally easy to let him go. “Disorderly conduct,” which appends to the offence of drunkenness, the punishment of a month confinement instead of a day is so uncertain in its character, that the jubilant politician is in danger of imprisonment if his huzzas are strengthened and multiplied by even moderate potations. And “disorderly house” is made to cover all kinds of disturbances between singing loud to a crying child, and the repeated orgies of drunkenness and prostitution, just as “misdemeanor” includes all indictable offences below actual felony. And “abuse and threats,” that formerly expressed something definite, now fill the commitment with most undefinable charges, and the cells with most astonished and astonishing inmates. The whole system of magisterial justice has, in this city, fallen into disrepute; and those who are the objects of its penalties, seem to lose respect for its ministers and their ministration, and to regard arrest and imprisonment as a misfortune which is as likely to fall upon one as another, if poor, and which therefore justifies any effort to evade the penalty. This was not always so; we speak of the estimate of aldermanic justice. There never was a time when vice and crime did not abound in a great city, and, consequently, if respect for public rights exists, and a necessity for order is admitted there is likely always to be business for the police, and cases for the magistrates. But there is a mode of conducting both arrests and “hearings,” that makes the difference in the proceedings and their effects. And when we shall have looked a little more into the details of the matter as they are presented, we shall not only see the cause of the evils which we deplore, but shall rapidly and easily arrive at a conclusion with regard to some of the means which are to be employed to alleviate the miseries of public prisons, and thus see that the subject of which we now treat, is one that directly connects itself with the aims of the Society, and that it demands from us an opinion of the evil which it involves, and a consideration of the plans which may be suggested as a remedy.