In a subsequent part of this Report, under the head of “Correspondence,” will be found large supplemental abstracts of British Parliamentary Reports; and it is thought that a few words explanatory of the British and Irish system might, in this part of our Report, be made useful in aid of the plan for auxiliaries. England has learned much from us in the work of Prison Discipline: we might learn something of her, (more, indeed, than we _shall_ acquire,) were our institutions more assimilated, and especially were we as geographically circumscribed as she is. The “Prison Reports,” physical and moral, in Great Britain, are all to the Government of the nation; and every part of every city jail seems to work with as distinct a reference to the whole system of prison regulation as the lower clerkships of a State Department do to the administration of the whole. This, it must be admitted, is easy in that country, where there is but one legislature to direct, and one government to administer and execute. It would be impossible in this country, for the National Congress to issue ordinances for the administration of _State_, county, and city prisons. To say nothing of State rights and State sovereignty, there would be insurmountable difficulties in prescribing and carrying out rules for prison discipline and dietaries for all the jails from Oregon to Maine. So that, when we read of the happy and harmonious working of the prison laws in Ireland and Great Britain, we must call to mind the proximity of each establishment to the other, and of the whole to the Government, to whose chief officers they are bound to make report, and with whose agents they are bound to co-operate. In England and Ireland the difference of longitude is so small, that, by the Sovereign’s command, it is made mid-day at the same moment in both kingdoms. In the United States, something more than human power would be required to work out that wonder, and something more than constitutional prerogative would be necessary to enforce it. We must take things as they are, and work with the means and in the space which are allowed. If we cannot expect national interference in behalf of prison discipline, we certainly may appeal to the State in which we live to exercise and dignify its sovereignty by legislation that will adapt prisons and their discipline to the use of society, and while the House is one of penal discipline, it shall be a place of moral improvement. We scarcely expect the Legislature of the State to initiate the good work. It is the duty of those who feel most anxious for its establishment, to prepare the means and present the arguments; and it is believed that no means of inducing a systematic arrangement of prison discipline throughout the State exists outside this Society. Persons abound who see and deplore the evils of the present want of system, but they lack the full information, and especially do they lack concurrent action; and it is believed that