For thirteen years, a quiet and useful charity, known as the “Shelter,” has been provided for a portion of the colored orphan children of Philadelphia. At the date of the twelfth report there were 56 children under care, and twelve were received during the year; while 9 were apprenticed and 3 died. There were in the house, January 1849, 53 children. Dr. Casper Wistar attended and administered to the institution gratuitously, during a season of severe sickness from the measles, in the progress of which thirty-six were under medical care! No. 9.--_Paupers and Prisoners in Cincinnati._ It is stated in the public prints, that the admissions to the Cincinnati city hospital in the year 1848, were over 3000; and two-thirds of them foreigners. In the number were 152 lunatics. “Admissions to the Jail, during the year, 776, of whom 742 were intemperate, 17 under 18 years of age, and 66 females. Of these 776, 35 were sent to the Penitentiary, and 741, ‘turned loose, without friends or employment, to prey upon society again--a portion of them serving awhile in the Chain-gang first.’” _No. 10._--_Insane Asylum in North Carolina._ We understand that the act establishing a hospital for the insane at Raleigh, provides for a tax of one and three-fourths of a cent on every hundred dollars valuation of land, and five and a quarter cents on the poll, to be levied for the space of four years, to raise the money to construct and furnish the building--the County Courts during the said time to have power to make a proportionate reduction of the poor tax in their respective counties. No. 11.--_Corrupt Police._ In a charge lately given by one of the Judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions for the city and county of Philadelphia, some passages occur, the implication of which is very far from being creditable to the police-gentry, and is, moreover, rather startling to the lovers of peace and security. “So long as there is collision between police officers and criminals, crime will continue, and it will be difficult to suppress it. If police officers will suppress evidence against the perpetrators of offences; if they will associate and correspond with criminals, and participate in the fruits of robbery, crime will continue to increase, because the chances for escape are great. In some of the _Incorporated_ Districts it is believed, the police force is efficient and useful.” This makes the whole matter so vague as to aggravate, rather than alleviate apprehensions. In the same charge, the magistrate is represented as saying, that “if there were no pardons there would be but few convictions.” Is it possible that the indulgence of executive clemency is so frequent as to make juries careless or forward to convict from the impression that their verdict will be reviewed under an application for pardon?