County of Philadelphia, in the place of such as cannot attend, upon whose certificate of insanity, or the certificate of any two of them transmitted to the Governor, and if by him approved, he shall direct that said insane prisoner shall be by said Inspectors removed to the State Lunatic Hospital, there to be received, safely kept and properly provided for, at the cost and charge of the county, from which they were sent to the Penitentiary, and if at any time during the period for which any such insane prisoners shall have been sentenced to confinement in the Eastern Penitentiary, they shall, in the opinion of the trustees of said Lunatic Hospital, be so far restored as to render their return to said Penitentiary safe and proper, then the said trustees shall cause the said prisoner to be returned to said Eastern Penitentiary, due notice being given to the clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions of the County, from which such prisoners were sent to the Penitentiary, of all such removals or transfers." In pursuance of the authority enforced by this law, the commissioners met at the Penitentiary on the 20th of October last, and at various times thereafter, and examined eighteen cases presented for their investigation--eight of whom they regard as proper subjects of hospital treatment; two, they think, will be as well or better off where they are; the sentence of one expired during the pendency of the proceedings, and he was discharged, four are not suitable inmates of an Insane Hospital, and three, who were committed for safe keeping, are regarded on all hands as unfit to be placed in any hospital, or elsewhere where the means of close custody are less efficient than in the Eastern State Penitentiary. In the course of their report to the executive, the Commissioners very properly speak of it as a grave question, how far it is justifiable to mingle convicted criminals (however afflicted) amongst the meanest whom the hand of God has visited with mental derangement, or how many insane criminals can be sent there without seriously jeopardizing the best interests of that institution, and risking the safety and well being of its inmates. They add, "that no wards can be specially appropriated to the class particularly under notice, and as a consequence the insane criminal must be in contact directly with the insane innocent." In the absence of a hospital constructed with exclusive reference to the custody and treatment of convicts deprived of their reason, and considering "the great security afforded by the penitentiary and the character of its arrangements," the Commissioners are of the opinion, that "it will be quite possible, inside its enclosure, to make the limited number of this class now confined there, more comfortable than they could be in any ordinary hospital, for the reason, where a just regard to the safety of others would require a much closer degree of confinement," in which opinion we cordially coincide.