In the recent report of the Inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary, cases are mentioned of prisoners who were clearly insane when first sentenced to the Penitentiary. How this fact was proved in any case, does not appear. The question would be relieved of much embarrassment if it did. But the report hazards another and much graver remark, viz: that the "experience and observation" (of the Inspectors) "have convinced them that the commission of crime is more frequently connected with mental disease than courts or juries suspect." We had supposed that the danger, if any, was in the opposite direction. It must be very rare, we apprehend, that the plea of insanity is not urged where there is the slightest pretence to sustain it. And courts and juries, in our country at least, have been regarded as quite sufficiently indulgent towards it whenever it is urged. It is scarcely safe, as it seems to us, after conviction by due course of law, to go behind the proceedings and attempt to avert their legitimate consequences by alleging the existence of a fact which should have stayed them entirely. That property is taken, mischief committed, and violent deeds done by persons of insane mind and of course irresponsible for their acts, we all know; but these acts are not offences, nor are the perpetrators of them offenders, nor can they, by any process of law, be turned into convicts. Yet the time to show this (if it is not plainly apparent) is when they are arrested for such acts, and their state of mind is relied on to exempt them from any responsibility. If it is not shown then, it is our duty (in ordinary circumstances) forever after to hold our peace. It is not our province to vindicate the established tribunals of the country from the charge of "presumption" or "inhumanity," when they direct a maniac, who, in a paroxysm of his malady, has taken the life of his wife or his friend, to be confined within the cells of a penitentiary as one dangerous to society. But we suppose the community has a claim to be protected against the violence of the lawless, whether they are rendered so by the visitation of God or by the indulgence of depraved and malevolent passions. That this protection can be made sure by existing arrangements in our State Hospital, or that adequate provision can be made therein without injuriously affecting the interests of third parties, we are not prepared to say. But we are well persuaded that proper provision for all classes of convicts, whatever their physical or mental condition, can be made in either of our State Penitentiaries; and we shall not cease to consider those institutions very imperfectly constructed or organized, so long as such provision is not made within their walls. Before our readers pronounce judgment on these views, we trust they will take sober thought and established facts into their counsels.