As at present advised we cannot consent to this view. Few evils arise, under any system of government, for which there is not a choice of remedies; and if it is made evident that under the application of a sound principle of prison-discipline, cases occur in which the legitimate ends of punishment are defeated, or at least not answered, the first question would be whether these cases are numerous and important enough to impair our confidence in the principle; or whether the exceptions are not necessarily incident to any general system, and such as cannot be provided against; or whether the remedy, if practicable at all, may not be applied without any infringement of the general principle. A compromise between two methods of convict management, so radically and essentially diverse as separation and association, seems to us entirely fanciful. These general observations must serve to introduce a very brief notice of the Report of the Physician of the Eastern State Penitentiary for the six months ending July 1, 1851. That day closed seven years of laborious and faithful service by Dr. Given in this important institution. His reports, during that period, have been frequently noticed in the pages of our Journal, and have contributed essentially, not only to the improvement of the particular institution under his care, but to the general interests of humanity. Few if any documents of this class, embody a larger amount of valuable information, or are entitled to more consideration. The author not being prepared to serve the interests of a party or a clique, nor to defend a favorite theory, his reports have uniformly taken independent ground, and must be regarded as the honest record of the results of professional experience and observation. We understand the present and final report of Dr. G., as unequivocally and emphatically favorable to _convict-separation_. That there are some prisoners on whom it bears with peculiar severity is a matter of course. No species of punishment is exempt from such inequalities. They are less prevalent, however, under the separate discipline than under any other, from the very fact that the isolation of the prisoner from his fellows, allows us to vary the minuter conditions of the discipline in peculiar cases, without exciting murmuring and discontent among less favored parties. That a relaxation of rigid discipline in an individual case, no matter how peculiar, if it becomes notorious works wide-spread mischief, is fully shown in the experience of the English prisons.[2]