Indeed, we cannot avoid the conviction that in one particular at least, a pernicious indulgence is granted; viz., the use of tobacco. Dr. G. anticipates “quite as much censure as approbation,” will be bestowed on this item of treatment, and he may think himself very fortunate, if the scales are so nearly equipoised as that. For ourselves, we cannot qualify our condemnation of the practice on every ground. So far as the Dr.’s argument rests on strength of habit, it would be equally cogent for the use of intoxicating liquors; and we must suppose he speaks ironically, when he refers to “legislative chambers, halls of justice, or even our pulpits,” as furnishing invariably safe precedents in moral conduct. Convict-life is, and of right ought to be a life of privation; and the wise disciplinarian takes advantage of this period to cross the prisoner’s vicious inclinations at every point, and thus connect the process of punishment with the process of reformation. Dr. G. has seen “a strong stubborn man beg for tobacco with tears in his eyes.” We have seen such a man beg, in like manner, for a drink of grog, or the means of escape from prison. But it is “the painfulness of this privation” which answers, in our prisons, the purpose which the douche, or the yoke, or the cat-o’-nine tails are supposed to answer in other prisons. It is suffering with profit, for it breaks up a most vicious habit, and it is suffering without degradation, too. Why should we throw away such an advantage? But what shall we say to the other ground of apology for allowing tobacco to the prisoners, viz., for the cure of “dyspepsia and mental depressions, otherwise treated in vain?” In such a war, we must put Greek against Greek. In insane asylums, where physical and mental diseases are supposed to have the most skilful medical treatment, we are informed that the use of tobacco is strictly interdicted by the resident physician; and we notice by the return of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum, that six of the cases of insanity received into that institution last year, are believed to have originated in the use of that narcotic! Nothing could show the prodigious power of the habit more strikingly than the remark of Dr. G., that “the fear of being deprived of it has produced a degree of order and discipline throughout the establishment, that the severest punishment could not effect.” We have seen, in a nursery of young rogues, a violent uproar against a parent or care-taker quieted at once by just giving a sugar plum, or a bit of gingerbread, which had been at first denied. How far such concessions to the vicious appetite of convicts, or to the unruly will of children promote sound discipline, is not a matter of doubt to observing minds. A firm maintenance of wholesome authority, or the discreet use of King Solomon’s specific for disorders of the temper, would perhaps add a new strain to the discordant music for the time being, but it would be likely to produce very agreeable harmony in the