For many years past, I find representations have been made to the Board by my predecessors, urging the propriety and the necessity almost, of removing the insane confined in this institution. I must record my testimony also.--The evil is unabated, and I cannot consistently with my duty as physician, nor with my own personal feelings, pass by this matter without at least doing the little I may be able to have it remedied. Heretofore there have been difficulties in the way, which happily exist no longer. The completion of a State Lunatic Asylum, it is to be hoped, has removed the last obstacle to a course already long approved of by every one, and urgently demanded by all the material and moral circumstances concerned in the case. For the object of prisons, if I understand it, is the punishment and prevention of crime, and, possibly the reformation of criminals. But the mischief that irresponsibles may do, is not crime, nor are they criminals: they may be restrained, but not punished. We punish and endeavor to reform the criminal, the imbecile and insane, we confine sometimes, but at all times, should endeavor to protect, to foster, to cure. It may often be very proper, in regard to these, to turn their hospital into a temporary prison, but it can hardly be deemed compatible with the objects and discipline, or the material arrangements and accommodations of penitentiaries, to make them serve the double purpose of prison and hospital--confounding in a common receptacle those that society ought to protect, and those it is obliged to punish. At the present time, we have a number of these unfortunates in a truly pitiable condition; and it is not only with a painful, but also with a mortifying and humiliating feeling, that we are continually obliged to reflect, that it is not in our power to improve it. Turning from the State Penitentiary to the State Hospital, we are met with the following passage in the first annual report of the trustees: