“There are at the present time in the State penitentiaries, and in the different jails of the commonwealth, a considerable number of insane,--alleged criminals--who ought to be transferred to the State hospital as soon as its buildings are completed. There are also in these institutions a few, who, from their peculiarly dangerous character, and the utter hopelessness of benefiting them by treatment, can never with propriety become inmates of the hospital. To protect the community and the ordinary insane from the dangerous propensities of these individuals, it would be necessary to introduce into our wards, intended for the treatment of disease, all the most repulsive features of a prison, or that a separate building, having strictly a prison character, should be erected upon the grounds. Some legislation will be required before any of these cases can be admitted, and some mode of proceeding should be adopted which will prevent any but proper cases being received from these sources.” It is obvious that different constructions are put upon the language of the report of the trustees, by the different officers of the penitentiary. The inspectors evidently regard the State Lunatic Asylum as the proper place to which insane prisoners should be removed, whether for safe keeping or for treatment. The warden apprehends, that one class of the insane convicts would be received at the State Hospital, though the other may be excluded. Dr. Given regards the prospect of transferring any of them as far distant, while Dr. Lassiter thinks the completion of the hospital has disposed of the last obstacle to the removal of all. If we understand the language of the trustees, it admits that a considerable number of “ordinarily” insane persons now in our State Penitentiary and in the different jails, ought to be transferred to the hospital as soon as it is so far completed as to secure them; while they maintain that there is another class of insane prisoners of “dangerous propensities,” who ought not to be received into any hospital, but for whom a separate building should be provided, on the grounds belonging to the State institution, entirely distinct from it, though doubtless under the same supervision and attendance with the main hospital. In giving this construction to the passage, we assume that the phrase “_any of these cases_” in the last clause, is limited to the dangerous and hopeless class, who can never with propriety become inmates of a general hospital.