In the report of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, for 1851, we notice ten cases returned under the head of “imprisonment,” eight of which are declared to be cases of “feigned insanity,” and of course though “convicts,” they were not “insane.” Of the other two, one became insane before trial, and was of course, though insane, never properly a “convict.” “Besides these ten,” says the report, “there have been sent to us from prisons and gaols several others, who were cases of genuine insanity, but who were doubtless insane when committed.” Then they were never proper subjects of penal suffering, and should not have been imprisoned, except for safe keeping. In most of our State hospitals pay-patients are received to some extent, and those who resort to them as institutions of charity, should not be forced into discreditable association. It is of great importance, that every thing attractive should be presented in them, and every thing repulsive avoided. The poverty-stricken are sometimes quite sensitive on these subjects, and it is as inhuman as it is impolitic to violate their feelings. The attention of the British Parliament has been recently called to this subject by a proposition of the commissioners of lunacy, to establish a central asylum for “criminal lunatics” in England and Wales, similar in character to that for Ireland, at Dundrum, near Dublin. The commissioners say, that “it has been frequently brought under their notice, that the friends and relatives of patients, and also the patients themselves, when conscious of being associated with “criminal lunatics,” have considered such association a great and unnecessary aggravation of their calamity.” There is some doubt expressed, whether such feelings prevail to any considerable extent in institutions where convict-patients are received; and to the question, whether the dislike to the society of criminal lunatics ascribed to patients and their friends, exists generally or only in those cases which were brought specifically under the notice of the commissioners, one medical witness says, that his own experience is directly the reverse; that he has carefully watched, in order to detect any repugnance or unfriendly feeling among the inmates of a county asylum, of which he has charge, towards their fellow-patients, who were known to have committed offences against the laws, and had not only failed to do so, but had heard expressions of sympathy and pity. He thinks there is much more tenderness felt for them by their fellow sufferers, than by their sane neighbors.