The Society’s “Report” recently issued shows the kind and the extent of the business transacted through its officials up to the close of the year 1867. It contains much that is interesting as well as instructive, and not a little that is puzzling. We are informed that within the year 644 vagrants were arrested and taken before a magistrate, and that of this number 311 were committed, and 333 discharged. From the commencement to the close of the year 1867, upwards of 10,000 cases of “casual” relief passed through the hands of the Society, as well as between 400 and 500 cases that are alluded to as “registered”—a term, it may be assumed, that distinguishes the ordinary casual case from that which demands investigation and private inquiry. Amongst the whole number, 44,347 meals were distributed, and a considerable sum of money and some clothes; it being no uncommon occurrence for the management to rig-out the ragged, hard-up unfortunate applying for relief, and to start him in the world in a way that, if he has the intention, gives him a fair chance of recovering a decent position. The most curious part of the affair, however, appears in the plain and simple tabulated statement that represents the yearly number of vagrants relieved and set to work, and consigned to proper punishment, since the time of the Mendicity Society’s first establishment. In the first year of the Society’s existence, when the scheme was new, and the vagrant crop dead-ripe for gathering, and the officers eager to get at their new and novel employment, 385 “sturdy beggars” were caught and sent to gaol. It is consoling to know that in the last year (1867) this number was decreased considerably, and that no more than 311 were sentenced. This may appear no vast reduction, but when we consider not only the enormously-increased population since 1818, and, what is of equal significance, the advance of intellect and cleverness and cunning amongst this as every other community doomed to live by the exercise of its wits, the result is one on which the country may be congratulated.