after year, to the What benefit the

attention of the General Assembly, year exclusion of the interests of agriculture. farmers generally will derive from the labors of the State Board upon that subject, the committee cannot foretell, but certainly high hopes may, and ought to be, entertained.And should more efficient support be requisite, the committee would not object to an appropriation in aid of the agricultural fund. Such an appropriation would be equally felt throughout the state-as equally, at least, as taxation can be made. Hamilton county pays a proportion exceeding oneeighth of the annual taxation of the state, but her agricultural interest does not bear any like proportion to the agricultural interest of the state.* The appropriation of escheats to the agricultural fund operates with still greater inequality upon Hamilton county. The large number of foreign immigrants into that county, an industrious and thrifty body of men, causes a much greater number of escheats there than any proportion which either her agricultural interest, or her taxation, bears to those of the state at large. If the board of agriculture needs assistance, as it probably does, let that assistance come proportionably from those counties which are benefitted by its labors, and not exclusively from the county of Hamilton. This is neither an honest mode of aiding a laudable design, nor one calculated to render that design popular and effectual.

On the other hand, Hamilton county has a special object of benevolence-one not addressed to any pursuit in life, how honorable and deserving soever, but one of the essential objects and ends of human government. This vast influx of foreigners, together with the general density of her population, has afflicted that county with a peculiar exhibition of crime, appalling and heart-rending beyond expression, for which a peculiar remedy is alone adequate. The committee refers to the exhibition of crime in boys and girls-many of whom have barely passed the limits of infancy itself. At every one of the four criminal courts holden in that county, each year, eight or ten boys are arraigned for larceny, embezzlement, obtaining money on false pretences, and even the graver offences of burglary, robbery, arson, and malicious shooting or stabbing-not to mention the scores of children, girls as well as boys, brought before examining magistrates,

*From the Auditor of State, the committee learns that the whole amount of taxes collected from real and personal property, for the year 1847, was

Collected in Hamilon county,

Somewhat more than one-eighth of the whole amount.

$1,155,502 17, 142,027 31

and allowed to escape. Your committee is cognizant of the names of a dozen boys, ranging between the ages of ten and seventeen, who have been convicted five or six times within the past three years. Over this record of precocious depravity, one may well weep, and, weeping, painfully forebode the decay of public as well as private virtue. Most of the girls grow up to lives of common prostitution and theft of the boys, many are now in the state prison, and not a few are destined to the felon's grave. In competition with alleviating this terrible, humiliating, crushing visitation-worse than the pestilence and the famine-the improvement of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, is not worthy of an instant's consideration. It is in vain that our schools are daily open, that religion is free, that prosperity covers the land, whilst the republic is thus stricken in the most tender and vital part-those who are to exercise her sovereignty and shape her destinies.

The only remedy thus far devised is a house of refuge and correction, where youth may be kept separated from adult and hardened offenders, and reclaimed, by proper influences, from the ways of vice. The ordinary system of confinement in the watch-house, the jail, and the penitentiary, has been found only to aggravate the mischief, by bringing the criminal of an hour into immediate association with the mature villain. The General Assembly, several years since, authorized the city council of Cincinnati to erect a house of correction, but made no efficient provision for its support.Private subscriptions were invoked; but in a city where the calls of charity are so frequent, little or nothing could be done by such means. By taxation upon the property of the citizens, however, the enterprise has been commenced, and bids fair to proceed prosperously, and to realize the fond hopes of the reformer and the philanthropist. But the institution is not a city institution peculiarly, nor ought it to be exclusively sustained by the city taxation. Juvenile of fenders from the thickly settled townships, surrounding Cincinnati, are the subjects of this institution, and are to be taken from the bar of the county court to its portals. The provisions of the act creating the house of correction apply to the county at large.

Now the act of 1847 allows the escheats, within the city of Cincinnati, to be appropriated to the support of this institution-thus acknowledging the propriety of the bill under discussion, in all cases where the same reasons may be found to exist.

The county of Hamilton consists of fourteen townships, beside the township of Cincinnati, one of which (Millcreek) is divided into two precincts. Of these, one precinct and three townships have no agricultural interest at all: they are, on the contrary, so densely populated as to subject them, in common, to the frightful afflictions already specified. Other townships there are, which have no considerable interest of a strictly agricultural character. Hamilton county has, therefore, a peculiar object of benevolence and necessity to which this source of revenue, so far as she is concerned, ought peculiarly to be devoted. The burthen of her wealth and the mass of her population are not concerned in the other object to which the act of February 8th, 1847 appropriates the proceeds of escheated property. They will gladly pay a tribute to the agricultural fund proportioned to her agricultural interest in the state.

All which is respectfully submitted.

G. E. PUGH.

REPORT

OF THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MEMORIAL CONCERNING THE NEW STATE HOUSE.

The select committee to whom was referred the memorial of R. E. Neil, William Miner, E. Gale, William A. Gill and others, concerning the NEW STATE HOUSE, beg leave to report:

That upon a careful examination of both the plans for the interior arrangement of the new state house, mentioned in said memorial, they find:

(A.)

That the rooms laid down in the cellar and first story are sufficient, if well arranged, for the objects assigned to said stories.

(B.)

By a separate examination of the old plan, viz: the plan adopted by the commissioners for the new state house, your committee find:

1. That the floor of the rotunda is elevated about seven feet above the floor of the first story, being about ten feet below the floor of the second story, with stairs passing each other up and down.

2. That the four open (2.) courts are to be vaulted over on a level with the floor of the first story; the floors upon these vaults to serve as passage ways to the privies, which are placed into the corner walls of the rotunda.

3. That the eight rooms adjoining the rotunda in the 2d and 3d stories are only accessible by way of out-door galleries leading over the open courts.

1

4. That the halls in the second story are not of sufficient dimensions for their objects, nor of such proportions, as the size of the building seems to require.

(C.)

Explanation of the new plan for the interior arrangement of the new State House.

1. The cellar rooms, about 14 feet high, excepting the four rooms adjoining the rotunda, remain as laid down by the old plan. They are for storing fuel, &c., and preparing hot air, to warm the upper rooms.

2. The basement story, about 17 feet high, excepting the four rooms adjoining the rotunda, and the stairs leading to, and from the same, remain as laid down by the old plan; furnishing a sufficient number of fire proof rooms for the different offices of the state government, and court in bank.

3. The rotunda retains the dimensions laid down by the old plan; but the floor thereof, is to be on a level with the floor of the second story; instead of its position by the old plan, half way up between the first and second stories.

4. The stairs in the middle of the building, on the East and West fronts, lead directly up to the floor of the rotunda, from which the South and North doors lead, on a level with the second floor, to the State Hall, Senate Hall and State Library.

5. In addition to said stairs, there are four stairs adjoining the outside corners of the rotunda, and leading from the bottom of the building to the 1st, 2d and 3d floors, and to all the rooms adjoining the rotunda, in each story above the cellar rooms. These stairs are of stone, and 43-12 feet in the clear. The top of these stairs is to land in the water reservoir rooms adjoining the rotunda, and from these rooms, there are four circular winding stairs, one in each corner of the outside square of the rotunda, leading to the top thereof.

6. In the corner room of the first cross passage in the north wing, there is an additional pair of stairs leading from the first story to the floor of the second story, landing on the passage, between the library and senate hall; leading also from the floor of the library to the gallery of the same.

7. The south wing of the second story contains the STATE HALL, for the use of the House of Representatives, with committee rooms on the east and west sides, and galleries on the east, west and north sides; said galleries being accessible from the floor above the entry into the hall, and entirely separate from the same.