_The Prison Agent._--William J. Mullen, the Prison Agent, acting under appointment and authority of the Inspectors of the County Prison, and also on behalf of our Prison Society, has continued his services in investigating cases of alleged oppressive and illegal commitments to the County Prison, with unabated zeal and singleness of purpose. He has, with the co-operation of the proper authorities, succeeded in liberating during the year 1,223 of these from prison. Amongst them were many very interesting cases, where the common rights of individuals would have been successfully outraged, if they had not been inquired into and relieved by the action of the agent. And it should be remembered that the wrong and suffering in these cases is by no means limited to the individuals who are incarcerated, but that it often extends most cruelly to others connected with the prisoners. What must be the situation of the poor wife and helpless children, when the husband, the father, and provider for their urgent necessities, is thus wrongfully torn from them? Some are arrested and committed under mistake, but much of the wrong-doing in relation to such commitments, arises from the cupidity of the Police-aldermen, or committing magistrates, who many times, on the most frivolous charges, and sometimes without sufficient evidence against them, commit individuals to the prison from motives of gain. In some instances they are content with the fees established by law, but there is ground to believe that extortion is not unfrequently attempted to be practised, and sometimes with success. The mode of compensating the aldermen, by fees to be derived from the individual cases in which they act, gives them an interest in thus oppressing the helpless, and has long been a crying evil. Under this system, and in actual practice, there is good reason to fear, that much of the income of many of them is not merely “the gain of oppression,” but that of extortion also. There are no doubt upright and honorable men among them, but until all fees for such cases are taken away, and a fixed salary substituted, we need not expect to find them as a class to be governed, in their official acts, by high-minded and disinterested motives.