number of private cases in confinement being
three thousand seven hundred and seventy-four.

At this point we should wish our readers to
pause for an instant, as we apprehend that a
comparison of the numbers to which we have
just referred may serve to throw much light
upon the general nature of those influences
which are constantly tending to the development
of mental alienation.

Taking the net total of persons relieved by
their parishes on the 1st of January, 1850 (as
shown by the third annual report of the Poor-
law Board, Appendix 26) to have been eight
hundred and eighty-one thousand two hundred
and six.— we shall very roughly say, for the
sake of a round number, one million — and the
entire population of England and Wales at
the same time to have been fifteen millions,
we shall find that, out of an aggregate of
fifteen thousand and seventy-nine persons who
were under confinement on account of mental
derangement, nearly seventy-five per cent,
belonged to the pauper class, and scarcely
more than twenty-five per cent. to the more
fortunate millions whose comparatively
comfortable private circumstances enable them to
dispense with extraneous help.

The inference derivable from this fact we
consider to be self-evident, and to admit of no
question whatever; viz., that poverty and its
attendant evils (including defective education,
and the unrestrained sway of appetites and
passions, which tend to produce an exhausted
state of the organic energies, whilst both
means and discretion are wanting to check
their ruinous career) are the most fertile
sources of insanity.

We have said that no good public provision
of any material consequence has yet been
devised for the accommodation of private patients.
In repeating this assertion, we would earnestly
deprecate any intention to disparage or hold
cheap the efforts either of those who have
already accomplished good deeds in this way,
or of other benevolent individuals who are
striving to adapt existing institutions of the
kind now under consideration to the altered
circumstances of the districts in which they
are situated, and to the improved
therapeutics of the present day. "What we
particularly wish to point out in reference to this
part of the subject is, the utter insufficiency
of the existing amount of this latter kind of
accommodation, as compared with the wants
of the community.

The annual Reports of the Commissioners
in Lunacy contain too many animadversions
on the want of due care and consideration for
the necessities of the insane, as exemplified in
the management of " licensed houses," to
render it probable that the system upon which
those establishments generally are founded,
can be much longer permitted to exist, unless
some limited exception be made in a few cases
where pecuniary considerations are far
outborne by knowledge, zeal, and humanity. It
is time that the " pressure from without " and
the extended powers and jurisdiction of the
Commissioners in Lunacy have produced very
considerable changes for the better, even here.
But it cannot be denied that the principle of
the system, as a whole, is vicious and unsound,
and that the sooner the State shall come to
look upon the protection and care of its most
helpless and unfortunate class of citizens as an
indefeasible duty of its own, the better will
it be for all who have the greatest and most
proper interest in such a change.

Around the merely destitute the law has
already placed its ægis, and has declared that
no human being within these islands shall be
absolutely and literally starved to death, nor
left to perish for want of shelter, without
somebody else being to blame for it. The
peculiar wants of the insane pauper have been
taken into consideration by the legislature,
and much has been done to meet the requirements
of his case. But for the necessities of
the lunatic, whose case is uncomplicated by
destitution, and who has (in this respect) the
misfortune to be in independent circumstances,
the legislature has hitherto vouchsafed no
such consideration. The Court of Chancery,
it is true, will guard his estate, if he have
one, and will assign a certain sum for his
maintenance, as soon as a commission de
lunatico inquirendo shall have determined
that he is insane. But farther than this it
cannot interfere. It can afford no absolute
guarantee as to the services to be rendered to
the patient in consideration of the sum set
apart from his estate to defray the charges of
his maintenance. The trustees of his person,
ignorant as most people are on these matters,
and directed in all probability by mere chance
as to the choice of his abode, and the
suitableness and sufficiency of his accommodation,
are constrained to rely almost entirely
on the conscientiousness of the person who
receives him, and whose ruling consideration
naturally points to the surplus which may
remain, after the current expenses of the
establishment over which he presides shall
have been accounted for.*

Let us hear what the Commissioners in
Lunacy say in reference to this matter.

"Whilst making our visitations in the course
of the past year, we had reason to believe
that, in some instances, private patients in
licensed houses had not the benefit of that
suitable accommodation and those comforts
to which they were entitled from their
circumstances and situation in life. In some
cases, it appeared, on inquiry, that the relations
were unable to afford a remuneration adequate
to the expenditure necessary for proper
accommodation and treatment, and in others, that

  * It would appear from a return recently made to
Parliament, that the number of commissions of lunacy which
were in force in the year 1849, was no more than thirty.
The total amount of the annual incomes of the parties was
twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-three pounds, ten
shillings, and tenpence, and the aggregate of the sums
allowed for their maintenance was seven thousand nine
hundred and three pounds, fifteen shillings, and eightpence.