The Want of a Military Lunatic Asylum

Extract

If legislative enactments, having reference to the care and treatment of the insane in this kingdom, can, of late years, be said to have been grounded upon any one broad principle, it is this, that insane persons, whose maintenance is provided from public funds, shall receive care and treatment in public establishments, directed by salaried officials, and under the inspection and control of public bodies. On this principle it is that the recent Asylum's Act renders it compulsory upon every county and borough, to provide a public asylum for its poor, and invests the Secretary of State with large and summary powers to enforce compliance. It is the operation of this principle which has removed pauper lunatics from almost all licensed houses throughout the country, and has brought the latter, with a few exceptions, to the more legitimate condition of private asylums. The legislature has imposed this broad principle upon the community at large. It has left freedom of action to the Government alone, of which the Government has taken and is taking an advantage, which is by no means edifying.