The proposed legislation on Irish Lunatic Asylums

Abstract

It is with great diffidence that we undertake the task of commenting upon this Bill. The flickering haze which rests upon the landscape of Irish life so disturbs the clearness of English vision, that we doubt if we judge of anything correctly, which takes place on the other side of the channel, from our point of view on this. We have, however, received several communications from our Irish brethren, urging us to represent their views in our journal, on the important legislation which is holding out its threats and its promises to them at the present moment. It would have been more satisfactory if some of the numerous and accomplished members of the Association, whose field of professional labour is in the Irish asylums, would themselves have undertaken this task; the more so since, when we affirm that such and such things work well in England, we are met with the constant rejoinder that it is not so in Ireland, that things are quite different there. A most important instance of this is afforded in the opposition made to the principle and basis of this Bill, which confers powers, hitherto held by the Executive, on Committees of Visitors appointed by the Grand Juries of counties. In England, the administration of justice, which brings the law to every man's door, is entrusted to gentlemen in Commission of the Peace, and to Borough Magistrates; and the management of pauper lunatic asylums is placed entirely in their hands. This task they have, with the rarest exceptions, discharged with exemplary diligence and fidelity. In Ireland, the initiative administration of the law is in the hands of Stipendiary Magistrates; but the Grand Juries in counties represent the same class of persons as the English Courts of Quarter Sessions; and to them it is proposed in Lord Naas' Bill to delegate some authority in the management of lunatic asylums, though by no means to the same extent as that which is exercised by the Visitors of Asylums in England. A strenuous opposition is being made to this, and when we say that the system has worked admirably in this country, we are met by the rejoinder that Irish Grand Juries are nests of jobbery and corruption. We are fain to hope that it is not so; and that the bad odour of past offences, rather than present failings, is the ground of the charge. We are fain to believe that the Irish country gentlemen are not essentially less just than the English; and we are certain of this, that to decry the highest class resident in a country, and to remove from them social powers and duties, is not the way to elevate the tone of public morality, and to diminish the prevalence of jobbery and corruption. We look upon the public responsibilities of country gentlemen as a great school for the formation of public character; and if it be that the Irish country gentlemen are a little behind our own happy land in this education of social duty, we recognize in the provisions of Lord Naas' Bill one means of training them in habits of business and principles of justice. Yet the interest of the insane ought not to be too rashly imperiled, which, according to the best advice we have received, this bill, in some of its provisions, threatens to do; especially in those which change the appointment and the tenure of office of the Resident Physicians from the Executive to the Visitors.