THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



VOL. IV.] NOVEMBER, 1827. [No. 



PAUPER LUNATICS. 



OP the calamities flesh is heir to, the one conspicuously the most appalling 

 to our apprehensions, and the least within our power to guard against, is 

 lunacy. Any man, at any moment, may be thus visited ; and, therefore, 

 every man's interest it is, while he is in a sane state, to look well to institu- 

 tions established for so deplorable a condition : it is his paramount interest 

 to insist upon the most approved arrangements for care and cure ; to detect 

 and remedy abuses ; to place such institutions, if that be possible, out of 

 the range of corrupt and sordid motives ; to stipulate for a system of inspec- 

 tion, of too wakeful and public a character to be easily evaded ; and thus 

 to secure to himself, beforehand, as far as precaution can go, something 

 like fair treatment. Such is if not the hardness of human nature, at least 

 such is its indisputable indolence, there is no trusting to spontaneous kind- 

 ness, and certainly not to steady and continuous kindness, for the fulfil- 

 ment of what are styled the duties of humanity, especially when neither 

 prompted by the impulses of affection, nor imposed by respect for opinion. 

 These duties are often onerous and expensive, and beyond the reach of 

 many who are called upon to perform them, and sometimes painful, and 

 even disgusting, and such as nature shrinks from; and then a reluctant 

 performance is all that even payment can exact, or authority extort. 



What is everybody's business is nobody's ; and so general is the convic- 

 tion that such business will not be performed at all, that recourse is had, by 

 common consent, to the sanctions of the legislature to enforce the dis- 

 charge. Hence arises the necessity for asylums, and provisions of relief for 

 poverty and age for those who have neither the means of subsistence left 

 them, nor friends to supply the loss. And if provision for the pauper can 

 only be secured by an act of the legislature, the necessity for placing the 

 lunatic ^and, above all, the pauper lunatic under especial protection, is 

 still more imperative. The pauper, if refused relief by the proper autho- 

 rities, can appeal to the magistrate ; but the lunatic is, for the most part, 

 utterly incapable of such appeal, arid if, in a lucid interval, he be capable 

 of applying for redress, he is more likely to be repulsed than relieved, and 

 his very complaints be numbered among his hallucinations. 



M.M. New Series VOL. I V. No. 23. 3 M 



