The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3060, 18 April 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1881.

We do not think we are exaggerating public sentiment when we say that the telegraphic summary of the report of the Commissioners to enquire iuiu the management of the Wellington Lunatic Asylum created a feeling of intense satisfaction throughout the colony. The evidence taken before the Commissioners disclosed a state of things that must have outraged the seuse of everyone possessing the faintest idea of what should be the proper treatment of the insane. The arrest of Whitelaw, the late Superintendent of the Asylum, following almost immediately upon the publication ot tne report of the Commissioners, intensified the feeling of satisfaction that effect was to be given to the decision tnat had been, arrived at after a long aud patient enquiry. In the hands of justice we may safely leave Whitelaw. Hia case is now ' subjudice. and we must forbear commenting on such part of the evidence already before the public that affects him personally. But upon the utility of ap Inspector of Lunatic Asylums we may speak freely. Upon the economy of employing a gentleman at a high salary for the purpose of seeiog that the insane are properly treated everyone is entitled to an open expression of opinion. If there should have been one lunatic asylum in the colony a model for all others, then it ought to have been found in the city where the head-quarters of the Inspector were situated. Now, the question that arises is this : is the Wellington Lunatic Asylum a sample of all others in the colony, or is it, or rather let ua say, waa it better or worse thau the others? It is a horrible question, but it must be answered. Are we to suppose that in other asylums paiients are treated for their cure in the way they were at Wellington? Is it a faff supposition that the strait jacket for seven months; the solitary cells; the cold baths at night in winter; the scanty clothing ; the beatings, and the menial labor form the general treatment in the public institutions of New Zealand for the cure of tr>e insaue ? These questions suggest themselves, because it was not the Ijspector who brought the management of the Wellington Asylum before the public. On the contrary, he bad reported that the management was satisfactory; whatever he might have thought, he led the pubic to believe there was nothing so radically wrong that be felt in duty bound to expose and remedy it. It was not the InsDector who caused the dismissal and finally the arrest of the Superintendent. And so it is that an uneasy feeling exists that the other asylums in the colony may not come up to the standard indicated in the annual official reports. Enquiry is demanded into the management of all of them— not a cold official enquiry that will skim the surface, and leave the festering evil untouched, but an investigation that will place, if need be, the Superintendents and the Inspector in the position of defendants. Then when enquiry baa probed to the bottom the systems adopted at the several asylums it will become necessary to place those institutions on a very different footing to what they are at the present time. The prison doors must he unlocked ; there must be no more secrecy. The only preventive against mismanagement and cruelty in lunatic asylums, and in gaols alao for that matter, is, so to speak, an open door. The fears of public exposure is the best guarantee possible for the right performance of duty by officers who have large discretionary powers. One of the witnesses at the late enquiry gave evidence showing the anxiety of an official lest an account of certain conduct should find its way into the papers. And another witness deposed to the anger of Whitelaw ar the publication of an article bearing upon the Wellington Asylum. The article, probably, was only written from hear-say, but it had a potent effect. But is it likely that the state of things dieclosed would have continued a month, let alone years, if newspaper reporters had had the privilege of visiting the asylum whenever they pleased ? We are no advocates of government by newspapers, but it becomes necessary to urge the privileges of the Press when it is discovered that officials unite to keep the public ignorant of great and crying abuses.