A COLONY OF LUNATICS.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 619, 13 June 1876, Page 3

A COLONY OF LUNATICS.

The following are some extracts from a lecture delivered by Mr James Smith ia Melbourne, ou " Some Reminiscences of a Lunatic Colony in Algeria" : " Many years ago, before leaving Europe, being out of health, I was recommended to spend a wiDter in Algeria ; and while I was staying at Constantino, a French gentleman, to whom I had brought a lettor of introduction, persuaded me (o pay a visit to a colony of lunatics which the French Governmcni had founded on a magnificent plateau among the Atlas Mountains. It wa3 originally composed of the most tractable inmates o» the various asylums, the maintenance of whom had become so costly that the Adrainis tration of Guizot resolved on deporting them to Africa, where a tract of country, singularly fertile, and also very rich in metals, com prising an area of something like 90,000 square miles, was reserved for their maintenance ; the Government washing its hands of all further responsibility concerning them, excepting that it appointed a military officer to watch over their affairs and to see that they did not embroil tho French nation with any of the neighboring tribes. In all other respects these lunatics were free to manage

their own affairs ; to Bell, or pawn, or barter their territory ; and to kick up Meg's diversions generally. When I was there the colony was about five-and-twenty years old. and its population had increased so rapidly that it must have numbered over half a million of people, one-fourth of whom were concentrated in the capital, which bears the native name of Bab-el-Bab. In ordinary conversation with the people, their insanity was not very noticeable ; but when you came to study their institutions, their mental disorder became painfully apparent. You might suppose that in organising a government they would have selected half a dozen of the least irrational of their elders, men of respectable character, fair ability, and honest antecedents, and would have entrusted to them the task of making such ordinances as they required, and levying such taxes as were necessary for the maintenance of peace and order, the formation of roads and bridges, and the administration of justice. Nothing of the sort. They were Frenchmen, and nothing would do but they must imitate the institutions of the old country. So they instituted two chambers, one of which they called the House of Pribbles, and the other the House of Prabbles. These were elective, and the manner of constituting them was the drollest you ever heard of. I will confine myself for the present to the House of Prabbles, because it was the more popular of the two, and because I visited it the more frequently. Every man had a vote, without regard to his character, his conduct, his utility and industry as a citizen, or the amount he contributed to the revenue of the state. But the mode of choosing the Prabbiers must be seen in order to be believed. The Bab-el-Rabids, unlike Frenchmen generally, are not a talkative people. They are rather taciturn and reserved, but the chief qualification they look for in the men they appoint to make their laws is what we should call "the gift of the gab" and a gloziog tongue. They never Knquiro who and what a man is; but "can he gabble?" At one election in Bab-el-Bab I heard a candidate promise to bring forward a measure for the abolition of the sirocco, the repeal of droughts, and the increase of the rainfall during the dry season of the year. He was elected ; but after I left Algeria I heard he had been transported for sheep stealing or land grabbing—l forget which. I almost hesitate to describe to you what I have seen with Imy own eyes, and what I have heard with my own ears, in the House of Prabbles, in the city of Bab-el-Bab ; because I am afraid you will think I am endeavoring to impose on your credibility. However, I will venture. Now what do you suppose is the chief occupation of the Prabblers ? Law making ? Serious deliberations and combined action for the good of the country ? Disinterested efforts to alle viate the public burdens, to remove all impediments to the progress of industry, and to promote the general weal ? Quite the Teverse. The first thing they do is to split up into two factions, and to take seats on opposite sides of the chamber in which they meet. Then they commence, howling, and barking, and yelping at each other, like & couple of packs of angry aud hungry dogs ; the bone of contention being the 350,000 francs per annum which fall to the share of the nine bashaws. The proceedings of the House of Prabbles are so grotesque that you cannot help wondering how they can be tolerated even in a colony of lunatics. For seven or eight hours of a night the members chatter incessantly. They do not argue ; and they actually pay three stenographers 37,500 f per annum to take down the flood of drivel which is poured out in the House of Prabbles. I have looked through many volumes of these records, and I ean solemnly assure you that the stuff therein printed can only be described in the language of Frederick the Great, as ' a deluge of words overflowing a desert of ideas.' Every month, when the moon is near its full, the Prabblers get terribly excited, and become exceedingly rabid. They chatter, they gesticulate, they make mouths at each other, like a cagefull of intoxicated monkeys. They call each other liars, traitors, puppies, gorillas, squirts of imbecility, shrieking demons, drunkards, idiots, cattle-duffers, swindlers, and landsharks ; and threaten to punch one another's heads with a passionate vehemence that must be seen and heard in order to be believed. And the other poor lunatics who are taxed for the support of these raging maniacs, actually look on applaudingly, and think it is rare sport. With the great bulk of these singular people, the chief aim and end of their existence is to get on in life. Every man wants to make money and acquire property ; but directly he is successful he becomes an object of popular animosity ; and if he happens to have risen from the ranks of labour, he is immediately proscribed as an enemy of the people. You will hardly imagine such a state of things to be possible, but I can assure you that I am only narrating what I saw and heard during my stay in Algiers. One of the chief delights of those lunatics is to be perpetually tinkering their political institutions. They know and feel that many of their laws are awfully bad ones, and that the whole system of government is shamefully extravagant; but the poor creatures are so perplexed in mind and so weak and wildered in their upper storeys, that it has never occurred to them that it is the Pribblers and Prabblers who are mainly responsible for the evils complained of, aud that an ideally perfect system of representation would be a signal failure in the hands of men chosen for no other reason than because they had the gift of the gab. At the same time, we must not be too hard upon the Bab-el-Rabids, for they arc only lunatics, you know. As a matter of course, they have a religion, or rather they have many religions, for it is no more to be expected that they should agree amoug themselves upon this subject thau upon any other. But there is a sort of tacit understanding I that the god they profess to worship is the I same. They call him the Unnameable ; and, as far as I could learn, he is regarded as a 1 Hort of mr.griified and distorted reflection of themselves—in other words, an exaggerated Frenchman. Each sect claims a special and exclusive property in him ; and each denomination privately believes that all the other denominations are entirely in the wrong. The only gleam of rationality about any of them is to be found in the fact that they assert that all men ought to be brothers to each other, and that mutual affection and mutual helpfulness should bathe rule of life, But then I could not find the slightest trace of this in their daily conduct, for every man's hand waß against his neighbour. They would lie, and cheat, and overreach, and swindle ; they would endeavour to take the bread out of each other's mouths ; they would impose upon you in buying and selling ; they would [■tell the most unblushing falsehoods with respect to the quality and value of any com

modity they wanted to dispose of, and would grind the faces of the poor ; and when you ventured to remonstrate with them, they would laughingly reply, 'Business is business, you know.' They suppose the Unnameable to be not one person, but a mob. Each seat believes hia own Unnameable, who is supposed to reside somewhere beyond the clouds, in a place where there is a great deal of singing and trumpeting going on, and which, as it never leaves off, must soon become quite insupportable—they suppose him, I say, to bo individually present in each of their temples when the Sunday performances are going on, and subservient to their commands. A man stands up in a wooden box, lifts up his eyes to the roof of the building, where the Unnameable is believed to be bobbing about like an inflated bladder, and begins to enumerate the various wants of the people and to instruct the Unnameable as to how and when thty should be supplied. Theoretically it is assumed that he knows much better than they do what is good for them, but practically it is declared that he is an old fool, and must be constantly flapped in the ears by a lunatic in a black coat and a white necktie, in order to Keep him awake, and to maintain the motion of the earth upon its axis, the orderly procession of the seasons, and the glorious bounty of nature. When the ' worshippers' have gone through this pitiably grotesque performance twice on Sunday, they consider they have discharged what they call their • duty' to the Unnameable. The most prosperous lunatics were usually the most religious. You would see them on a Sunday, decorated with the most expensive dresses and jewellery, conveyed to their respective places of worship in a luxuriously appointed carriage, and going through the piescribed form of entertainment with a sedately serene resignation of manner and a sadly decorous expression of countenance. There was another thing which struck me as very remarkable about the conduct of these lunatics. Some of the best sites in Bab elBab are occupied by ppacious and pretentious temples erected, as they profess, in honor of the Unnameable, or rather of a whole mob of Onnameables, each of whom, as I have s<tid, is supposed to come down and listen invisiblyto the entertainments which are got up for his pleasure. Several of these buildings have cost from 500,000 to 750,000 francs each, a'"d no expense is spared in their decoration. They are kept empty all the week, and yet in that very city there are numbers of houseless persons who are sleeping in gaspipes, or in the scrub outside of Bab el-Bab, while theie are hundreds of others who are packed as thick as herrings in dormitories where the air is so foul as to be absolutely poisonous. Within a stone's throw of those temples there are human habitations which it would be a shame to put a pig into. There are quarters of the city where the air reeks with pestilential odours; where deadly ferments throw off the poison germs which are the prolific cause of epidemics ; where the enjoyment of health is entirely impoeilble, because every one of its conditions is absent, and where the poor creatures who hovel there find a temporary refuge in the excitement of the stupor produced by dram drinking, from the misery, the filth, the squalor, and the wretchedness by which they are surrounded. Babel*Bab has no underground sewerage, acd its gutters or channels exhale, at certain hours of the night, pestiferous stinks which must be smelt in order to be appreciated. , . . . Mr Smith having attempted to

argue with one of the residents upon the degeneracy of the age, was brought up standing with the remark, ' I tell you what it is,' said he, with a good deal of irritation in his voice aod manner, ' you are the only madman in Bab-el. Rab, and I should advise you to clear out, before we place you in confinement.' I saw that he meant it, and next morning I was on my way back to Constantine, a sadder and a wiser man."