New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4896, 30 November 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30.

When a number of wiseacres in Parliament decided that there should be no Inspector-General of Lunatic Asylums in New Zealand their motives were of a mixed character. Some members voted against the sum set down in the Estimates for the appointment, because the Government had wisely appointed a gentleman whose practical and theoretical knowledge of his subject was most extensive, and had not conferred it on some praiseworthy superintendent of a colonial institution, who might be very well fitted for his present position ; but who had not, and could not have had the large advantages of experience possessed by Dr. Skae. There were other members again who considered every item in the Estimates for paying money to any official as so much mere waste of money, and could only recognise one just vote, namely, the remuneration of £2OO for the session to each M.H.R. There were unquestionably several members who voted as they did 1 Simply because they considered it their, first duty to vote against Government, and their second to vote for what might be best for the country. And finally some members voted because they did no.t honestly see any necessity for the appointment. NoW, it is with this last class, that we Would like to have a few words. Their action arose, we _ believe, from simple ignorance,; and this we say without at all wishing to be offensive. The whole. question involved in the

proper conduct and supervision of lunatic asylums had never received any attention from them. It was like that of gaols and other institutions which they looked upon as matters incident to civilised life, but not really requiring the attention of politicians occupied in discussing constitutional and other questions Those gentlemen are quite unaware that the proper treatment of the insane, and that the laws under which they may bo placed in an asylum under restraint, have formed the subject of very important legislation during the present generation, and have occupied the attention of the most distinguished statesmen. Perhaps the New Zealand laws on the subject are quite as far advanced as those of other countries, and our asylums are on the whole as well conducted as are similar institutions elsewhere. But even in this colony it is not all certain but that given certain conditions, to which our legislation offers facilities, it might become twice as easy to get a sane man shut up in an asylum as to get one whose insanity had been cured out of it. Not indeed that there need be much apprehension on that score, as here private asylums have their places supplied by those of the State in which patients of a superior social condition, whose friends can pay for them, can be received and supplied with what may be called comforts and luxuries not within the reach of the afflicted persons whom the State has to maintain. There- , fore we need scarcely be apprehensive of such a condition of things here as that described recently by an American journalist who simulated insanity, got himself sent to a private lunatic asylum, and in a subsequent work, “A Mad World and its Inhabitants,” has shown that in “ the freest country of the earth” there daily occur violations of personal liberty and instances of torture and oppression which the dark ages could scarcely parallel. It is not this that is to be apprehended, as we have said, but those practices which a Victorian journalist has shown to exist in that colony, and of which the superintendents and. higher officials of asylums are ignorant, because concealment from them is carefully practised. There may be no absolute deliberate cruelty it is true, but “A Vagabond,” writing in the leading journal of Victoria, has shown that in too many instances the attendants at asylums are without that sympathy and kindly feeling for their unfortunate charges which they should have, and that this inevitably leads to a treatment of human beings similar to that which horses and dogs experience from careless though not wilfully cruel grooms and gamekeepers. As for the existence of this state of things being detected by justices or other unprofessional visitors, the nonsense of the idea has been too frequently exposed to need mention here. Mr. Charles Beade in “Hard Cash,” and'the “Vagabond” of the Argus, have each shown how even with the best intentions in the world a non-professional visitor may absolutely lend himself to the continuance of a state of things the very existence of which, were it known to him, he would himself be the first to rebuke. And it is but too true that the greater number of those whose official duty it is to visit lunatic asylums are quite unable to get beneath such a surface view as may be presented to them. We are writing now without any intention of detracting from the merits of those who have charge of the various State lunatic asylums throughout the colony, and without casting any reflection on the attendants in those asylums as a body. But if anyone will peruse the aeries of letters in the Melbourne Argus, to which we have previously incidentally alluded, he will be able to see that what is possible in the Victorian asylums is quite possible here, and is one of the things which the appointment of such a highly-qualified and experienced gentleman as Dr. Skae may be hoped to remedy.