South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2478, 28 February 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1881.

Centralism, like free trade, sounds well. In the abstract it is perfect; in practice it don’t suit. Since the abolition of the Provinces in New Zealand efforts have not been wanting to deify centralism, and they have generally resulted in lamentable failure. Local government has been subverted by centralists administration and what has been the consequence ? Central authority, swelled by its own conceit, has expanded bigger and bigger, only, like a house of cards or soap-bubble, to suddenly collapse. The latest illustration comes very appropriately from the parent nest of centralism— Wellington. It will bo recollected that a portion of the wild scheme of adminstrative reorganisation framed by Sir Julius Vogel and Major Atkinson was to establish central gaols, infirmaries, immigration depots, lunatic asylums, police depots, &c., and each of these centralists institutions was to be under the direct control and supervision of an inspector, whose principal qualification was to be a total ingnorancc of the colony and its requirements. The central police system was established under Colonel Motile and it proved a failure ; the central gaol at Taranaki was promoted but it suffered the fate of the Taranaki iron-sand scheme ; the central immigration depot has not thriven mainly owing to the upbraidings of new arrivals, who treat tents and damper with disdain. But Major Atkinson was so far successful as to secure the assent of Parliament to the appointment of an Inspector of Lunatic Asylums in the shape of an Edinburgh doctor of medicine, and his restoration to power in the present Ministry has enabled him to pursue his favorite hobby a step further and secure a Home-made Inspector of Gaols. The latter has hardly had time yet to distinguish himself, but the Major’s first Inspector has had an opportunity of shedding his inspectorial light over the institutions confided to his care, and the result is a mass of revelations, which, to say the very least, are somewhat painful. We do not intend at this stage, to comment on the conduct of the individuals implicated through the evidence which lias been taken at the Wellington Lunatic Asylum enquiry. The details are so scandalous, the cruelties depicted so appalling, that we should rather have avoided their publication, but the evidence being given on oath, and the enquiry being—very properly—a public one, we have had no option. There are few of our readers, wc imagine, who could have read the evidence with equanimity. Leaving the widest possible margin for exaggeration the evidence of witnesses, not connected by ties of relationship or in any other way with the inmates of the Asyiurn, is of a most startling character. As the enquiry has proceeded, the suggestion of gross immorality, the allegations of fearful brutality, and the insinuations of rank dishonesty, appear to be abundantly corroborated. The picture, we repeat, so far as it has been painted, is appalling. It is that of a congregation of helpless idiots, entrusted to the tender mercies of a band of ruffians, equal apparently to the perpetration of any atrocity. The evidence of one man, Macintosh, whoso insanity, due to over-indulgence, was probably of a most temporary character, escaping three times from his brutal keeper,* limited clown and re-captured to be subjected on each occasion to the most exquisite tortures, removed from his cell at midnight to be locked up in a box and drenched with a shower-bath, supplicating the advice of a clergyman as to how he could regain his liberty, and finally, requiring the intercession of his wife, and the intervention of His Excellency the Governor, to save him from a fearful fate, is a tale that might fitly adorn a romance to ifiease the palate of those who delight in imaginary horrors, but the facts are a disgrace to the institution concerned, and to a colony where such an institution can exist. The skewering and gagging of prisoners in the Nelson gaol was conveniently glossed over by a friendly tribunal : will the refined cruelties indulged in by the keepers of the Wellington Lunatic Asylum be treated in the same manner ?

But supposing that a fair case for the intervention of the criminal law has been made out against the superintendent of this Asylum and his keepers, the remote cause must not be overlooked. The Wellington Asylum like the other institutions has been flourishing lately under the reign of centralism. Dr Skae is not to be blamed ; he is simply a Ministerial creation. For all this alleged mismanagement, refined cruelty and rank dishonesty, there is one chief, respon-sible-author. The Ministry of which Major Atkinson was chief, which took the control of the Lunatic Asylums out of the hands of the local authorities and superseded the local visitors by a Government Inspector is undoubtedly the primary criminal. Under local supervision such as existed before Major Atkinson and his colleagues interfered with tho management of these institutions, such a state of affairs as this enquiry has revealed would have been impossible. The cruelties now sworn to could not have gone on for weeks and months unde, tected. The opening left for fraudimmorality, and every kind of villainy practised at the expense of imbeciles and under the patronage of the Government would not have been tolerated for a moment. We have no doubt this enquiry, with its revolting details will make a deep impression in Wellington and all over the colony, and re will be a great outer the punishment of Whitelaw .. As

auxiliaries. But it must not be forgotten that Whitelaw’s doings have long been notorious, that be was retained in power under tbe.eye of an Inspector and the sanction of the Government, and that his present situation—execrated and loathed by a whole population —is due not only to the enormities that have been sworn to, even by his orvn mother, but to a system that has made these enormities possible, and of which Major Atkinson and his political henchmen are the authors. The gaols have now been placed on a footing similar to our Lunatic Asylums, the reins have been taken out of the hands of the local authorities—the visiting Justices —and placed in those of a Government inspector. We care not how able and vigilant this gentleman may be, of one thing we arc perfectly confident, that if the horrors of the Wellington Lunatic Asylum are not repeated in the gaols of the colony, it will be the fault of the governors and warders, and not lor want of opportunity.