Lord Shaftesbury on this occasion recommended that magistrates should be empowered to provide asylums by money raised on the security of the rates, for all the non-pauper classes. "When I look into the whole matter," he said, "I see that the principle of profit vitiates the whole thing; it is at the bottom of all these movements that we are obliged to counteract by complicated legislation, and if we could but remove that principle of making a profit, we should confer an inestimable blessing upon the middle classes, getting rid of half the legislation, and securing an admirable, sound, and efficient system of treatment of lunacy." The Committee, however, while encouraging such asylums founded on private contributions, could not recommend that a burden should be imposed on the ratepayers, or that their establishment should be compulsory.
The Committee suggested as safeguards against the improper detention of lunatics in private asylums (after dismissing the proposal to require the sanction of a magistrate) various important precautions.
1. Worthy of consideration whether the certificate should be verified before a magistrate, so as to enable him to determine whether the Act has been complied with. 2. The certificate authorizing detention to be limited to three months. 3. The order to state the time when the patient was last seen, and not to be effective unless the applicant had seen the patient within three months. 4. Copy of order and certificate to be sent to the Commissioners within twenty-four hours, instead of within seven days. 5. The patient to be visited as soon as possible by the Commissioners or by some person acting directly under their authority. 6. The person who signs the order for admission to a private asylum to visit the patient at least every six months--a clause in Mr. Gordon's Act, but omitted in that of 1845. 7. Patients to have a _primâ facie_ right to receive visits from and correspond with friends. 8. To make it penal for any medical man to receive a patient in a single house without apprising the Commissioners of it.
Other suggestions of the Committee had reference to Chancery lunatics, criminal lunatics, and the composition and powers of the Lunacy Board.