This enactment may be enforced by the Lunacy Board so far as the Secretary of State can prevail with a body of magistrates to accede to it, "in such manner as the said Secretary of State may see fit, and direct." But this high official has no direct power to compel a Committee of Visitors under any sort of penalty. "It shall be lawful for such Secretary of State," says the clause, "to require" such additional asylum alteration or enlargement; but the history of the contest between that public officer and the Middlesex 'Committee of Visitors' appears to prove that his requisition may be neglected and set aside. "He found" (as Lord Shaftesbury tells us in his evidence, Rep. Select Comm., Query, No. 799), "that the passive resistance offered was beyond his power." We coincide with his lordship, that this ought never to have happened, and think, that the Secretary of State, acting under the representations and advice of the Lunacy Commissioners, ought to be armed with full powers to enforce the provision for pauper lunatics in asylums being rendered equal to the demand for it, according to some plan agreed to by them, in every county, in harmony with the true intent and purpose of the Act now in force.
In order to facilitate the carrying out of this design, and to limit the scope for the passive resistance and attempted delay of some county magistrates, the re-enactment of the sections of the 8th & 9th Vict. sect. 126, as quoted, appears desirable, viz. to sanction and promote the erection of distinct retreats for chronic cases. We are, indeed, glad to find, that in this recommendation we are also in accord with the noble lord at the head of the Lunacy Commission.
Looking at the matter in a general point of view, therefore, we appear to find, in the plan of separating the more chronic and most unpromising cases of lunacy from the recent and hopeful, so as to leave these in smaller numbers for the purpose of more direct and effectual treatment, one mode of improving and extending the future provision of the insane. However, to elucidate the scheme, we need go into further detail, so as to define more particularly the classes to be separately accommodated, and the extent to which the separation should be carried.
