What we would desire is, that every recent case of insanity should at once obtain admission into the public asylum of the county or borough, if furnished with the necessary medical certificates and with an order from a justice who has either seen the patient or received satisfactory evidence as to his condition (see remarks on duties of district medical officers), and obtained from the relatives an undertaking to submit to the assessment made by a commission as above proposed, or constituted in any other manner thought better; or the speedy admission of recent cases might otherwise be secured by prescribing their attendance and that of their friends before the weekly Committee of the Visitors of the Asylum, by whom the order for reception might be signed on the requisite medical certificates being produced, and the examination for the assessment of the patient's resources formally made, with the assistance possibly of some representative of the parish interests,--such for instance as the Clerk to the Board of Guardians.
In the County Courts the judges are daily in the habit of ordering periodical payments to be made in discharge of debts upon evidence offered to them of the earnings or trade returns of the debtor; and there seems no _a priori_ reason against the investigation of the resources of a person whose friends apply for his admission into a County Asylum. It is for them to show cause why the parish or county should assume the whole or the partial cost of the patient's maintenance, and this can be done before the Committee of the Asylum or any private board of inquiry with little annoyance or publicity. Rather than raise an obstacle to the admission of the unfortunate sufferer, it would be better to receive him at once and to settle pecuniary matters afterwards.
We must here content ourselves with this general indication of the machinery available for apportioning the amount of payment to be made on account of their maintenance by persons not paupers, or for determining their claim upon the Asylum funds. Yet we cannot omit the opportunity to remark that the proceedings as ordered by the existing statute with a similar object are incomplete and unsatisfactory. These proceedings are set forth in _sects._ xciv. and civ. (16 & 17 Vict. cap. 97). The one section of the Act is a twin brother to the other, and it might be imagined by one not "learned in the law," that one of the two sections might with little alteration suffice. Be this as it may, it is enacted that if it appear to two Justices (_sect._ xciv.) by whose order a patient has been sent to an asylum, or (_sect._ civ.) "to any Justice or Justices by this Act authorized to make any order for the payment of money for the maintenance of any Lunatic, that such Lunatic" has property or income available to reimburse the cost of his maintenance in the asylum, such Justices (_sect._ xciv.) shall apply to the nearest known relative or friend for payment, and if their notice be unattended to for one month, they may authorize a relieving officer or overseer to seize the goods, &c. of the patient, whether in the hands of a trustee or not, to the amount set forth in their order. _Sect._ civ. makes no provision for applying to relatives or friends in the first instance, but empowers the justice or justices to proceed in a similar way to that prescribed by _sect._ xciv., to repay the patient's cost; with the additional proviso that, besides the relieving officer or overseer, "the Treasurer or some other officer of the County to which such Lunatic is chargeable, or in which any property of the Lunatic may be, or an officer of the Asylum in which such Lunatic may be," may proceed to recover the amount charged against him.