tinental neighbours. When the beneficent thought struck the great Pinel to knock off the fetters of the English captain, he sounded a note which reverberated through Europe, and the poor insane captives issued from their dungeons in which they had been so long immured as the prisoners emerge from their prison to the divine strains of Beethoven's Fidelio.' But when this vast step was accomplished there still remained an immense amount of coercion scarcely less injurious than the old darkness and chains, and to Englishmen is mainly due the credit of abolishing it. Nor shall we rest where we are. It is our belief as well as our hope that, before another generation has gone by, the last vestige of restraint, in the shape of dismal airing-courts, and outside walls, which serve to wound the spirit rather than to enslave the limbs, will pass for ever from among us, and only be remembered with the hobbles and the manacles of the past. It has been asserted by some psychologists that lunacy is on the increase, and that its rapid development of late years has been consequent upon the increased activity of the national mind. This statement is certainly startling, and calculated to arrest the attention of all thoughtful men. Is it true that civilisation has called to life a monster such as that which appalled Frankenstein? Is it a necessity of progress that it shall ever be accompanied by that fearful black rider which, like Despair, sits behind it? Does mental development mean increased mental decay? If these questions were truly answered in the affirmative, we might indeed sigh for the golden time when 'Wild in woods the noble savage ran,' for it would be clear that the nearer humanity strove to attain towards divine perfection, the more it was retrograding towards a state inferior to that of the brute creation. A patient examination, however, of the question entirely negatives such a conclusion. Dr. Ray, of the United States, in taking the opposite view of the case, says 'If we duly consider the characteristics of our times, we shall there find abundant reason for the fact that insanity has been increasing at a rate unparalleled in any former period. In every successive step tha has led to a higher degree of civilisation; in all the means and appliances for developing the mental resources of the race; in the everwidening circle of objects calculated to influence desire, and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental ener * In Belgium, where many of the pauper lunatics are located in religious houses and are attended upon by the frères and sœurs of these establishments, it is not uncommon to find the patients at certain times of the day totally deserted and left to their own devices-the attendants being engaged in their religious duties! gies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together, and leads to an harmonious result. The press and the rostrum, the railway and the spinning-jenny, the steam-engine and the telegraph, republican institutions and social organizations, are agencies more potent in preparing the mind for insanity than any or all of those vices and casualties which exert a more immediate and striking effect.' Such is the burthen of the story of all those psychologists who believe that insanity is fast gaining upon us; but if'in the everwidening circle of objects calculated to influence desire and impel to effort we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together,' it should appear that those classes of society which are in the van of civilisation should be the chief sufferers. Bankers, great speculators, merchants, engineers, statesmen, philosophers, and men of letters-those who work with the brain rather than with their hands, should afford the largest proportion to the alleged increase of insanity. How does the matter really stand? In the Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for the year 1847 we find the total number of private patients of the middle and upper classes, then under confinement in private asylums, amounted to 4649. Now, if we skip eight years, and refer to the Report of 1855, we find that there were only 4557 patients under confinement, or about 96 less, notwithstanding the increase of population during that period. If we compare the number of pauper lunatics under confinement at these two different periods we shall find a widely-different state of things; for in 1847 there were 9654 in our public and private asylums, whilst in 1855 they numbered 15,822. In other words, our pauper lunatics would appear to have increased 6170 in eight years, or upwards of 64 per cent. It is this extraordinary increase of pauper lunatics in the county asylums which has frightened some psychologists from their propriety, and led them to believe that insanity is running a winning race with the healthy intellect. But these figures, if they mean anything, prove that it is not the intellect of the country that breeds insanity, but its ignorance, as it cannot be for one moment contended that the great movements now taking place in the world originate with the labouring classes. We shall be told, we know, that there is a constant descent of patients from private asylums to the public asylums; that the professional man and the tradesman, after expending the means of his friends and family for a year or two in the vain hope of a speedy cure, becomes necessarily in the end a pauper lunatic, and that this stream aids to swell the numbers in the county institution. Allowing its due weight to this expla nation nation-and those who know public asylums are well aware how small, comparatively speaking, is the educated element-yet as the same disturbing element in the calculation obtained at both periods, we may safely conclude that the figures are not thereby essentially altered. A still more convincing proof that mental ruin springs rather from mental torpidity than from mental stimulation, is to be found by comparing the proportion of lunatics to the population in the rural and the manufacturing districts. Sir Andrew Halliday, who worked out this interesting problem in 1828,* selected as his twelve non-agricultural counties - Cornwall, Cheshire, Derby, Durham, Gloucester, Lancaster, Northumberland, Stafford, Somerset, York (West Riding), and Warwick, which contained a population at that time of 4,493,194, and a total number of 3910 insane persons, or 1 to every 1200. His twelve agricultural counties were Bedford, Berkshire, Bucks, Cambridge, Hereford, Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, Oxford, Rutland, Suffolk, and Wilts-the total population of which were 2,012,979, and the total number of insane persons 2526-a proportion of 1 lunatic to every 820 sane. Another significant fact elicited was, that whilst in the manufacturing counties the idiots were considerably less than the lunatics, in the rural counties the idiots were to the lunatics as 7 to 5! Thus the Hodges of England, who know nothing of the march of intellect, who are entirely guiltless of speculations of any kind, contribute far more inmates to the public lunatic asylums than the toil-worn artisans of Manchester or Liverpool, who live in the great eye of the world and keep step with the march of civilisation, even if they do but bring up its rear. Isolation is a greater cause of mental ruin than aggregation-our English fields can afford crétins as plentifully as the upland valleys of the mountain range seldom visited by the foot of the traveller; whilst, on the other hand, in the workshop and the public assembly, As iron weareth iron, so man sharpeneth the face of his friend.' If we required further proof of the groundless nature of the alarm that mental activity was destroying the national mind, we should find it in the well-ascertained fact that the proportion of lunatics is greater among females than males. It may also be urged that Quakers, who pride themselves on the sedateness of their conduct, furnish much more than their share; but for this *It may be as well to state that the Poor-Law Commissioners also worked out the problem with very similar conclusions in 1851, and that the investigations made by the Swedish Government into the condition of the insane in Norway in 1835 further corroborate the statement that insanity prevails to a greater extent in rural than in urban districts. singular singular result their system of intermarriage is doubtless much to blame. Still the fact remains that within a period of eight years, extending from 1847 to 1855, an increase of 64 per cent. took place in our pauper lunatic asylums. These figures, however, afford no more proof of the increase of pauper lunatics than the increase of criminal convictions since the introduction of a milder code of laws and the appointment of the new police, afford a proof of increased crime. As the Commissioners very justly observe, medical practitioners of late years have taken a far more comprehensive as well as scientific view of insanity than formerly; and many forms of the disease now fall under their care, that were previously overlooked, when no man was considered mad unless he raved, or was an idiot. But the great cause of the increase of lunatics in our asylums is to be ascribed to the erection of the asylums themselves. With the exception of three or four Welsh counties, and two or three in the north of England, there is not a shire in England which does not possess some palatial building. These establishments, in which restraint, speaking in the ordinary acceptance of the term, is unknown, and in which the inmates are always treated with humanity, have drained the land of a lunatic population which before was scattered among villages or workhouses, amounting, according to the computation of the Commissioners, to upwards of 10,500-just as the deep wells of the metropolitan brewers have drained for miles around the shallow wells of the neighbourhood in which they are situated. For the same reason the number of lunatic paupers has declined in registered hospitals since 1847 from 384 to 185, and in licensed houses' from 3996 to 2313. Upon the whole we may safely predict that when these disturbing causes have ceased to act, the annual returns of the Commissioners will show, that, as the treatment of insanity is every day better understood, so the pauper lunatics in our public asylums, instead of increasing in a ratio far beyond that of the general population, show a diminished proportion. Already there are symptoms that the flood is returning to its proper level; for while the lunatics of all classes in the public asylums, licensed houses, and in the Royal Hospital at Haslar, were 20,493 in 1855, they had only advanced in 1856 to 20,764, which is an increase in the twelvemonth of but 271! ART. ART. IV.-1. The Political Songs of England from the Reign of John to that of Edward the Second. Edited and translated by Thomas Wright, Esq., F.S.A. Camden Society. 1839. 2. England under the House of Hanover; its History and Condition during the Reigns of the three Georges; illustrated from the Caricatures and Satires of the day. By Thomas Wright, Esq., F.S.A. 1848. 3. Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. A new edition. 1852. 4. The Coalition Guide. Press' Office. 1854. 5. Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. XXX. HE 1856.. E whose business or inclination takes him to the lobby of the House of Commons during the sitting of Parliament will often be amused at the peculiar mixture of awe and comedy with which a stranger from the country may be seen contemplating some famous statesman as he passes in. How does he recognise him? for he evidently knows who he is without having consulted a policeman. The answer is simple. He knows his face from the caricatures of him in Punch. It is a fact worth reflecting on, and peculiarly illustrative of the character and history of England. We cannot help wondering that our antiquaries and men of letters have not meditated on it oftener, and taken more pains to elucidate that branch of our literature to which it is related. There are, however, some important contributions to the subject before us, and we shall endeavour, as well as space permits, to do justice to this valuable department of letters. Probably every nation under every form of government has developed out of its national life some kind of political satire. It is certain that satire itself is one of the oldest things in the world; and that men learned to knock wit out of a dunce almost as soon as to knock fire out of a flint. The species of it called political varies of course with political forms. Under despotisms we have epigrams. Under free governments every sort is produced which the genius of the people can suggest. Thus the two great commonwealths of antiquity have each left us ample means of judging of their fertility in this way; and from the remains of their satires we learn important facts about their life. The distinction between their political satire and our own serves as an index of other distinctions, and there is no better way of understanding ourselves than by a comparison with our predecessors. Ours is individual, desultory, and unorganised; theirs was essentially a part of their state life. Take the Greek comedy for example. It had its roots deep in antiquity and in religion, and had grown up inextricably intermingled with the country's institutions. |