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with the unanimous approval of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and a subscription was at once set on foot to carry it into execution, nearly every Fellow of both Colleges contributing something. But enough money was not then raised to start the project in a practical way. Fourteen years afterwards, the attention of the legislature was directed to the provision for the insane in Scotland, when (in 1806) an Act (46 Geo. III., c. 156) was passed for appropriating certain balances arising from forfeited estates in that country to two objects, not apparently allied-the use of the British fisheries and the erecting a lunatic asylum in Edinburghichthyology and psychology. The Act provided, among other clauses, that the Barons of Exchequer should pay out of the unexhausted balance or surplus of the moneys paid to them in 1784, by the Act 24 Geo. III., c. 57 (relating to forfeited estates placed under the board of trustees), the sum of £2000 to the city of Edinburgh towards erecting a lunatic hospital. A royal charter was obtained in 1807, and subscriptions were raised not only from Scotland, but England, and even India, Ceylon, and the West Indies. Madras alone subscribed £1000. The idea of the originators of the institution was a charitable and very far-reaching one. They made provision for three classes-paupers, intermediate, and a third in which the patient had a servant to attend him. It may be mentioned that the establishment of the Retreat at York and its success were constantly referred to in appealing to the public for subscriptions. The building which is now the "East

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LUNACY ACT of 1815.

House" was opened in 1813, and the plan of that building was greatly superior to the prison-like arrangement of some of the asylums built twenty or thirty years afterwards. From the beginning the teaching of mental disease to students was considered, as well as the cure and care of the inmates. The management was a wise one. There were three governing bodies-the "ordinary managers," for transacting the ordinary business; the "medical board" of five, consisting of the President and three Fellows of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons ; and the "extraordinary managers," consisting of official and representative men in and about Edinburgh, who had, along with the ordinary managers, the election of

the board every year. At first there was a lay superintendent and visiting physicians.

Then there was an Act "regulating mad-houses in Scotland" (55 Geo. III., c. 69), passed in the year 1815— that important epoch in lunacy legislation in the British Isles-brought in by the Lord Advocate of Scotland (Mr. Colquhoun), Mr. W. Dundas, and General Wemyss, and which received the royal assent, after several amendments from the House of Lords, June 7, 1815.

This Act provided that sheriffs should grant licences for keeping asylums; that no person should keep one without a licence; that the money received for licences should form part of the rogue money in the county or stewartry, and that out of it all the expenses required for the execution of the Act should be defrayed; that inspectors should be elected within a month after the passing of the Act, and thereafter should annually

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inspect asylums twice a year-four by the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh from their ordinary resident members, and four by the faculty of physicians and surgeons in Glasgow from their ordinary resident members; that sheriffs should ascertain whether patients are properly confined; that the sheriff should make an order for the reception of lunatics, upon a report or certificate signed by a medical man (no statutory form was ordered for the medical certificates or the warrants of the sheriffs; a medical man signing a certificate without due examination of the patient was to forfeit £50); that the sheriff or stewart might set persons improperly detained at liberty; that a licence might be recalled upon report made to the sheriff by two of the inspectors; that the sheriff might make rules for the proper management of asylums; that the Act should not extend to public hospitals, nor to single patients; that the Procurator Fiscal should enforce the Act and recover penalties. The friends of patients were required to pay an annual fee of £2 25.

Such were the main provisions of this Act, which proved to be an important advance in the right direction, though far from perfect. It was amended by 9 Geo. IV., c. 34, and 4 and 5 Vict., c. 60. The three Acts were repealed and other provisions made by the 20 and 21 Vict., c. 71, an "Act for the Regulation, Care, and Treatment of Lunatics, and for the Provision, Regulation, and Maintenance of Asylums."

I may add here, though anticipating the future course. of events, that the General Board of Commissioners in Scotland was established by the Acts 20 and 21 Vict.,

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c. 71, and 21 and 22 Vict., c. 54, both Acts being amended by 25 and 26 Vict., c. 54, and 27 and 28 Vict., c. 59, the latter continuing the appointment of Deputy Commissioners, and making provisions for salaries, etc. The statutes now in force in Scotland are the 20 and 21 Vict., c. 71; 21 and 22 Vict., c. 89; 25 and 26 Vict., c. 54; 27 and 28 Vict., c. 59; Act for the protection of property of persons under mental incapacity, 12 and 13 Vict., c. 51; Act providing for the custody of dangerous lunatics in Scotland, 4 and 5 Vict., c. 60 (repealed and other provisions made by fore-mentioned Acts); Act to amend the law relating to lunacy in Scotland and to make further provision for the care and treatment of lunatics, 29 and 30 Vict., c. 51; Act to amend the law relating to criminal and dangerous lunatics in Scotland, 34 and 35 Vict., c. 55 (1871).

But we must retrace our steps to pursue the course of legislation a little more in detail.

On the 3rd of February, 1818, a Bill for the erecting of district lunatic asylums in Scotland for the care and confinement of lunatics, brought in by Lord Binning and Mr. Brogden, was read the first time. A few days after, a petition of the noblemen, gentlemen, freeholders, justices for the peace, Commissioners of Supply, and other heritors of the county of Ayr was presented against it, setting forth that the petitioners, "from the first moment that they were made acquainted with the principle and provisions of the proposed Bill, were deeply alarmed for their own interests and those of Scotland in general, by the introduction of a measure uncalled for

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and inexpedient, novel in its application and arrangement, and substituting regulations of compulsion, to the exclusion of the more salutary exertions of spontaneous charity, and this, too, at a time when, by the gradual progress of enlightened philanthropy, so many admirable institutions have been so lately established in various parts of Scotland by voluntary contributions; and that the petitioners are most willing to pay every just tribute of respect to the humane views which may have dictated the proposed measure, but they are satisfied that it must. have owed its origin to exaggerated and false representations of the state of the lunatics in Scotland, and an unjust and groundless assumption of a want of humanity in the people of Scotland toward objects afflicted with so severe a calamity. The House cannot fail to remark that the proposed Bill recognizes a systematic assessment, which it has been the wise policy of our forefathers to avoid in practice, and that, too, to an amount at the discretion of Commissioners ignorant of local circumstances, and perhaps the dupes of misinformation; entertaining, as the petitioners do, deep and well-grounded repugnance to the means proposed for carrying this measure into execution, partly injudicious and partly degrading to the landholders of Scotland, for it does appear to be a humiliating and, the petitioners may venture to say, an unconstitutional Act, which would place the whole landholders in Scotland in the situation of being taxed for any object and to any amount at the discretion of any set of Commissioners whatever; the petitioners therefore, confiding in the wisdom of the