tion, and the most humane propensities. Whatever may be said by different writers on the malady itself, and the different ways of treatment, here if any where is a call for humanity; and it may be inferred, that the accomodations and treatment should be very different from what they frequently are. The Hospital and Asylum at York (for both should be mentioned together, being origin. ally founded on the same principles) are perhaps a pattern in many respects to similar houses; but Lunatic Hospitals might be point. ed out both in England and Scotland, that are a disgrace to the police of any country.

I shall close with a few general observations, applicable to the circumstances of several public institutions.

As in governments a constitution may be excellent, but an administration execrable, the same also frequently takes place in public institutions. A person, therefore, in becoming a governor, should not rest satisfied in seeing his name shine in a list of sub. scribers, and in obtaining agreeable or useful connections; this would be to sink his charity into a flirt of vanity, and his office will be turned into a trade, a mere job. He pledges himself, in becoming a governor or trustee, to the performance of certain duties: he should therefore bring with him a conscience, and that may be as serviceable to the society as his subscription. He need not be a trifling and troublesome intruder; but as a steady inspector, and upright improver, he should unite with the other governors to keep things in their proper place; or in those instances, where something may have been originally wrong, he should study to set it right, and to improve all that is susceptible of improvement.

I am pleased to find, by the Report of the Westmorland Lock Hospital, opened by Government in 1792, and perused by me since writing the above remarks, that what has been advanced on the prudence of settling suitable salaries on professional gentlemen, and not relying on gratuitous services, is confirmed by that Report, so far at least as concerns surgeons. On the first opening of that hospital, the physicians and surgeons served without fee or reward. But so far as surgeons were concerned, the plan was found quite defective: attendance from the beginning was irregular; serious consequences followed to the patients; and an addition of contingent expences was unavoidably incurred by the society. In consequence of all this, the Board of Directors, well convinced that where a daily and laborious duty is required from professional men, they have a fair claim to be paid for their time and trouble, advised Government to appoint two senior surgeons, and three assistant or junior surgeons, to be chosen every two years, with suit. able salaries; and that is now the law of this hospital.

This Report furnishes me also with two other admirable hints : the one relates to an assistant steward or purveyor; the other to a public

public inspector. As to a steward, it must necessarily happen in a large hospital, that by acting in some sort as secretary, memori alist, purveyor, and inspector to the society (at least as the steward in the Lock Hospital at Dublin did), his occupations become multiplied and various: an assistant steward, therefore, supplying some parts of his office, and under his direction, becomes of great importance: his office at this Lock Hospital was to distribute the various articles of expenditure, to visit and regulate the wards, and to take the direction of the personal concerns of the patients; and these matters are a great deal better managed by such an officer, than by a beadle, housekeeper, or inferior servant.

The public inspector at the Lock Hospital, Dublin, is chosen out of the board of directors and attending surgeons: he is chosen monthly, and in rotation, so that even to gentlemen in great busi. ness the office is light, as each director takes his turn only at the end of fourteen months. His office is to inspect each department of the hospital during that period: not in a rapid manner, or at fixed periods; he comes without notice, and often stays a considerable time. Every part of the hospital is subjected to his inquiry and inspection, and all abuses, according to his report, are rectified by the Board. Such an officer is of the greatest consequence in large hospitals. As a superintendant of all other officers, he should be able to command all the charters, bye-laws, and constitutions of the society; to look over books of accounts; to be ac quainted with every circumstance in the department of every officer; and, as much as may be, with the situation of the patients.

The observations thrown out in this paper relate mostly to the public institutions in England, and principally to those in the metropolis. Scotland has few poor houses (for Edinburgh and Glasgow at least must be excepted here), but it is abundant (Edinburgh, perhaps, is superabundant) in charitable institutions: those in Edinburgh are in the main well regulated, and take no fees from patients; but from the number of well regulated institutions in Edinburgh, I must be always understood to except the Lunatic Asylum, which both in its building and its regulations is extremely bad. The prisons in Scotland (constructed in conformity to the old Scotch law, to give prisoners pain) are also deplorably bad; but in some instances a better system is beginning to prevail; and it cannot surely be long before a more suitable building, and better regulations, are set on foot than are at present to be seen in this wretched asylum for lunatics; for the Scotch are a humane people. Oh! Ireland, would to Heaven I could do thee any good, but alas! thy pools are much too deep, and too full of wretchedness, to be scooped out and cleansed by accidental, extemporaneous reform.-Ireland has no poor rates, and to supply the want (it is supposed to be a want, but her evils lie deeper than such a want,) Government

Government has of late years established Houses of Industry. From the House of Industry in Dublin licensed beggars, with tickets and badges, issue forth, to publish their distresses, and to solicit alms through the metropolis. Here young and old, the idle and the industrious, the infirm and the hale, the abandoned and the unfortu nate, have a common dwelling, and are supported by the same stock of public charity.-Ireland would furnish materials for a long tale; but an allusion is now made to Ireland, merely to do it justice in one particular case, that of the Lock Hospital just mentioned. This is an excellent foundation, and its regulations are a pattern for all institutions of a similar kind.

As public institutions in some sort concern every individual in a community, freedom of inquiry into the customs which prevail in them should be allowed, though, after all, perfection is not to be expected; and good and ill are so intermixed in the common affairs of life, that we are often obliged to submit to some evil to obtain a greater good. Certainly the cui bono ought to be the previous question; and next, how the greatest quantity of good can be obtained with the least quantity of evil. Philosophers and philanthropists may both lead us wrong, and we must all be allowed to speculate for ourselves; as to facts, they are often useful in reasonings on either side of a useful question; and should such sort of cursory hints as have been here made prove not unacceptable, I may probably send another letter on different sub. jects in the same strain.

P. S.-I find, by the perusal of an Act of Parliament passed in 1806, that 2000l. were voted to the city of Edinburgh, in addition to the funds raised there, towards erecting a Lunatic Asylum; and, on this ground, that the place where lunatics were confined was incommodious and unfit for its purpose; so that the nuisance here complained of will be soon removed, if it has not been removed already. I have perused the Act only as the sheets are now passing through the press. This paper is written in the way of observations on what the writer knew to exist in different parts of the country a few years ago, having spoken after inquiry, and being an eye witness, long also before the public notice taken of the abuses in Christ Hospital. Should any improvements have been since introduced into other charities, of which I am not aware, the reader will make the proper abatements. But public institutions have always a tendency to decline, and there. fore always require watching; it should be added too, that ill-contrived, and even pernicious ones, impede such as are useful, and are supported generally at a much greater expence.

AN OBSERVER.

ART. X.-On Opinions respecting the English Constitution.

MR. REFLECTOR,

In some connection with the essay on the Defects and Abuses of Public Charities, (Art. IX.), it might be allowed us, perhaps, to consider the Defects of Political Constitutions, and even of our own but it is proposed to confine the subject within narrower limits, and endeavour merely to state its principles.

After all said on public charities, experience forbids us to speak of them as a good criterion of public or private virtue. A constitution and government might, perhaps, be so happily disposed, as that knowledge might be so widely circulated, motivės to industry so happily induced, and, at the same time, so much moral sense, so much natural feeling be promoted through a country, that public charities would be less necessary. A state of society, perhaps, may not only be conceived, but even described, in which public charities might be considered almost as an evil and disgrace.

But when we speak of an existing state of society, it may be prudent to keep sometimes out of the world of possibilities. In the removal of a positive grievance under a present system we may do real good, though it may be small. It may become greater in happier times, and under more auspicious circumstances. When speaking then, of political forms, let us leave others to talk of perfect models. Let us renounce theories and appeal to facts; let us feel for substance, and permit the insane, the selfish, the corrupt, to talk of aerial forms and vanishing points.

It should at first seem that the question,-What is the political constitution of a country? is of all questions the most easy of solution; a constitution of forms and laws being the most prominent feature in its policy, to be seen, we should suppose, in daily exercise. Yet in governments do circumstances often arise, by which the question is perplexed, and what ought to be visible and clear, is thrown in the back ground, or kept wholly out of sight.

One might think, that the question as it relates to a country in which we live, could still less he liable to ambiguity or uncertainty. Yet circumstances have arisen in our history that have rendered that peculiarly so with us. Hence some of our historians have been called constitutional, others unconstitutional writers. From such books as Nicholson's Historical Library, and such collections of papers as those made by Sir Robert Cotton, Archbishop Parker, and others, and the Reports lately made of the Public Records of the Kingdom, one might conclude, there is

no

no country that possesses so many constitutional writings and yet do Rushworth's Collections, by exhibiting the eloquence and reasonings of the most able in men the country, shew how, in criti cal points and trying periods, they differently reasoned on constitutional principles. And Andrew Horne, the author of the Mirroir des Justices, one of our oldest writers on the Law, shews, in his chapter de Abusion, that in the earliest times, the common law was liable to be abused, and that as Magna Charta yet had some faults, so also had it in some points been misconceived and abused.

We have at present three predominant parties in the country, (if we may be permitted to use a word without any invidious meaning), we mean classes of politicians, that cannot be induced to make their particular interests and claims one common stock. Yet they all talk of rallying round the Constitution. Will it be said, that in the eye of all the three the principles of the English Constitution are the same?—that the dispute wholly turns on the moderation or excess of its government?-on the qualities good or bad of the administration? Or shall we say it is effected by the selfishness, the pride, or ambition of either party, or of all the parties at once? If there were three hundred parties in England, what is the presumption, that they would not all rally about the English Constitution?

The question, What are the principles of the English Constitution? is receiving an answer, true or false, in the practice of every day; in the symbols and forms of executive power; in the modes and principles of debate in both houses of parliament; in the language of our courts of law; and in the silent homage, either hypocritical or sincere, at least, the obedience, of private life: it will be perhaps then safe to admit, that the two difficulties, the principal difficulties, in the way of this question are, some latent faults, in the Constitution, which few are willing to admit, or in abuse and corruption, which no one is willing to abandon.

Over and above the answer of every day, there arise periods, when the question returns with peculiar force; when all parties are set on the alert; when the press labours; when every public meeting, every private club, every company, every family, sounds with the question proposed, and answered.

re.

In our own time we have had three such periods: one, when we were setting on foot the war with America; another, when we engaged in the present war with France; and a third, at the present moment,-when, alas! we seem at war among ourselves.

Prior to the period of their war with this country, the Americans spoke favourably of English liberty. The political constitutions of their several states were much framed after the English

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model;