I sketched it briefly in evidence before the Select Committee of 1877-8, and it is developed at length in the work to which I have already referred.

1. Give the Commissioners in Lunacy power to enforce their recommendations on all proprietors, keepers, and officers, of asylums. The Board which has grown up under the fostering care of Lord Shaftesbury may be trusted. Its noble work has entitled it to public confidence.

2. Allow cases of mental excitement or disease to be sent to an hospital for the insane, just as a sick person is sent to an hospital, or treated at home, for bodily maladies, without certificate, but require that within eighteen hours of receiving the patient or commencing the treatment at home, the medical man shall report the case to the Commissioners, who shall forthwith issue their order to a duly qualified expert, not in practice or paid by fee, to visit the patient and make a proper return to Whitehall, upon the basis of which the Commissioners will sanction removal to an asylum or direct discharge from confinement.

3. Let the same official who has acted for the Commissioners in this matter of diagnosis watch the case, seeing it at short intervals until ended by recovery or death, thus keeping the individual patient under personal observation instead of merging him or her in a crowd.

4. The medical officers of health might conveniently be empowered with this duty of certifying and inspecting within their districts. A proof of special study should be required, and could be readily obtained. The new duty would rapidly create a new interest in the subject of insanity; and the universities would examine in lunacy, granting special diplomas, as they are beginning to act with regard to the subject of State medicine and public health.

The scheme proposed is not a costly one, and if it be supplemented by placing private asylums on a public footing, their proprietors holding State bonds for the money invested, and their officers being paid by salary out of a central fund, the whole matter may be set on a better basis; one of which, I think, there will be little cause to complain, either on the score of safety or of prudence.

Before I leave the subject I should like to ask attention, in as few words as possible, for two of the financial and administrative consequences to which the policy of constructing palatial establishments has given rise. Take first the cost of public asylums. In Middlesex alone, up to the year 1875, before the third asylum, at Banstead, was commenced, a total of 788,302l. 48. 9d. had been expended. I find in the annual reports of Hanwell, which was opened in 1831, entries of outlay to the extent of 348,754l. 58. 6d. 3 under the several heads 'building,' 'repairs and alterations,' 'furniture,' &c. This of course includes the first cost of land and construction. At Colney Hatch,

3

The sums expended in 1860 and 1863 are not included. They would probably add upwards of 10,000l. to the total.

which was opened in 1851, 439,5471. 19s. 3d. had been laid out in the same way, and since 1875 there is the third asylum, above mentioned, for which the ratepayers are again taxed. In Surrey, up to the end of 1875, Wandsworth cost 248,6521. 28. 8d., and Brookwood 130,0721. 28. 1d., together 378,724l. 48. 9d.; and now a third and costly institution is in progress for that county also. The City of London has devoted a considerable sum to the same object. I have been unable to ascertain the first cost of the asylum at Stone, but the annual reports show that in the course of ten years 10,204l. 48. 1d. was expended in enlarging, replenishing, and beautifying this home of the insane. All this is exclusive of the enormous cost of licensed houses kept up, partly at least, for the sake of the paupers boarded in them, and practically at the charge of the ratepayers.

Turning to the annual outlay, without loading these pages with details, I may point out that, whereas the expenditure per head for inmates of asylums has risen 14.2 per cent. since 1856, to the end of 1875, or 15.2 per cent. during the ten years 1864-5-1874-5, only 9.9 per cent. of the increase has gone to feed the patient, and 15.7 per cent. to clothe him! Meanwhile every comfort and luxury is lavished on the insane in their confinement, and the improvements in 'treatment' are so many and humane, that while the increased proportion of cures is no way remarkable, life in an asylum has come to be, for the pauper at least, almost preferable to a self-supporting existence in the outer world. The chief cause of offence seems to be that an asylum is now, as always, a house full of mad people, or persons claiming the irresponsibility of lunacy; and it is just as easy as ever to get in, and as difficult to achieve an escape, with brain and character intact. I question whether enough, and more than enough, has not been written about the needs and interests of the insane. I fancy the time has arrived when the grievous complainings of the hardworking sane people outside should command attention; and in furtherance of that true and wise, though generous and benevolent, economy in which their interests are bound up, I venture to ask consideration for the figures, and reflections, I have tried to set forth. My inferences may be faulty, but the facts submitted will stand the test of a close scrutiny.

J. MORTIMER-GRANVILLE.

BANKING AND COMMERCIAL

LEGISLATION.

THERE has always been a doubt in the minds of those who are in favour of codes and systems, whether the laws of currency and banking in the three kingdoms, or those appertaining to the liability of shareholders and partners in trading companies, contain the greatest amount of anomaly and absurdity. No better idea can be formed of the confused state of our banking legislation than by examining the following propositions of Sir James Stephen as to the existing statutes affecting joint-stock banks, private banks, banks of issue, and non-issuing banks, laid before the House of Commons' Select Committee in 1875.

First. The Bank of England may issue notes for not less than five pounds throughout England, upon the conditions of the Act of 1844.

Secondly. Private banks in any part of England and joint-stock banks sixty-five miles from London, and having no establishments in London, and having issued notes on the 6th of May, 1844, may issue notes not less than five pounds, subject to the restrictions of the Bank Act of 1844..

Thirdly. Every private banker who fails or discontinues business, and every private banker increasing his partners above six, loses his right to issue notes.

Fourthly. Both private and joint-stock banks before mentioned may have agents in London for the payment of the notes which they issue.

Fifthly. No joint-stock bank which issues notes anywhere, except the joint-stock banks specified in Proposition ii., may carry on business in any part of England.

Sixthly. Any joint-stock bank which does not issue notes anywhere may carry on all other branches of banking business, except the issue of notes, in any part of England.

The series of Acts upon which this anomalous state of the law is founded partly arises from the gradual encroachment upon the exclusive privileges of the Bank of England, partly from the advisability

of instituting banks in England similar to those in Scotland, which Lord Liverpool pointed out in 1825, and partly from the successful defence set up by the Scotch banks to the attempt then made to reduce their issue to the same limits as that of England.

It is admitted that the Scotch banks have secured for themselves the legal privilege of issuing notes with the actual monopoly of banking business, while it is alleged that they have, against the letter of the various statutes (according to Sir James Stephen), and against the spirit of them according to most other authorities, set up banks in London and other parts of England, competing with existing English banks which are restricted as to their issue and do not enjoy a similar monopoly. This incursion of the Scotch banks led to the appointment of the Select Committee which collected the evidence from which the propositions of Sir James Stephen are taken. This evidence, though given some time previous to the occurrences of the past year, is so complete as to make it useless, except for the purposes of delay, to seek for any additional information. It does not, however, contain an account of the nature of shareholders' liabilities. The anomalies connected with this subject are perhaps more startling than those connected with the restrictions of issuing notes or of the establishment of banks.

Previous to 1826 it is doubtful whether the Crown had the power to grant charters of incorporation to companies carrying with them rights other than those of limited liability: that is to say, that a company was either on the footing of a simple partnership, or had all the rights of a pure corporation.

Subsequently to 1826 several Acts were passed empowering the Crown to grant charters embodying some corporate rights unaccompanied by those of limited liability, but since 1844 there has been a tendency in all Companies' Acts to the establishment of the principle of limited liability in all commercial bodies.

Her Majesty's Government, notwithstanding the expectations that have been generally formed, has apparently no present intention of pledging itself to any great and comprehensive scheme for the consolidation of Bank Acts, or for the remedy of the larger evils from which shareholders suffer in respect to their liability. All that Sir Stafford Northcote has promised as yet is a Bill dealing with a minute particular in the Limited Liability Acts, a Bankruptcy Bill, and an alteration, not retrospective, in the law regarding trustees.

Such being the proposals of Government to remedy the existing confusions, it may be well to offer a few remarks upon one or two of the points which are sure either directly or indirectly to crop up during the debates or in the investigation of these comparatively small matters.

The Government may not intend to deal with the currency, the law of partnership, or the detection and punishment of fraud;

but it cannot be doubted that independent members will take the opportunity to ventilate all these questions as well as that of bankruptcy.

Criminal prosecutions in cases of commercial fraud in this country are apt to go by fits and starts; sensation trials take place at the call of an angry public; but it is very seldom that the real authors and inventors of fraudulent schemes find their way into the dock. Some unfortunate dupe or over-sanguine capitalist becomes the scapegoat of the sins of others.

The extravagance and unfairness of the bankruptcy administration are hard upon both creditors and debtors; but it is difficult to say whether these evils arise from the vices of the law or from the complicated state of our commerce and social system.

The observations I am about to make will be confined principally to currency and the law of liability, and to certain proposals for the more efficient audit of banks, which have been lately much discussed.

Mr. Palgrave, editor of the Economist and Banker's Magazine, in republishing certain articles which had already appeared in the former paper, and a writer in the Fortnightly for December, who, though anonymous, can be no other than a gentleman as well known in the economical and statistical world as Mr. Palgrave, have propounded the views they entertain on what is necessary to be done, and the lessons which may be learned from recent events.

I

Before discussing their propositions it will be right, I presume, for the sake of form, to begin by stating what appears to me to be the present condition of commercial affairs. Some four years ago published a pamphlet on banking and currency, and in it I distinguished between a bankers' panic and a panic in any other branch of trade; and according to that definition I now venture to assert that we have been passing through what I then called a bankers' panic, which is accompanied or caused by a general fall of prices, by a want of profit in the manufacturing establishments of the country, including the bread and beef manufacture called agriculture, and, saddest of all, by a difficulty in obtaining landlords' rents.

Mr. Cliffe Leslie, who seems to recommend the study of political economy in the pages of Dr. Newman and Jomini, and of war and religion in those of Adam Smith, assures us we are quite wrong in supposing that there are recurring cycles of commercial distress and prosperity, or that there are fresh generations of knaves and fools, who grow up and prey upon one another, regardless of the lessons which have been learned by those who have gone before them.

According to my experience of commercial accidents and phenomena, it seems clear enough that these cycles do recur, and that a succession of knaves and fools appears with astonishing regularity. No legislation is likely to remedy this; yet, every time these disasters