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insane? Obscure struggles, half measures, renewed efforts, mark the progress from 1763 till, in the year 1788. Mason the Poet wrote a pamphlet, finding bitter fault with the management of the York Asylum. The tone of his pamphlet was condemned. There is nothing society resents so much, as having the duckweed on the still pond of its surface disturbed by the under-current of struggling lives. Society did not want to hear about such horrors; society was of opinion they could not be helped. Mr Mason was loudly blamed for his interference; and he and his pamphlet were thrust aside. About three years afterwards, the relatives of an insane Quaker being discontented with the regulations of the same Asylum, renewed the complaints Mason had made; and followed them up with considerable perseverance. Little was done, however, except that the "Retreat" at York was established by the Quakers themselves. Every sort of obstacle was thrown in the way of public inquiry. At length (with praiseworthy ingenuity), thirteen gentlemen qualified as Governors of the York Asylum by paying twenty guineas each, for the express purpose of getting a committee of the House of Commons appointed to examine into this matter. They did get the Committee appointed; the expenses of most of the witnesses being paid by a subscription raised among the ladies of York; and thus began that interference with a monstrous evil, which is now a matter of regular government control. In the particular instance of the York Asylum, the most horrible abuses were discovered. There were but two servants to one hundred and twenty male patients; the funds had been misapplied; the books and registries burned; the grossest immorality practised; and in the report of deaths, 144 out of 365 had been suppressed. As the inquiry spread to other asylums, more and more horrors were made known. When Mr Wakefield visited Bethlem, among countless other instances of cruelty one man was found with an iron ring round his neck, an iron bar round his waist, and iron pinions on his arms, fastened to the wall; and this had
