however severe, should always be inflicted in the same. spirit that the surgeon performs a painful operation.

Whether the feelings of society would permit the adoption of this system is doubtful. In the present day we do not make the laws we deem the wisest, but the laws which will be most acceptable to the temporary frame of mind in which the great mass of the population is placed; because we know that in our form of government it is impossible to enforce an obnoxious regulation. Whether this influence of the people on legislation be attended by more advantages than evils, I leave to wiser heads to determine; it exists, and we are compelled to frame our measures accordingly.

Some of the alterations of the law, as to the infliction of the punishment of death for certain crimes, were delayed long after an almost universal conviction that the change was necessary and essential to its due execution, but no one dared to propose a specific abolition for specific crimes; and it was only by an evasion that this just and necessary change could be brought about. I know that some of the most active promoters of that reform were of opinion, that severe corporal chastisement was the most appropriate punishment, and that simple imprisonment was by no means adequate to the offence, but they dared not come forward and advocate their own convictions, when their arguments were to be spread all over the world, and their names inseparably connected in imagination with the crimes for which they were legislating.

If, in spite of the pains I have taken to avoid offence, some who have not read my work with attention, or

who have not the preliminary knowledge necessary to the clear understanding of it, be inclined to draw inferences from my doctrine which it does not justify,I enter a protest against the proceeding, and defend myself by the following parable.

A certain man, about to leave his country, pointed out to his children the poppies which were the natural and uncultivated produce of the soil; called their attention to the graceful form of the leaves, and the wonderful variety and beauty of the flowers; recommended the seeds as a wholesome and agreeable article of food; and shewed how to make from them a bland and benign emulsion for the relief of sickness; he advised that they should be satisfied with these pleasures and blessings, and leave untouched all other parts, which he assured them were unwholesome and injurious. He was no sooner departed than his children wounded the skin of the capsules, and extracted the opium, and thus obtained the means of intoxication, disease, and death.

The father is not responsible for the mischief caused by the wilful disobedience of his children; he could not remove the poppies, for they were the spontaneous growth of the soil. He gave the advice which might have rendered them a blessing, and he would have pointed out even the beneficial qualities of the drug they had abused, could he have calculated on their discretion and self-command in the use of it. It was their own perverse disposition which converted the blessing into a curse.

APPENDIX I.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON INSANITY.

HAVING been much occupied in investigating the origin and progress of insanity in Catholic countries, I have been struck with the rarity of religious madness in that sect as compared with our own. I have no wish to express any opinion whatever on the peculiar tenets of the two great divisions of Christians; they are entirely out of the province of the physician, who, in estimating the influence of different modes of faith on the intellectual functions, has rather to consider the usages than the dogmas.

The practice of the clergymen of the two sects is, however, diametrically opposed in the management of that state of mind which precedes religious insanity, as to exercise great influence on the progress of the disease. Some Protestant clergymen, when first made acquainted with the doubts and embarrassments of their young and fragile-minded communicauts, enter into explanatory discussions, recommend the study of the Bible, and of works of theological controversy. The patient, at an age when the brain is expanding perhaps faster than its bony covering can make room for its growth, enters upon the investigation of subjects so abstruse that they have disturbed the intellect of the most able and energetic men. The poor girl (for it is most frequently, though by no means exclusively, in that sex that these doubts and delusions take root) becomes more and more bewildered. If it be only one of the brains in which the disease is beginning, the sound one,

instead of performing its duty of acting as a sentinel and controller, is taught to dwell constantly on the same morbid train of thoughts which occupy its fellow, and thus confirmed insanity is established, where a different mode of treatment would perhaps have restored the disorded brain to a healthy state.

It is not to be expected that the clergyman should possess medical knowledge and tact to see the commencement of mental disease in an apparently increased acuteness of the reasoning powers, or many might be saved from destruction, who fall a sacrifice to well-meaning but mistaken views of duty. If one of these gentlemen, with more sagacity or better information than the rest, should discourage the further prosecution of theological studies in the applicant, there is risk of his incurring serious censure, and its painful consequences, for his presumed indifference to the tenets of his sect and the welfare of an immortal soul.

The practice of the Catholic clergy is exactly the opposite. They give their communicants a large quantity of ceremonial devotion to perform and prayers to be recited, and forbid all controversial or doctrinal reading. The incessant repetition of these prayers and observances has the soothing effect of all monotony, and tranquillizes the morbid emotions of the brain.

It is also a principle with the Catholic clergy to confine the study of theology to themselves, and entirely to discourage it in the laity. Thus one large source of mental disturbance is superseded. I have sometimes wished, when hearing flippant young girls discussing the abstruse doctrines and mysteries of religion, that a similar practice prevailed in our church with the young.

I cannot shut my eyes as a medical man to the mischievous consequences of such studies to every brain whose delicate structure tends to insanity, nor to the advantage (medically speaking) of a system which puts such brains in repose.

Yet no one can be more convinced that without the influence of religion on society at large, the number of maniacs would be vastly increased, as was seen in France during the horrid Revolution, at the time Esquirol first gave his sentiments to the

public. The increase of insanity was frightful, when no longer checked in its beginnings by the judicious control of the clergy, and by the calm influence of a tranquillizing faith. At the same time the form of religious mania was become so rare that, in three hundred and thirty-seven patients admitted into the private establishment of that gentleman, only a single case could be attributed to that source.

For one person rendered mad by fanaticism, half-a-dozen are reduced to that state for want of religious consolation. I will here venture to relate an example of what I call (medically speaking) judicious conduct on the part of a clergyman, the dignitary of whom I have already spoken.

A woman of the upper class of artizans came to him one evening, and asked permission to consult him in a serious religious difficulty, on the ground of being a parishioner, although not of the same faith. He listened very patiently to her story. She told him with the greatest naïveté and simplicity her interesting tale of virtuous self-denial and benevolence. She had been on the point of marriage to the man of her heart, when her sister (a widow) died and left six children totally destitute; she at once resolved to break off her projected marriage, and devote herself to the orphans. Having a small independence, she was enabled to accomplish this-had brought them all up virtuously and happily, and having established them in the world, was now waiting patiently the time when she should be called to render an account of her stewardship. She had been

happy and contented, and had always found a source of consolation and of hope in the good deeds she had been enabled to accomplish.

Some pious Protestant ladies, belonging to a society which in the zeal for religion violates rather too boldly the sanctity of the homes of the poor, had forced themselves upon her, and by dint of iteration had almost convinced her that the Catholic faith was the broad path to eternal destruction.

In her embarrassment and despair she had applied to this gentleman, from a knowledge of his benevolence and sagacity, and requested him to direct her into the right road.