The discussion in the House of Lords on Thursday evening,
on the Lord Chancellor's Lunacy Bill, was not, to our minds, at all satisfactory. Lord Selborne pleaded hard for private asylums ; Lord Cranbrook supported him ; and Lord Grim- thorpe, with his usual curtness of manner, attacked the Bill from beginning to end, and indicated his contempt for the reformers. Even Lord Herschell was not as strong in defending the provisions for gradually extinguishing private asylums as we should have liked to see him, and he postponed the clauses on this subject,—which ho classed amongst the controversial clauses,—till he should have reconsidered the Bill, with the view of making it square with the wishes of the objectors,—i.e., of watering it down into a feeble measure. The argument for privacy, in the case of many lunatics, seems incontrovertible; but surely lunatics whose friends can pay for privacy, could as easily secure privacy in a county lunatic asylum, as in a private asylum where it is the interest of the proprietor to keep his patients as long as possible.
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