The letters of last week in the Press urging the
Govern- ment not to drop the Mental Deficiency Bill have been continued this week. The appeal of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Birmingham. Sir Clifford Allbutt,
and others last week was followed, it will be remembered, by the suggestion of Lord Oland Hamilton and others that if the Bill must be dropped the Government should adopt as their own the Feeble-minded Persons (Control) Bill and pass this through its remaining stages. On Tuesday the Times published a letter from Mr. 0. S. Loch, who argued that the effect of passing the Feeble-minded Persons Bill would be to postpone indefinitely the really valuable principles of the Mental Deficiency Bill. He could not accept this plan as even a useful step forward. Sir William Chance and the National Association for the Feeble-minded have proposed that those clauses of the Mental Deficiency Bill which may be passed through the Grand Committee should be embodied in the Feeble-minded Persons Bill. This compromise would in our opinion be a good deal better than nothing, but we sincerely hope that the Government will still make a great effort to find time to pass the Mental Deficiency Bill, which is urgently needed for the care and protection of the unhappy people whom it is designed to help.
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