The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-24 00:00:00

IRISH LINES.
ULSTER.

BELFAST, FRIDAY. e;ie;ti;i the first half-yearly
meeting of this Company, which was unusually large, was
held,here.

Mr. JAMES GODDARD, chairman of the Directors, pre-
sided, and read the following report :
" The following statement shows the result of the Com-
pany's business for the half•year ended 31st ult.:—
First class passengers 25,589
Second class ..
Third class ditto

To'al passPngers
Net receipts for carriage of goods and parcels

211,867
3,938

Total receipts from traffic

Register fees .........

RELATIVE CLOSING PRICES OF
RAILWAY SHARES

IN THE
PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS IN ENGLAND
SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND.

NAMES or RAILWAYS. AI es yl is" I)
;:i f le

Sept. Sept. Sept. Sept
23. 23. 23. 23.
4N

Aberdeen • • • • •
Airdrie and Coatbridge
Arbroath and Forfar ..
Ditto Half Shares ....
Armagh, Colr., & Portrush 2%
Bandon and Bantry 214
Belfast and Ballymena
Belfast and County Down 13%
Birknhd.Lan.&Ches..lnc.
Birmingham and Glo'ster 12934
Do. New (iss. at 7% dls.)
Ditto Half Shares ..
Birminghm & Oxtril.Jtmc.
Blckburn, and Preston..
Blckburn, Darwn,& Boltn
Bolton, Wigan, & Liverpl.
Boston, Stamfrd and Birm
Brighton, Lewes, & Bast.
Bristol and Exeter .. • . • .
Ditto New .. • • • • • • • • • •
Bristol and Gloucester • •
Bristol and S. Wales June.
British and Irish Union..
Caledon. and Ayrsh. June
Caledon. & Dumbar. June
Cale&nian ...........

90%'

6%P,1

3%Pi -

434 p' -

**fg
N, ..
4d
A

iSept. Sept. Sep
23. 22. 22.

2•%1 -

13%1 -

sxl—

--- X 47:

Lincoln, 41. 6s. 3d.—East Lincolnshire, 674—G001e and Don-
caster, 614—Grimsby and Sheffield, Quarter Shares, 61. ls. 3d
—Grimsby Railway and Dock Extension, 11—London and
York, 7—Liverpool and Leeds Direct, 7%—Manchester,
Midland, and Great Grimsby, 51/2—Manchester, Buxtcn,
Matlock, and Midland, 1034—Sheffield and Lincolnshire, 8%—
Wakefield and Harrogate, 6%—York and Carlisle, 61. Is. 3d,

The Heroine, 6, Commander Edmunds, is nearly ready for
sea. Lieutenant A. G. Glasscott (1841), and Mr. Horatio
Nelson, mate (1844), are the last appointments to her.
The Jackal and Bloodhound steamers are to have another
trial of their sea-going qualities this week, before being
trusted on a foreign station.

The Daring, 12, is ordered to Portsmouth, to complete the
repair of her defects.
The defects of the Experimental Squadron have been " re-
ported," and are being repaired as expeditiously as possible,
in order to get the ships to sea again without delay.
Rear-Admiral Hyde Parker has left in the Rattler steam-
sloop, Commander Smith, for the seat of his duties, the dock-
yard, Portsmouth.

may be easily foreseen. The patient has none of the repose
so essential to comfort, and indispensable for recoVery. His
views of things, already prismatised by a disordered brain,
are still more beWildered by the false position in which he is
placed, and the unfavourable circumstances by which he is
surrounded. The time when cure was possible passes gifickly
away; the excitement subsides into a calm; the disease
changes its character; the acute is followed by the chronic
stage, and the brightness of the mind is dimmed for ever."
The author states the argument for the early treatment of
insanity as-concisely as powerfully :—" The protection of the
brain from the effects of the high irritation and congestion
that prevail in the acute stage of mania, can only be secured
by vigorous and prompt medical treatment at the very outset.
The penalty ofneglect or delay on this point, when not promptly
fatal, will be to redube the brain, the organ of the mind, to
ruin, which no effort of skill or kindness can repair
The proper use, therefore, of the time for medical treat-
ment is all important. The period for the moral treatment
begins only when the first violence of the storm has spent
itself. The best authorities on 'the statistics of this form
of cerebral disease assert that it is curable, in the vast ma-
jority of cases, when the proper means are employed at the
proper time. _

"-But where shall we look for such a well organised sys-
tem of moral management for the rich and the elevated,
as will meet the wants and habits of this class? This is,
in fact, the grand desideratum, the difficulty to be pro-
vided for. Where are we to find the ever-watchful kindness
—the considerate forbearance in the discharge of duties often
irksome, harassing, and even dangerous—the ready inven-
tiveness to suggest new thoughts to cheer and amuse ? We
shall look for them in vain in the crippled resources for such
objects, in the private lodging or the private family, where
the rich man is doomed to solitary confinement in a modified
form, and in the dreariness of his isolation, to expiate an in-
firmity as if it had been a crime. This is a blotch on our
civilisation from which our continental neighbours are in
progress of being freed. With us, alas! it will continne to
prevail until the apathy, ignorance, and selfish pride that so
extensively provide such a doom for fellow-creaturds, who
might still
.enjoy the benefit of superior arrangements, shall
have disappeared, and given place to sounder views and feel-
ings on this subject."
The author advances a new idea, the voluntary resort of
the "nervous"—those (and they are many) who dread the
coming disease—to the care and treatment of a private
asylum. This the law, as it stands, renders impossible;
for it requires the certificate of two medical men that the
patient is of unsound mind. This might be altered. To
prevent, abus-, the free and voluntary resort might
have its own ,conditions, and such patients might
be made subject to the inquiries and inspection
of visiting commissioners, in the same manner as
the others. "But these benefits, important as they
are, would not be the sole ones resulting from a
change of the law. The very character of the asylums
would be changed. From a prison which it is now so
universally regarded, it would become an hospital, and
those prejudices which now operate so extensively against
the recovery of persons att.cked with insanity, would
disappear. Every enlightened physician acknowledges
and laments the extent of this evil. Persons so attacked,
and for whom recovery might be calculated on, almost
with certainty, had they been promptly transferred to
such a place, are, from a notion that kindness and atten-
tion will be all that is required, restrained from sending
their relatives from home. This mistaken kindness is
fatal. In the experiment of love and duty, the time is con-
sumed between alternating hopes and fears; and when the
asylum is resorted to at last, it receives a poor fellow-crea-
ture, for whom, at the beginning, cure was possible, but who
is henceforward an irreparable wreck, doomed to live on,
exhibiting the gradual extinction of the noblest faculties.
It is with the brain as with the other organs of the body;
the congestion or irritation that can be moderated and sub-
dued at first, if allowed to persist and make progress un-
checked, will at last produce such morbid changes in the
organ itself, that it becomes incurably incapable of perform-
ing healthy functions. And why, then, make an exception
as regards the affections of the brain, which experience and
common sense condemn in regard to other organs ? In
pneumonia or bronchitis, who would be absurd enough
to confine the treatment to kindness, quiet, and water-
gruel? And shall our conduct be less wise or less ener-
getic in the case of the brain than in that of the lungs,
involving, as the perversion of the cerebral action does,
a double death ? It is quite time that the views and
practice of society should be changed on this point; it
is one of startling urgency and importance, now that a
closer view of this awful scourge (rendered so much
more destructive by unreflecting kindness) and its statistical
bearings, have all but proved that out of every 500 of the
population, we have one case of insanity. The pernicious
practice that inflicts so much evil on the community, calls
aloud for animadversion : it scatters deso!ation and mourning
amongst families--blasting happiness and hope : it cannot be
palliated—it must be abandoned."
After some judicious observations on the importance of
numbers and classifications in the arrangements for the care
of the insane, the letter concludes as follows :—" None of
our private asylums come up, in all respects, to the ideal
we have been tracing. lam not acquainted,' says the
late Sir William Ellis, with any asylum at all coming up
to my notions of what an asylum for the rich ought to be ;
but I still think that it is perfectly practicable to provide for
them in an institution possessing every means for cure, and
every requisite for their comfort and happiness, combined
with but little risk of their being improperly detained.'
"But it will perhaps be said that a comprehensive plan,
embracing the means of treatment and liberal accommo-
dation for the rich, will be above the reach of the well-
educated middle classes. It should not be so. The ques-
tion of accommodation should decide that of the terms
of payment. A patient requiring several rooms, special at-
tendance, and a separate table, should contribute to the
funds of the establishment a larger sum in proportion than
those who are contented with the accommodation provided
for all. This is, in fact, the principle on which a family
hotel, as well as many other forms of public enterprise, are
carried on. Upon a graduation of this kind, in the working
of which there is no practical difficulty, persons paying from
60/. or 70/. a-year, to 2001. and 300/., might be provided for
on a scale of comfort totally unknown either in private
lodgings or in our private asylums, as they are at present
conducted.

" The superior administration of such an establishment
should be aided by a committee of philanthropic persons,
whose duty it should be to see that every improved method
of treatment recommended by experience should be adopted.
There should be no private arrangements for the treatment
of lunatics, and no private asylums in the present sense of
the word."

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
(YESTERDAY.)
MANSION-HOUSE.
George Stratford, a man of respectable appearance and good
address, was brought before the Lord Mayor, upon the charge
of having obtained money and clothes from the Rev. Michael
Gibbs, his Lordship's son, under fraudulent practices.
Mr. Sturgeon, the principal clerk to the Mendicity Society, at.
tended to prosecute the prisoner.
The Rev. Mr. Gibbs, Vicar of Christ Church, Newgate-street,
stated, that on Saturday the 6th of September, the prisoner called
upon him, and represented himself to be the Honourable Mr.
Stratford:; declared that he was in a condition of extreme
want, in fact, next to starving; that he had called upon the
Lord Mayor, but not finding his Lordship at home, he had come
to a itness in the hope of receiving the assistance which would
enable him to go into the service of a Mr. Edwards, of Houn.
slow, at some powder-mills there, whose only ground of hesita.
tion about forming an engagement with him was, that he had
not better clothes. Witness gave the prisoner eighteenpence,
and told him at what hour he could see and communicate with the
Lord Mayor. On the same evening the prisoner returned to
witness, stated that he had seen the Lord Mayor, and exhi-
bited a five-shilling-piece, which he said he had received from
his Lordship. Witness then gave him a bundle of clothes, con.
sisting of coat, waistcoat, and trousers. The prisoner said, upon
receiving the clothes, that he should go at once to Hounslow
to secure the situation, and promised to inform witness or the
Lord Mayor of the result of his application for the appointment.
Some days afterwards the prisoner called at the Mansion-house,
and stated to witness that he had obtained the situation, but he
stood in need of six shillings, in order to be enabled to remove his
wife to Hounslow. Witness accordingly lent him six shillings,
which he promised to return at the end of the week; but the
promise was not performed, neither did he make his appearance,
and it was subsequently ascertained that the statements had no
foundation in fact.
William Horseford, an officer of the Mendicity Society, stated
that he went to Hounslow, to the powder- mills, and found that
there was no Mr. Ed. ards there. He then called upon Mr.
Carlis, the proprietor of powder-mills in that place, to make in-
quiry, and was told that there was no such person there, and that
no such person as Mr. Edwards had been known there for twenty-
seven years.
The LORD MAYOR desired to be informed whether the prisoner
was known to the establishment of the Mendicity Society ?
Horseford replied that the man had been known to the Mendicity
Society since about the year 1837 ; and added that a begging peti-
tion had been found upon him, and that witness had known him
as an associate of persons who lived by mere begging, and one of
whom had been lately tried at the Central Criminal Court.
The Loan MAYOR—Now, prisoner, what, have you to say in an-
swer to this very serious charge ? The prisoner —My Lord, I am
the son of the Earl of Aldborough, the son and heir of that noble.
man, and I have been deserted by my father. I have a wife and
family to support, and I have made every effort to support them.
I have worked in the docks, and at all sorts of menial employments,
and my father, although in the enjoyment of 16,0001. a year, has
wholly abandoned me. What could I do, my Lord ? lam in a
state of utter destitution.
The LORD MAY —What you have stated has nothing to do with
the charge against you. The charge against you is, that you ob
tained alms under fraudulent pretences.
The prisoner—I solemnly declare that lam the legitimate son
of the Earl of Aldborough

Mr. Sturgeon, the clerk to the Mendicity Society, stated that
there was no truth in the assertion of the prisoner, or as to the
legitimacy of his birth. There might be ground for supposing
that he was the illegimate offspring of the Earl.
The prisoner—I am the son and heir of Lord Aldborough, and
I have been deserted, together with my two sisters, by my father,
who is now at Doncaster, and has 16,0004 a year clear property.
The LORD MAYOR—You say nothing in explanation of your'
statement about the situation at Hounslow ? Prisoner—l admit I
was wrong there. I was guilty of having misrepresented in that
instance, but I can prove that I have worked at the docks, and
that I have been willing to undergo the greatest drudgery.
The officers of the Mendicity Society assured his Lordship that
the prisoner was an incorrigible beggar, and that he was in the
habit of persisting, with great apparent candour, in whatever
statement he considered best adapted to his object of working upon
the sympathies of the humane and generous people who abounded
in London. As for the idea of labour, it never entered into the
man's imagination for a moment, but he had a wonderful capabi-
lity of varying the circumstances of his fantastic distresses, and
so far could be called industrious.