The Express. — 1849-06-30 (London, England)

NOTTIDGE. The transcendental mystical notions which seem to form the staple of the Princite creed have been held and acted upon by minds of the highest order. They consist in a belief that words and attitudes constitute no memory part of prayer; that the essential of prayer is a devotional state of mind which ought to be uninterinittingly kept up; that where this state of mind ex;ies every action is a prayer, and ought to be regarded as seen. Combined with these notions is a belief that all who are united by holding these opinions ought to possess their worldly goods in common. 'this latter article of faith has b.en held by more than one sect, against whom no charge of licentiousness or insanity has been substantiated. As to the mystical views of devotion, PASCAL and the Port Royal came pretty me-r them. SPINOSA on One hand, and HARRINGTON, Fox, and others, went quite as far ; yet who can qaestion the ability of the men we have named to take care of themselves. sad avoid infringing the civil and moral laws of tte @Deistic' in which they lived? True, Miss NOTTIDOZ and her friends are said to believe that there is something divine in their bereeiarch Prince; but does this imply madness any mote then a belt f in the miraculous power of images and p'etures entertained by a large proportion of the Christian community ? The power of priests and inquisitors to incarcerate sad seclude for heresy . would be indignantly declaimed against and resisted in this country. TLe power of doctors to shut up all whose religious tenets appear to them absurd, is equally monstrous, equally susceptible of being perverted to the matt selfish and dishonest oppression. Miss Norrinca was dint up in a private mad home, without that previous public inquiry, which is the only. safeguard of the private citizen. The pretext for incarcerating was the grave dictum of confidential medical men (one of them a relative of the keeper of the asylum), that none but a mad woman could entertain such religicris notions as she entertained. Her pales beat regulatly, the spoke and acted in worldly affairs like other people, she was under no delusions as to the nature of external objects, her conversation and her conduct were coherent. But her religion was not a religio medici, and, therefore, the doctors pronounced her mad. If every one whose creed does not square exactly with the notions entertainedby the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons and at Apothecaries' Hall is to be shut up in a mad-house, we shall have a rare time of it. But the conduct of the Commissioners of Lunacy, who had a public duty to perform, was still more unaccountable and indefensible. The case of Miss NovTIDGII was six times brought under their consideration. They found the keeper of the asylum, wbo affects to have entertained fears that she might commit suicide, allowing her to pay visits in the neighbourhood, uuaceompanied by any attendant. They saw and conversed with her, and were convinced that, apart from religious questions, she was perfectly sane and capable of taking care of herself end of ber money. But her religions notions appeared to them so absurd, that to account for her entertaining them they jumped at the conclusion that there was some hidden monomania lurking in the recesses of her mind. This was a gratuitous and unwarrantable assumption. When men enter upon the dim and shadowy realm of the infinite and its relations, who can take upon him to say that conceptions are too absurd to be entertained by any one bat a maniac merely because they differ from hut own preconceived notion' ? PESTUS called PAUL mad. The Commissioners of Lunacy acted most unwarrantably in allowing a lady to remain under coercion a single day, simply because her religious notions appeared to them extravagant. It was stated in the coarse of the trial that the lady has, since her liberation, transferred her money in the funds to the name of Mr.PRINCE; and this was triumphantly. referred to by one of the commissioners as Justifying his dinbts of her sanity. Assuredly, we will not take upon us to say that the act was either wise cr prudent; but under the circumstances of the case, it can scarcely be regarded as insane. It appears that during her confinement the relations who Rot her shut up took upon them to receive her dividends, and they refused to give up 301. thus received until ordered by the court to do so. Possibly Miss Normal may think her money as safe in the keeping of the husbands of three of her sisters and their spiritual head, as in that of her brother and the husband of another sister. Nay, the uncharitable may go so far as to doubt whether, had Miss