er. In my humble opinion, all
private madhouses should be suppressed at once, and it should be no less
than felony to confine any person under pretence of madness without due
authority.

For the cure of those who are really lunatic, licensed madhouses should
be constituted in convenient parts of the town, which houses should be
subject to proper visitation and inspection, nor should any person be
sent to a madhouse without due reason, inquiry, and authority.

It may be objected, by persons determined to contradict every thing and
approve nothing, that the abuses complained of are not so numerous or
heinous as I would insinuate. Why are not facts advanced, they will be
apt to say, to give a face of truth to these assertions? But I have two
reasons to the contrary; the first is, the more you convince them, the
more angry you make them, for they are never better pleased than when
they have an opportunity of finding fault; therefore, to curry favour
with the fault-finders, I have left them a loophole: the second and real
is, because I do not care to bring an old house over my head by
mentioning particular names or special cases, thereby drawing myself
into vexatious prosecutions and suits at law from litigious wretches,
who would be galled to find their villanies made public, and stick at no
expense or foul play to revenge themselves. Not but I could bring many
instances, particularly of an unhappy widow, put in by a villain of a
husband, and now continued in for the sake of her jointure by her
unnatural son, far from common honesty or humanity. Of another, whose
husband keeps his mistress in black velvet, and is seen with her every
night at the opera or play, while his poor wife (by much the finer
woman, and of an understanding far superior to her thick-skulled
tyrant,) is kept mean in diet and apparel; nay, ill-used into the
bargain, notwithstanding her fortune supplies all the villain's
extravagances, and he has not a shilling but what came from her: but a
beggar when once set on horseback proves always the most unmerciful
rider.

I cannot leave this subject without inserting one particular case.

A lady of known beauty, virtue, and fortune, nay more, of wisdom, not
flashy wit, was, in the prime of her youth and beauty, and when her
senses were perfectly sound, carried by her husband in his coach as to
the opera; but the coachman had other instructions, and drove directly
to a madhouse, where the poor innocent lady w