“I’m thinking, please yer honor, that it is quite time I was let out of this place,” said a voice as we entered one of the wards.  Dr. Conolly told me that he had several Irish patients in the asylum, and that they gave him the most trouble on account of the hurry in which they were to be discharged.  We heard the same request eagerly made in the same brogue by various other patients of both sexes.

As I left this multitude of lunatics, promiscuously gathered from the poor and the reduced class, comprising all varieties of mental disease, from idiocy to madness, yet all of them held in such admirable order by the law of kindness, that to the casual observer most of them betrayed no symptoms of insanity, and of the rest, many appeared to be only very odd people, quietly pursuing their own harmless whims, I could not but feel the highest veneration for the enlightened humanity by which the establishment was directed.  I considered, also, if the feeling of personal liberty, the absence of physical restraint, and the power of moral motives, had such power to hold together in perfect peace and order, even a promiscuous band of lunatics, how much greater must be their influence over the minds of men in a state of sanity, and on how false a foundation rest all the governments of force!  The true basis of human polity, appointed by God in our nature, is the power of moral motives, which is but another term for public opinion.

Of the political controversies which at present agitate the country, the corn-law question is that which calls forth the most feeling; I mean on the part of those who oppose the restrictions on the introduction of foreign grain—­for, on the other side, it appears to me that the battle is languidly fought.  Nothing can exceed the enthusiasm of the adversaries of the corn-laws.  With some of them the repeal of the tax on bread is the remedy for all political evils.  “Free trade, free trade,” is the burden of their conversation, and although a friend of free trade myself, to the last and uttermost limit, I have been in circles in England, in which I had a little too much of it.  Yet this is an example to prove what a strong hold the question has taken of the minds of men, and how completely the thoughts of many are absorbed by it.  Against such a feeling as that which has been kindled in Great Britain, on the corn-law question, no law in our country could stand.  So far as I can judge, it is spreading, as well as growing stronger.  I am told that many of the farmers have become proselytes of the League.  The League is a powerful and prodigiously numerous association, with ample and increasing funds, publishing able tracts, supporting well-conducted journals, and holding crowded public meetings, which are addressed by some of the ablest speakers in the United Kingdom.  I attended one of these at Covent Garden.  Stage, pit, boxes, and gallery of that large building were filled with one of the most respectable-looking audiences,