In 1810 the Government urged upon the House of Commons the necessity of affording some relief to the neglected condition of the insane poor in Ireland, the result being that grants were made for building an asylum in Dublin, called "The Richmond Lunatic Asylum" (55 Geo. III., c. 107). It was opened in 1815, and proved a great boon to the district. Two years afterwards, Mr. John Leslie Foster, one of the governors, in evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the lunatic poor in Ireland, referred to the humane system of treatment introduced at the York Retreat, "the good effects of which are illustrated in a publication[255] of Mr. Tuke," and said, "This system appearing to the governors of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum to be founded in good sense, they determined on trying the experiment in their new institution, and beg to add, as a proof of this, that there is not in the Richmond Asylum, to the best of my belief, a chain, a fetter, or a handcuff. I do not believe there is one patient out of twenty confined to his cell, and that of those who are confined to their cells, in the great number it is owing to derangement of their bodily health rather than to the violence of mania." He speaks of the superintendent as the "moral governor," whose particular business it is to attend to the comforts of the patients, to remove from them causes of irritation, to regulate the degrees of restraint, and to provide occupation for the convalescent. The Richmond Asylum did not serve, as was hoped and expected at that time, to supply accommodation for a large portion of Ireland. To the amazement of those who had induced Parliament to make what they deemed so ample a provision, it was soon found that not only was the asylum full to overflowing, but the house of industry was soon as full as before, and that as to finding accommodation for those at a distance, it was altogether out of the question. At first, sanguine hopes were raised by the large number of recent cases discharged cured, and the common but fallacious inference was drawn that, had all the chronic cases in the houses of industry or at large been fortunate enough to be placed under asylum treatment in the first stage of their malady, they would also have been cured in like proportion. Unfortunately, the accumulation of incurables, even in asylums, opened the eyes of many to the fallacy of this inference.[256] Other asylums were, therefore, it was seen, required.