At the date of this Commission there were 22 district asylums, containing 8073 patients. There were 150 workhouses, with 3200 insane inmates. In Dundrum[279] were 166 criminal insane, and in private asylums about 680 patients, making a total of 12,200. In addition to these, the inspectors obtain a return of every idiot, imbecile and epileptic, at large, from the police, not being under the supervision of the Lunacy Board; the number in 1878 was 6200, bringing up the figures to 18,400. That practical effect might be given to the recommendations contained in this Report, Lord O'Hagan called attention to them in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, August, 1879, in which he said, "Let me ask the attention of the House to the case of neglected lunatics in Ireland. It is the most pressing, as it is the most deplorable." He cited the statement of the Royal Commission of 1858, that there were 3352 lunatics at large, of whom no fewer than 1583 were returned as "neglected;" and the recent statement of the Irish Lunatic Inquiry Commission that within the last twenty years the number of that class had increased by more than a hundred per cent.--from 3352 to 6709--without "any diminution in the proportion of those who may still be classified as neglected." Lord O'Hagan referred to the case of a naked lunatic in a farmhouse, which we have quoted at p. 424, and maintained that some four thousand lunatics were in a condition "better or worse according to circumstances." We cannot but think that the speaker generalized a little too much. He was right, however, in his contention that none of the neglected cases "are protected by any intervention of the law from exhibiting themselves in as shocking an aspect." "Only," observed Lord O'Hagan, "when the life of George III. was threatened by a lunatic in England, did Parliament interfere and send the insane to jails; only in 1838, when it was discovered that jails were not fit receptacles for them, was provision made for committing them to asylums; and only in the Consolidating Act of 1853 were provisions made for such inspection and report as were needful for their protection and the safety of their neighbours. I lament to say that Ireland was left without even the benefit of the Act of 1799 until 1838, and that the advantages which the Act of that year gave to England were not extended to her lunatics until 1867; whilst you will scarcely believe that the salutary reforms of 1853 have not to this hour been made operative in Ireland." Lord O'Hagan asked for identical legislation for Ireland and England, the want of this having caused "incalculable mischief."