Mr. Litton's Bill provided (1) for the supervision of neglected lunatics; (2) the boarding out in suitable places, under the direction of the governors of district asylums, of such patients as they might select for that purpose; (3) an alteration in the law of committal, so as to allow of patients being admitted before they became incurable; and (4) power to the poor-law guardians to give outdoor relief under the circumstances stated.[285] The Bill had the approval of the Social Science Congress committee, and of Lord O'Hagan, but on account of the pressure of other business never reached the House of Lords.[286] It should be added that the Government, in the person of the Solicitor-General, expressed a hope that they would be able to bring in a Bill of larger scope, one more fully covering the ground traversed by the Royal Commission of 1879. The sketch now made, slight as it is, will serve to show that Ireland formed no exception to the neglect to which the insane were subjected, especially in the poor-houses and jails; that when attention was strongly drawn to the better treatment of the insane in England, partly by the publication of a work describing how this was to be carried out, and partly by the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1815, the Irish Government took up the question of reform, and resolutely set about putting their own house in order. Select Committees collected valuable evidence which bore fruit in efficient legislative enactments, and there seems to have been singularly little opposition to the introduction of improved methods of treatment and new buildings in place of the old. The Richmond Asylum from the first led the way in enlightened modes of treatment, and at the present time this institution, under the long and able management of Dr. Lalor, is a credit to Ireland; the more so that here, more efficiently than in any asylum I have visited in the British Isles, the employment of the patients in school work has been introduced and prosecuted to a successful issue.[287]