[409] _Ibid._ 5th November 1847. Some of the rooms were only 3-1/4 feet long and 7 feet wide, in fact, mere cupboards, which the Lunacy Commissioners said were unfit for any one. Yet nothing was done, and the "rooms" were still occupied in 1854 when the district auditor mildly commented on the fact (Letter Book, Plymouth Board of Guardians, August 1854). [410] Circular of 27th February 1857, in Tenth Annual Report, 1857, p. 34. [411] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 247. [412] Twentieth Annual Report, 1867-8, p. 60. [413] House of Commons, No. 50, Session 1 of 1867, p. 444. [414] _Ibid._ p. 426. [415] _Ibid._ p. 407. [416] _Ibid._ p. 114. [417] Circular of 21st March 1870, in Twenty-third Annual Report, 1870-71, p. 3. The policy of the Lunacy Commissioners was to get provision made in every county for all the persons of unsound mind, whatever their means, in specially organised lunatic asylums in which the best possible arrangements should be made for their treatment and cure irrespective of cost, and altogether regardless of making the condition of the pauper lunatic less eligible than that of the poorest independent labourer. Unlike the provision for education, and that for infectious disease, the cost of this national (and as we may say communistic) provision for lunatics was a charge upon the poor rate. Under the older statutes, the expense of maintaining the inmates of the county lunatic asylums was charged to the Poor Law authorities of the parishes in which they were respectively settled; and the boards of guardians were entitled to recover it, or part of it, from any relatives liable to maintain such paupers, even in cases in which the removal to the asylum was compulsory and insisted on in the public interest.[418] The great cost to the poor rate of lunatics sent to the county lunatic asylums, and the difficulty of recovering the amount from their relatives, prevented the whole-hearted adoption, either by the boards of guardians, or the Central Authority, of the policy of insisting on the removal of persons of unsound mind to the county asylums. For the imbeciles and idiots of the Metropolitan Unions, provision was made after 1867 in the asylums of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.[419] But no analogous provision for those of other unions was made. The result was that, amid a great increase of pauper lunacy, the proportion of the paupers of unsound mind who were in lunatic asylums did not increase.[420] On the other hand the indisposition of the Central Authority to so amend the General Consolidated Order of 1847 as to put lunatics in a separate category, and require suitable accommodation and treatment for them--an indisposition perhaps strengthened by the very high requirements on which the Lunacy Commissioners would have insisted--stood in the way of any candid recognition of the fact that for thousands of lunatics,