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consultation with the Medical Officers
the Privy Council and the Commissioners in Lunacy with the view of testing the state and efficiency of Hospitals and Asylums in Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions.
As there is no Lunatic Asylum in the Colony, the Colonial Surgeon has returned the Papers sent to me blank, being of course unable to fill them up;
but I trust that your Lordship will not infer from such inability that there is any indisposition on the part of this Government to do all that is needed in respect to those who have become mentally afflicted while domiciled in the Colony.
Such contingencies are, I am happy to say, rare and when discovered in the Town or developed in the Civil Hospital, the patients, of a lower class, are either accommodated at the Gaol or attended to in the Civil Hospital until their friends can remove them to the Mainland.
If an Asylum were to be built and maintained at the expense of this Government, the probability is it would be unfairly made use of by the Chinese on the Mainland for the treatment and support of their afflicted Kinsmen and Countrymen, but, however desirable such an institution might be on philanthropic grounds.