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The following is an answer to a letter which I wrote to Mr. John Buswell, of Exeter Mills, and I read the letter before the committee of investigation.

AUGUST 20. 1850.

Dear Sir, -- Your letter of the 13th, is just received, and in answer to your request I would say, that my stay at the hospital was short; that I was in the upper gallery with the convalescent patients; that I had but little opportunity to see the abuses that are complained of there; but the impressions I imbibed while there, were, that the hospital was badly managed; that the patients were often ill treated; that they were sometimes kept long after they should have been discharged, and I will state to you the principal reasons I have for forming such an opinion.

Firstly. On entering the hospital, I very soon learned that the patients did not like Dr. Bates; that they had no confidence in him; that the impression among the patients was that they were treated often-times very bad, and sometimes thrown on the floor and jumped upon in such a manner as to cause the death of the patients.

Secondly. After I had been in the hospital perhaps four weeks, I had liberty to go out in company with two other patients to walk, and we sometimes called into the neighboring houses, and I found the people in the neighborhood were generally of the same opinion as the patients. And

Thirdly, -- What I saw and heard myself under this head. I will mention the case of Charles A. Stephens, of Castine, an unfortunate homicidal patient. Mr. Stephens appeared quite sane while I was there, and much of a gentleman. He was in the gallery with me in the day time. He had a sore ankle that pained him very bad, and made him very lame, and he asked the Doctors fifty times to do something for it, or give him something to put on, to relieve the pain, but he had never got anything. One evening I was sitting by Mr. Stephens and Dr. Bates came in. As he passed by us Stephens spoke to him, and said that he bad asked Dr. Harlow for an opium plaster to put on his ankle, that Dr. Harlow had promised him one, a day or two before, that he had not got it, and be did not know the reason, and said he thought he was neglected, to all of which Dr. Bates only answered with a laugh. At another time I heard a conversation between Dr. Bates and Mr. Stephens, in the course of which, Dr. Bates said that if a patient deceived him once, he set him down ever after as a dishonest man, that he had detected a letter that Stephens had written and not been sent, and if a patient undertook to circumvent him it would be worse for him.

I will here mention what took place between Dr. Bates and Mr. Buswell in regard to his leaving the institution. He thought the Dr. was keeping him longer than was beneficial for him to remain, and he procured the signatures of some of the neighbors to a certificate stating that they thought him to be a sane man, and well enough to go home. Mr. Buswell wrote out a true description of the character and management of the hospital by Dr. Bates, in its natural and true colors, and sealed and directed it to a friend. When a gentleman who visited the hospital was passing through, he asked him privately if he would do him the favor to put a letter into the post-office for him, and he promised that he would. Instead of so doing he gave it to Dr. Bates, as is usual, for it is next to impossible for a patient to send a letter out, except through the officers. It was but a short time before Dr. Bates came in and told him he had got his letter, and said -- "now I intend to punish you most severely for writing such a letter and trying to send it in that manner, and I will now tell you how I shall do it. I shall do it by sending you home in a few days, for you shall not have it to say that I have kept you too long." Now the reason of this very desirable punishment was, that Dr. Bates saw by the letter that he was detected; that Mr. Buswell had discernment enough to read his true character at a glance, and that he knew enough to write it out in true colors, and that the friend to whom he had directed it was a person of whose standing he was afraid, and so thought to make him his friend, so he might not expose him to the public. -- These statements Mr. Buswell made to me before he left Augusta, and I make them simply to show the perfect system of espionage and survillance -sic- constantly held over the patients; for the whole system of the government, and treatment of that institution is perfectly inquisitorial in all its details; from one end to the other a patient, with some few exceptions, is looked upon and treated as a Criminal or an outcast from society, and of no more importance than a brute or a stone. -- These things are facts, whether you will believe them or not.

Mrs. Graves, of Thomaston, Mrs. Witherell, of Norridgewock, and a Mrs. Bickford, three inmates of the cottage, were so inhumanly abused by the supervisoress, and so neglected by Dr's Bates and Harlow, though remonstrated with by the two attendants of the cottage patients, that they died most horribly! Some of these three cases are too horrible to relate, therefore I refrain from doing so. So strong were these female attendants impressed with the above horrid facts that they left the cottage, declaring that they were afraid if they remained they should see the ghosts of those murdered women. These three cases were cited before the committee of investigation but were crushed down by the testimony of the officers of the institution -- testifying in their own behalf -- who stuck to it that these poor, unhappy females were as well and kindly treated as the circumstances of their case permitted. But if I were allowed the privilege to summon the two attendants, mentioned above, I could have proved all this abuse.