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"Mrs. Packard, I believe you to be a perfectly sane person, and moreover, I believe you always have been."

Thanking him for the comfort this announcement gave me, I left better fortified to meet a most cruel and wanton attack Dr. McFarland then make upon my moral character, while he knew, better than any other man, that my character was stainless.

Looking at Dr. McFarland's character from these various standpoints, I am forced into the unwelcome conviction that he is a most unprincipled man, and on this ground is un-worthy of confidence as a man, and much less as a public servant.

I have done all I knew how to do to raise this man, from the low level of selfish policy to the higher platform of Christian principle -- but all in vain -- I now herewith pass him over into the power of that State, whose public servant he is, hoping and praying that this power may be able to do for this man's benefit -what "woman's influence" has failed to accomplish.

And if the State will not receive him, I then leave him with his own worst enemy -- Himself!

If any of my readers wish to know what has been my destiny from the time of this discharge, I would refer them to my Second Volume, wherein they will find this part of my experience delineated, affording a fearful exhibition of the abuse of marital power, which every married woman is liable to suffer, in her present position of legal disability to defend herself.

CHAPTER LX.
An Appeal to the Government to Protect the Inmates of Insane Asylums by law.

God's laws are above all other laws and therefore human instincts are above all human enactments. No matter what the penalty -- the more atrocious and cruel, the more certain are they to be disregarded. No human power can stand a law in violation of our natural instincts.

Our present Insane Asylum System ignores these principles. It says:

"God's laws are subject to human enactments."

It tramples upon the highest and noblest instincts of our nature, and enthrones an autocrat to rule over them, instead of the rule of reason. The law of sympathy, which God has established in our natures, as one of its noblest elements, suffers strangulation under this Asylum System.

Instead of developing this faculty in a normal manner, by caring for and administering to the unfortunate one, whom Providence has placed under our charge, for our own especial discipline and development, we admit the human law of Charitable Institutions to usurp this holy instinct of human sympathy, and its aspirations die out for want of their natural nutriment to perfect the vigorous growth it naturally seeks for in the human soul.

Thus God's law, or our human instinct of sympathy, is supplanted by human enactments.

No matter how large the compensation offered in lieu of this usurpation, nothing can compensate for the blemish our divine natures receive by this soul strangulating process.

The orphan, for instance, in order to receive the benefits of the Orphan Asylum, is compelled first to sever the purest and holiest affection of his nature the love of his parent -- as his necessary passport to the benefits of the Institution. The price is too dear -- the equivalent received can not be commen-surate to the loss sustained to secure it. But if, instead of depriving the orphan of a mother's love -- its God-given heri-tage -- they should so disburse the charities of the Institution as to secure this influence to the child, as the first God-given right of his nature; then these charities would act in concert and harmony with God's law, instead of conflicting with it, as the Orphan Asylums are now compelled to do.

So in the case of the insane -- to sever them from the sym-pathy of their own kindred, is to deprive them of the first God-given right of their nature; and no adequate equivalent can be rendered as a compensation for this usurpation.

But if the charities of our present Insane Asylum System could be appropriated so as to act in concert with this in-fluence, then would this system bless both the giver and the receiver of natural affection and human sympathy.

They would then be doing right by their unfortunates, and as the result of a law of our nature, they would consequently feel right towards them.

Whereas our present system compels them to act wrong towards them, by severing them from home influences; and they of course, come to feel wrong towards them, as the in-evitable result.

First comes a feeling of indifference, as the result of casting off a responsibility which God had laid upon them to bear; then succeeds the feeling of alienation, as the heart gradually ossifies by this extinction of human sympathy, which a neglect of our practical duties to our natural responsibilities produces.

I never knew this legitimate tendency of our present system to lead to any different results, when practically applied.

Therefore, in order to place the axe at the root of the evils of our Insane Asylum System, and other Eleemosynary Insti-tutions, there must be a recognition of this great fundamental truth, that human instincts are above human enactments.