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There are, in proportion to numbers, more insane in cities than in large towns, and more insane in villages than among the same number of inhabitants dwelling in scattered settlements.

Wherever the intellect is most excited, and health lowest, there is an increase of insanity. This malady prevails most widely, and illustrates its presence most commonly in mania, in those countries whose citizens possess the largest civil and religious liberty; where, in effect, every individual, however obscure, is free to enter upon the race for the highest honors and most exalted stations; where the arena of competition is accessible to all who seek the distinctions which the acquisition and possession of wealth assures, and the respect accorded to high literary and scholastic attainments. Statesmen, politicians, and merchants are peculiarly liable to insanity. In the United States, therefore, we behold an illustration of my assertion. The kingdoms of Western Europe, excepting Portugal, Spain, and the lesser islands dependent on Great Britain, rank next to this country in the rapid development to maniacal insanity. Sir Andrew Halliday, in a letter to Lord Seymour, states that the number of the insane in England has become more than tripled in the last twenty. Russia in Europe, Turkey, and Hungary, together with most of the Asiatic and African countries, exhibit comparatively but little insanity. The same is remarked by travellers, especially by Humboldt, of a large part of South America. Those tracts of North America inhabited by Indians, and the sections chiefly occupied by the negro race, produce comparatively very few examples. The colored population is more liable to attacks of insanity than the negro.*

* The Ethiopian American, habitually gay, lounging, and contented, is, as a general rule, constitutionally free from the solicitude and anxiety for the future, which is so marked a characteristic of the Anglo Saxon, the Celtic, and the Germanic races.

According to the latest Parliamentary returns taken with the report of the Metropolitan Commissioners on Lunacy, which give the numbers of all classes of insane in the hospitals of England and Wales, it is ascertained that in these two countries "there is one insane pauper to every one thousand inhabitants alone."

This terrible malady, the source of indescribable miseries, does increase, and must continue fearfully to increase, in this country, whose free, civil, and religious institutions create constantly various and multiplying sources of mental excitement. Comparatively but little care is given in cultivating the moral affections in proportion with the intellectual development of the people. Here, as in other countries, forcible examples may be cited to show the mischiefs which result alike from religious,* social, civil, and revolutionary excitements. The Millerite delusions prepared large numbers for our hospitals; so also the great conflagrations in New York, the Irish riots and firemen's mobs in Philadelphia; and the last presidential elections throughout the country levied heavily an the mental health of its citizens.

*NOTE. -- I wish to mark carefully the distinction between true religion and extravagant religious excitements. The one is the basis of every virtue, the source at every consolation under the manifold trials and afflictions which beset the path of every one in the course of this mortal pilgrimage; while that morbid state which is created by want of calm, earnest meditation, and self-discipline, by excessive demands upon the physical strength, by protracted attendance upon excited public assemblies, is ever to be deprecated. The following statistics show how large a part of the patients in some of our best hospitals labor under what is commonly termed religious insanity. I offer a pretty full list from the report for 1843, of the Massachusetts State Hospital, for the sake of comparison: number of years not recorded:â

Many cases are not recorded for two years previous to 1844.

Dr. Woodward remarks, that "the coincidence of this table with the records of other institutions shows, conclusively, that if we have failed in ascertaining causes, we have fallen into a common error."

Seven consecutive and valuable reports by Dr. Kirkbride, exhibit the following results in the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. This is not, like the first referred to, a State institution, but has large numbers of patients from adjacent States, as well as its own. It will be kept in mind, also, that more than 350 insane patients are in the Blockley almshouse in the immediate vicinity, of which no note is here made.

In 1841-'42, admissions 299; of which 238 were residents of Pennsylvania, viz:â