Note 495 — OF IDIOTS AND LUNATICS.

See Beverley’s Case, 4 Co. Rep. 123. So in the case of Miss Kendrick, 8 Ves. 67; Lord Eldon said, “No one can look at this case without seeing, that every person about this lady is satisfied, that some care should be thrown round her. If clearly it is fit to protect her against executing powers of attorney, that she should not decide where her person, or with what trustees her property ought to be, all agreeing, that she should not choose the persons who are to have the care of her property, it is fit for me to put a controul upon those who may be proper persons to have the controul of her property. I will not subject her to another commission; but will direct two physicians, who have not been concerned nor consulted, to talk to those who have been concerned and consulted, to see the evidence, and afterwards in the most tender manner, to find the means of visiting her without alarming her, for the purpose of determining, whether her state of mind is competent to the management of her affairs. I am pretty confident Lord Hardwicke would not have gone so far: but finding when I came here a course of cases establishing this authority, and feeling a strong inclination to maintain it, or that the legislature should take measures to preserve persons in a state of imbecility, laying them as open to mischief as insanity; till these decisions are reviewed, I will not alter them.”

An order was made accordingly, restraining Miss Kendrick from executing any instrument, except in the manner and with the attestation directed by the order.—We have not been able to discover this order in the Register’s books.