active interference of Dr. Blake, and others, he was respited, on the ground of insanity."

Moreover, a full consciousness of the illegality or wrongfulness of the act may exist in a man's mind, and yet he may be fairly acquitted on the ground of insanity; thus, the "incendiary Martin admitted that he knew he was doing wrong, according to the law of man, when he set fire to York cathedral; he was conscious that the act was illegal, but said he had the command of God to do it." And lastly, and not unfrequently, do we find existing in the lunatic criminal, not only a consciousness of right and wrong, but even a knowledge of the consequences of the act, and, strange to say, perhaps this latter perception constitutes the only motive for the commission of the deed; thus, in the case "of Hadfield, who was tried for shooting at George the Third, and acquitted on the ground of insanity, he knew that in firing at the king he was doing what was contrary to law, and that the punishment of death was attached to the crime of assassination; but the motive for the crime was, that he might be put to death by others; he would not take away his own life"! Many insane people act from motives sufficiently apparent, and plan crimes with abundant premeditation, contrivance, and cunning; they exercise their powers often without intending any crime, but in the furtherance of some vague or insane object. Dr. Conolly tells of a gentleman, an officer in the Engineers, who,

confined in a private asylum near London, had for some time meditated escape; one day, when some workmen were in the house, he affected a particular interest in the construction of the lock of the door, and persuaded one of them to take it off for his inspection. He took it to pieces and put it together again, and volunteered to fix it again to the door, which he did in a very workmanlike manner; but he had first abstracted from the lock the portion of hard metal, of which the use is to prevent the key from being turned too far backward. Soon afterward, he escaped from the asylum in the night, and much wonder was excited, when it was found that he had managed to saw in two one of the iron bars by which the window of his room had been, it was supposed, securely guarded; no one, not even the policeman, could conjecture how this had been done. The patient was soon retaken, and in his pocket was found the piece of metal which had been so useful to him, and which he explained that he had employed in sawing the bar through. Here were premeditation, contrivance, an object or motive, and all the quiet precaution of a reflecting man; yet the patient was so decidedly insane, that when he had effected his escape, his first step was to proceed to Apsley-house, where he announced himself as the Marquis of Wellesley! Now the instances which have been brought forward to illustrate these positions are by no means exceptional ones, they are types of many which are continually urging

themselves upon the attention of the jurist; therefore, to repeat, we object to the law test for two reasons, 1st, That many cases occur which should be accounted free from punishment, in which it is impossible to prove that there did not exist a consciousness of right and wrong at the period of the perpetration of the crime; and 2ndly, That there are many cases in which the lunatic possesses a consciousness of right and wrong, and also a knowledge of the consequences of the act, though he ought not to be held responsible for his actions. But it may be urged, why not produce instances in which the working of this legal test has failed or done injustice? And here, unhappily, there is no scarcity of material to select from. The instance of M'Naughten will be fresh in the remembrance of many; here was "a man lurking for many days together in a particular locality, having about him a loaded weapon, watching a particular individual who frequents the locality; a man who does not face the individual and shoot him, but who coolly waits until he has an opportunity of discharging the weapon unobserved by his victim or others; the circumstances appear to show such a perfect adaptation of means to ends, and such a power of controlling his actions, that one is quite at a loss to understand why a plea of irresponsibility should be admitted, except upon the fallacious ground that no motive could be discovered for the acta ground, however, which was not allowed to pre

vail in the cases of perpetrators of other atrocious crimes.

Compare the case of M'Naughten with that of Reg. v. Lawrence; here the prisoner had been arrested by a constable for a petty theft; he was taken to a police station, where the inspector, who was an utter stranger to him, was at the time engaged in talking to some friends, his back being turned to the prisoner; the man suddenly seized a poker and struck the inspector a violent blow on the skull, from which he speedily died. The prisoner admitted that he struck the blow, that he had no motive for the act, and that he would have struck any one else who had been standing there at the time. He also said, he hoped the deceased would die, he was glad he had done it, and he wished to be hanged. The evidence at the trial showed there was no quarrel between the parties, but that the prisoner appeared to be actuated by some sudden impulse, for which they could not assign the slightest reason. The man was left to a chance defence-there was no eloquent advocate to make a brilliant speech in his favour; there were no medical witnesses profoundly versed in the subject of insanity to contend for the existence of an "homicidal climax," or of impulsive homicidal monomania; but there was simply a formal plea of insanity, resting upon the fact of the deceased being a stranger to him, and of there being consequently no motive for the murder: the jury negatived the

plea, and the prisoner was convicted and executed. The only difference between this case and that of M'Naughten was, that there was in Lawrence less evidence of deliberation, with stronger evidence of sudden impulse, and there was not sufficient interest about the deceased, the prisoner, or his crime, to attract any great public attention. In the case of Reg. v. Hon. Ross Touchett: the prisoner, a young man, entered a shooting gallery in Holborn, took up a pistol and deliberately fired at the proprietor of the gallery while his back was turned; thereby inflicting a wound, which ultimately led to his death after the long period of eleven months. The prisoner was tried for shooting with intent to murder: the defence was insanity, founded on the absence of motive for the act, and the presumption of hereditary taint. After having fired the pistol, he said he did it on purpose, for he wished to be hanged: there was no evidence of intellectual aberration, his landlady said he was a very regular and quiet sort of person, and that he had complained of a sensation of boiling at the top of his head. Dr. Monro considered that at the time of the act the prisoner was labouring under mental derangement. He admitted to him that he had no knowledge of Mr. Smith (the person whom he shot), but that he wished to be hanged, and had been brooding over suicide for several years; he referred to the case of Lawrence who had killed the man at Brighton, and said he wished to do something

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