lésion du jugement, sans déraison.' Dr. must be shown that it is necessarily and inHitch, superintendent of the County Asy-variably so; otherwise such delusions as lum at Gloucester, speaks of some of his existed in the mind of M'Naughten, accompatients as "insane in conduct but not in panied as they were by no symptoms of ideas." In short, the more the phenomena moral insanity, anterior to the offence for of madness have been studied, the less does which he was tried, are not more concluit appear that the definition and test laid sive proofs of irresponsible insanity than down by Locke, and adopted by many the visions of Swedenborg, or the apparigreat lawyers and medical writers, will hold tions which have haunted men of unquesgood in all cases. According to that pro- tionable sanity. Dr. Prichard adds, and position, mental delusion, or the belief of we fully concur in the remark, that "all some unreal and merely imaginary fact, is that has been said upon this subject the invariable concomitant and criterion of will tend to confirm the general observainsanity. "Delusion," said Lord Erskine, tion, that the attention of those who have "is the true character of insanity." "The hitherto investigated cases of insanity has belief of facts which no rational person been too much directed to the particular would have believed," said Sir John Nicholl, error which clouds the understanding, or "is insane delusion, and where there is de- to the disordered state of the intellect or lusion of mind there is insanity." Thus judging and reasoning powers, whereas mental delusions have been made the ne-in reality it is of the moral state, the discessary test of moral madness. We may position, and habits of the individual conrefer the reader to Dr. Prichard's excellent cerned that the principal account ought work for a large collection of cases and to be taken....The existence of halluvery ingenious and acute argument by cination or illusion is a very important which he demonstrates the fallacy of this part of legal investigation in cases of innotion, and establishes the fact that what sanity; but is chiefly important in indihe terms moral insanity may exist without cating a great probability that with such a any indications of mental aberration at all, phenomenon moral perversion co-exists." either because those aberrations are very We contend that it is a fatal and a very deeply concealed, or because the logical mischievous fallacy to expand delusion of powers of the understanding are not affect motive into unconscious and irresponsible ed by the disease. But although some insanity. In the first place, the motives of writers have taken this view of the case, crime are not admissible at all, under any and have held that mental delusion is not other circumstances, as a palliation of an invariably necessary to prove moral insan- offence. Our feelings may be very differity (thus admitting the distinction which ent towards a man who has lain in wait to we have adopted between the motive and the assassinate his benefactor, or another man act), yet even Georget appears disposed to who has lain in wait to take a sanguinary assume, as we think too easily, that " par- revenge for the most cruel wrongs; but tial insanity or monomania excludes the the act is the same. We loathe the foridea of criminality or culpability, and mer criminal; we may possibly pity the takes away from the patient all responsi- latter; for the one has given way to the bility of his actions, whatever may be the worst passions of our nature, and the other nature and extent of the illusions under to an impulse which the best might share: which he may labor." To a proposition but both have yielded to the suggestions of thus broadly stated we presume that no law-crime and to the shedding of blood; both yer would yield an unqualified assent. But it is not a little remarkable that this sweeping assertion proceeds from a writer who has distinctly admitted in a former part of his work that errors of the will do not invariably imply errors of the judgment. This was precisely the language of the medical witnesses on M'Naughten's trial. Dr. Prichard observes with more caution, that "partial illusion of the understanding or monomania is generally accompanied by the state which constitutes moral insanity." Such is undoubtedly the case; but in order to rely implicitly on the rule which has been so peremptorily laid down, it

have violated the fundamental law of God and society; both have incurred the law's severest penalty. No jury of Englishmen would so elude the dictates of their own consciences as to acquit a murderer, because they could not but feel that he had received extreme provocation. If the provocation was extreme, the greater was the patience and resistance required of him. But the same jury will acquit him, it is supposed, if the criminal has acted under the influence of imaginary provocation; if he has been so deluded by aberration of mind as to suppose that an innocent indi. vidual whom he never saw before was the

head of a conspiracy against him; if, in short, the motive of the crime be an insane delusion.

Into the appreciation of such motives it is most dangerous for juries to enter. No real evidence can be given on the subject. Vague surmises must take the place of facts; and if deluded motives or insane objects are to be received as grounds of acquittal, there is scarcely one crime in ten which is not committed with such a strange neglect of all ordinary precautions and such an absence of motives as might suggest the incoherence of lunacy. In most cases crimes (confining our remark to crimes against the person) are the effect of criminal impulse. That such impulses exist in the heart of man is in itself sufficiently strange, when we remember how contrary they are to all the happier and higher emotions and sympathies of his heart. But they do exist; and not in the insane alone. Nay, it cannot be contended that their presence amounts even to an indication of insanity, until they have assumed some very monstrous and extravagant character, implying a total unconsciousness of or disbelief in the most palpable physical truths. At that point only should we be disposed to admit that morbid delusions imply moral irresponsibility. The medical witnesses on the late trial appear unanimously to have given it as their opinion, that as it was proved without difficulty that M'Naughten was a prey to certain delusions, therefore "any act growing out of these delusions was quite irresistible;" for that "whatever act the delusion compels him to is quite beyond his moral control." We might fill a page with repetitions of this proposition uttered by numerous witnesses in nearly the same words; but we do not the less contest the logic, the law, and indeed the common sense of their concurrent assertion. So also Mr. Winslow, in speaking of what is termed moral insanity:

is urged, the causes should be particularly inquired into; the evidence in support of the presence of moral insanity ought to be clear and convincing."

Yet in this passage no attempt is made to show what necessary relation (if any) subsists between the delusions of the mind and the perversity or infirmity of the will; nor was any such attempt made by any one of the witnesses on M'Naughten's trial. It was shown that he entertained certain morbid notions that things existed which had no real existence at all; but not a single attempt was made to prove that he labored under any infirmity of the will whatsoever. The medical men contend that the presence of these morbid notions in the mind places all the actions of the unfortu nate person who entertains them "quite beyond his moral control." In other words, every crime that was ever committed suadente diabolo is to go unpunished, provided the devil has but made himself sufficiently heard. And upon this mere assertion of the prevailing doctrine in the Scotch medical schools, it was admitted that this delusion was at once irresistible, and with equal cogency of reasoning, that it impelled M'Naughten, because he conceived himself to be persecuted by somebody, to take some other body's life.

The whole point at issue was thus assumed. The real question was, whether, entertaining as he did this delusion, M'Naughten was so incapable of exercising discrimination and self-restraint, that this murder was committed by him under a fatal impulse, without even the consciousness that he was violating the law and doing what exposed him to its severest penalties. Be it observed, that the act for which he was tried had no necessary or even apparent connexion whatever with the alleged delusion. There is no conceivable act of folly or wickedness which he might not have committed with impunity on the same ground. Did then this delusion impel him to any or every act indiscriminately? Was he equally unable to resist every temptation? Was his moral control gone? Far from it:

on

"With reference to the moral culpability and responsibility of persons affected by this form of insanity, much, pro and con, has been said. Many have questioned the existence of a state of derangement, confined solely to the moral all other matters he showed a great deal perceptions and powers. There is no doubt of more prudence and discretion than we are the occurrence of this form of insanity, and when wont to find south of the Tweed; and it its presence is clearly established, the person so would be ridiculous to suppose, from the unhappily afflicted ought not to be considered as evidence produced at the Old Bailey, that a responsible agent. In most cases, he has no any jury, empanelled under a commission power over the train of thought; his will is dis- de lunatico, would have deprived him of the eased; he has no motive for the crime; he struggles for a considerable time against the dis-management of his affairs. eased impulse, till at last it overpowers him, Whether men yield to the temptations and he rushes upon a fellow creature and takes of ordinary life, the delusions of a disoraway his life. When such an exculpatory plea dered mind, or the frenzy of criminal pas

sion, it is clear that the acts which ensue | verged into general insanity, still marked with are the result of a certain infirmity of the this predominant character. "He eventually died will, unless it be supposed that they are raving-mad. committed in total ignorance or forgetful-ious, sanguine temperament, of simple and reg"Dr. Michu knew a country-woman of a bilness, not only of the laws of duty and con- ular habits, but reserved and sullen in her manscience, but of the positive laws of this and ners. She had been ten days confined with her all other countries. But even in cases of first child, when suddenly, having fixed her eyes sanguinary monomania, several of which upon it, she was seized with a desire of strangare collected in the volumes before us, ling it. The idea made her shudder; she carnothing is more common or more affecting ried the infant to the cradle, and went out, in orthan the efforts of the enfeebled will to re- of the baby, who required nourishment, recalled der to get rid of so horrid a thought. The cries sist the suggestions of the distempered mind. her to the house, when she experienced a still "Dr. Zimmerman relates the case of a pea- more ardent impulse to destroy it. She hastensant born at Krumback, in Swabia, who was ofed away again, haunted by the idea of committen attacked with an irresistible inclination to ting so horrible a crime. She raised her eyes to commit murder. He felt the approach of the fit heaven, went to church, and offered up a fervent many hours, and sometimes a whole day, before prayer for divine assistance. The whole day its invasion, and, from the commencement of was passed by this unhappy mother in a conthis presentiment, he begged to be secured and stant struggle between the desire of taking away chained, that he might not commit some dread- the life of her infant, and the dread of yielding ful crime. When the fit comes on,' he says, to the impulse. She concealed her agitation un'I feel under the necessity to kill, even were it a til evening, when her confessor, a respectable child.' His parent, whom he tenderly loved, he old man, was the first to receive her confidence. declared would be the first victim of this mur- He soothed her feelings and recommended her derous propensity. 'My mother,' he cried to take medical advice. When we arrived at out, with a frightful voice, save yourself, her house,' adds Dr. Michu, she appeared or I must kill you.' Before the fit he complains gloomy and depressed, and ashamed of her sitof being exceedingly sleepy; without being uation. Being reminded of the tenderness due able to sleep, he feels depressed, and experien by a mother to her child, she replied, 'I know ces slight twitchings in the limbs. During the how much a mother ought to love her child; but fit he preserves his consciousness, and knows if I do not love mine it does not depend upon perfectly well, that in committing a murder, he me.' She soon after recovered, the infant havwould be guilty of an atrocious crime. When ing, in the mean time, been removed from her he is disabled from doing injury, he makes the sight.' most frightful contortions and grimaces, singing or talking in rhyme. The fits last from one to two days. When they are over, he cries out, 'Now unbind me. Alas! I have suffered cruelly, but I rejoice that I have killed nobody."

"Gall states, that he knew a woman who experienced, especially at certain periods, inexpressible torture, and the fearful temptation to destroy herself, and to kill her husband and children, who were exceedingly dear to her. She "The narrative is published of a lady, who, shuddered with terror as she described the on returning home one afternoon, found her fa- struggle that took place within her, between her vorite female servant in tears. On questioning sense of duty and religion, and the impulse that her, she flung herself upon her knees, and beg- urged her to this atrocious act. For a long time ged her mistress with earnestness to dismiss her she dared not bathe her youngest child, because from her service, in order to prevent the com- an internal voice said to her constantly, 'Drop mission of a horrid deed. On being pressed to him in; let him slip. Frequently she had explain what she meant, she said that for some hardly the strength and time to throw away a weeks back, every night as she undressed her knife, which she was tempted to plunge in her mistress's child, the whiteness of its skin inspired own and in her children's breasts. Whenever her with an almost overwhelming impulse to de- she entered the chamber of her children or husprive it of life. She suffered unutterable tor- band, and found them asleep, she was instantly ture in resisting the tendency, and every day possessed of the desire of killing them. Someshe found her resolution growing weaker. An-times she precipitately shut behind her the door dral relates the case of a man of considerable scientific reputation, who became the subject of these horrid impulses. He was seized with an intense desire to deprive some human being of life. Frightened by a consciousness of his state, he voluntarily deprived himself of liberty. He pray ed incessantly before the altar, that God would assist him in his struggle. When he felt the inclination arising (for it assumed an intermittent character) he had his thumbs tied together, and this slight physical obstacle for a time prevented him from gratifying the horrid propensity. Notwithstanding all his exertions, his malady increased, and he at length made an attempt at homicide; after which the monomania

of their chamber, and threw away the key, to remove the possibility of returning to them during the night, if she should fail to resist the infernal temptation."

The commission of any given act is determined by motives, whether sound or unsound, passionate or rational, real or imaginary, which influence the will; but it is impossible to affirm that in any particular case one motive premominates exclusively over all others. On the contrary, in almost every imaginable human action there is a conflict of motives; and the supreme will,

the energy which has been finely termed to it. In order to give an air of reason "the great inmate" of man, is not a passive and coherency to these two propositions, instrument, but an active power. It does they are united by a third proposition to not imply insanity if the better motive is the effect that A being possessed by an inset aside by the worst, or if the stronger sane delusion, had no moral control over sense of duty is impaired by the solicita- his actions, and therefore was no fit object tions of crime. The conflict, whatever be of punishment." its result, is the proof of sanity. But if no such struggle takes place, if the conscience is altogether dark and duty-dumb, if the unfortunate man goes about his work of blood with as much confidence in his own rectitude of purpose as if he were engaging in a deed of mercy-if he neglects all precautions, discards all apprehensions, and glories in the murder he has committed, then, indeed, it may be affirmed that the controlling power itself is gone, and that he has ceased to be a moral agent. The guilt of Adam and Eve was shown by their hiding themselves in the garden; for from the moment they had committed their of fence, they knew what was good and what The same test of discernment was admitted not long ago on the continent upon the trial of a very young offender, who hid himself after he had perpetrated some heinous action. But the real question of moral responsibility consists, not in the presence or absence of certain motives, but in the presence or absence of the power of controlling them.

was evil.

Those even who, with Lord Erskine in his defence of Hadfield, are inclined to give the largest extension to the influence which mental delusions exert upon the will, are compelled to reason upon the question as if some necessary connexion existed between the delusion and the act. The madman of Athens, who thought that all the ships which entered the Piræus were his own, was perfectly capable of reasoning and acting like other men. Nor would a judge have acquitted as an irresponsible lunatic that pleasant visionary described by Horace, who was ever smiling at a fancy stage or excited by the terrors of imaginary tragedy. Even such extravagances as these are not altogether incompatible with the rule quoted by d'Aguesseau in his admirable remarks on the subject, that it is a sufficient test of sanity "Mediocritatem officiorum tueri, et vitæ cultum communem et usitatum."

"In the instance of instinctive insanity or insane impulse to commit acts of violence and atrocity, to play the incendiary, or to violate the good order and decency of social life, it is obvious that the only thing requiring much consideration is the real existence of the disease, and its distinction from ordinary and real criminality. So soon as it is proved to exist, there can deplorable misfortune ought to be effectually sepbe no doubt that the person who is visited by this erated from society, to prevent mischief to him. self and others. Whether he ought in any case to undergo other punishment than this is a question which I do not feel disposed to discuss. As we have seen that a struggle often has taken place between the desire to commit any violent act, and the conscientious feelings of the unfortunate person who is thus tempted, it is probable that some have yielded to temptation, though convinced that they ought to have resisted it. Such persons must be admitted to be morally guilty and to deserve to suffer."-Prichard, p.

177.

Criminal acts, whether in the insane or the sane, may proceed either from error of judgment or of the will; nor is a consciousness that an act ought not to be committed an infalliable test of moral guilt. The murderer of Cardinal Beaton-the as. sassins of Cæsar-or the republican fanatics who attempted the lives of Napoleon and Louis Philippe, would acknowledge no moral consciousness which ought to have restrained them. Though sane, their judg ment of right and wrong was altogether confused, because they failed to bring it to the test of the law.

But for one crime which is dictated by an error of the judgment, a thousand are committed from depravity of the will. Yet here again the law interposes a salutary moral influence. If a man possessed with an insane delusion, or (to take a more common case of the same import) animated by some violent passion for any given act or object, is at the same time so infirm in will that he is likely to yield to temptation, what is to check him? What does check a large portion of mankind from committing This brings us to the more practical part acts of a criminal nature? The answer is of the whole discussion-that, namely, obvious-it is the fear of punishment. which concerns the impunity of persons Punishment supplies a motive sufficiently of unsound mind. Nobody would venture strong to counteract a vast variety of moto contend in terms, that because A was tives which would otherwise make incespossessed by an insane delusion, therefore sant inroads in society; and the sanction A was not punishable for having yielded of punishment cannot be omitted or re

moved even in relation to the most obvious | The will is itself the guardian of the will. moral duties in the most civilized and ra- In very many cases of mental disease, we tional communities in the world. If, then, have no doubt that the necessity of adherthe idea of punishment and penal con- ing to a stricter discipline, aided by the sequences is indispensably necessary to fear of penal consequences, might check check the aberrations of the will, even in the progress of the complaint. A mind is those of sound mind, can it be admitted seldom overthrown until it is relaxed. that impunity is to be secured to the aberrations of those who have least the power of self-control-the insane?

The great progress which has been made of late years in the treatment of insanity arises mainly from judicious endeavors to rouse the voluntary powers of the patient. In former times the mad were regarded as passive victims of insurmountable disorders. They are now treated, in spite of the delusions which haunt them, as men, still preserving some share at least of the responsibilities of men.

Inclined as we are to uphold the necessity of punishing even the insane for such criminal acts as may have been committed by them, unless their state was such as to exclude all consciousness of the nature of what they were doing, we confess that it is neither probable nor desirable that capital punishment should be applied in such cases. But we see no reason whatever for not subjecting men like Oxford or M'Naughten to the hardships, labors, and privations of a penal colony, and the infamy of a felon's banishment, though perhaps a more satisfactory mode of treatment would be a strict system of prison discipline in this country.

The fact is perfectly well known to all those who have paid attention to the treatment of the insane, that those unfortunate persons are quite as accessible to the fear of punishment as any other men. No lunatic asylum could be conducted, no lunatic could be restored to health, without salutary rules of discipline based on some kind of penal sanction. We do not, of course, mean those harsh corporal punishments which were the inhuman expedients of a less enlightened age, but certain privations or restraints, or even the application of heavy douches of cold water, have been employed as punishments in some of the French mad-houses with great effect. In France, too, we have seen sanguinary monomaniacs who were perpetually handcuffed, as a mark of criminal degradation. The fear of punishment acts with sufficient intensity on the insane, except of course idiots or maniacs, who are incapable of any fears, and not susceptible of any We have already observed, that the dismoral influence at all. The acquittal of cipline of those establishments which are certain criminals, on more than one recent devoted to the reception and cure of the occasion, on the ground of insanity, has insane could not be maintained if the prinunquestionably encouraged other persons ciple of irresponsibility was rigorously adto attempt similar crimes under the shelter hered to. Punishments adapted to the con. of the same plea. Each verdict has been dition of the unhappy inmates of those asyfollowed by a recrudescence of such of lums are habitually and very properly emfences. This striking fact is in itself a ployed in them. Favors or privations, an sufficient proof, that however such delin- increase of liberty or of restraint, praise quents may be affected in their minds, they or humiliation, are found to be scarcely are sufficiently sane to reason, and to act less effectual means of encouragement or upon the state of the law and the decisions repression amongst the insane than amongst of juries, by which they conceive it to be any other class of human beings. demonstrated that they are exempt from needs no demonstration to show that such the operation of the law. How, then, can rewards and punishments must be circumit be maintained that the same persons scribed within certain limits; and those would have been incapable of reasoning limits are determined by the state of the upon the effect of the law, if it had been patient. It is clear that where insanity exapplied in all its rigor, or of conforming ists, the common feeling of humanity and to its injunctions, if they had no hope of justice, of which the law is and ought to be eluding its penalties? The assurance of the expression and the instrument, will reimpunity not only acts upon insane minds coil from the application of that fearful as a direct incentive to crime, since they mode of punishment which leaves no room know themselves to be legally relieved for mitigation or change. No one will from the consequences of their actions, contend that dangerous madmen deserve but it acts upon minds in a state of incipi- no more clemency at the hands of the offient unsoundness as an encouragement of cers of justice than any of the lower anithe disease by which they are affected.mals in a state of mischievous fury; but

But it