CHAPTER IX.

THE LEGAL RELATIONS OF MANIA.

WHEN an individual is incapable of judging of the legal character of his acts by reason of acute mental disease, he is irresponsible for those acts should they contravene the criminal law, and he is held incompetent of entering into such acts where they only amount to civil transactions. The consideration of mania in its various phases has already indicated under what circumstances this form of mental disease will deprive a man of his civil ability or of his criminal responsibility. Still, a little more may be added here, as it is, perhaps, more easy to appreciate the legal relations of acts when they are separated from those medical relations in connection with which they have been already partially considered.

In all civil matters, if a man can be shown "to be non compos mentis, the law avoids his act, though it cannot be traced to or connected with the morbid imagination which constitutes his disease, and which may be extremely partial in its influence on conduct." But in criminal cases it is not enough to prove a man non compos, for responsibility simply means liability to punishment, and there is always held to be liability to punishment when the existence of intention, will, and malice can be proved. Now, in many kinds and

degrees of insanity one or more of these attributes of the concept crime can be shown to be absent, and in that way the supposition of the criminality of an act is rebutted. It is evident that the existence or non-existence of these three mental tendencies, as demonstrated by the conduct of the accused, is a question for the jury.

It is evident that the plea of insanity can be raised in any criminal inquiry; but as it is sometimes thought better to undergo a slight sentence for a minor offence rather than be kept in prison at her Majesty's pleasure, it is practically only set up in cases of a graver

character. This naturally leads to a question as to whether the present mode of dealing with the persons of lunatics who have committed a crime is altogether satisfactory. In this place, however, we cannot discuss the question, and may only mention that in Scotland a somewhat curious and reasonable departure from the ordinary mode of procedure has been adopted. There a party who committed murder and was found to be insane was delivered over to private custody on caution to the amount of £200, to prevent him doing harm to himself or others.* The plea may be occasionally pleaded even in minor cases, where the position or rank of the individual who has committed the act, the quality of which is in question, are such as would suffer materially by incarceration in a prison. But in most criminal cases the defence is generally one of simple passive silence, or some assertion, when the prisoners are asked to say whether they are guilty or not guilty, that "they don't know anything about it." There is some reason in declining to raise this plea for the defence when the detention upon the ground of irresponsibility would be a more severe punishment than the reward for the crime on the ground of responsibility would amount to.† But this is no ground why the prosecution should not in all cases take cognizance of the insanity of an accused person, for the object of criminal jurisprudence is the protection of the lives and properties of the people, and not the apportioning a minor sentence to such as plead guilty of an offence which in the truest sense they did not actually commit. If any judge advised the withdrawal of the plea in a case where an individual was being tried for a felonious assault upon the ground that if the plea were admitted the accused would probably undergo a much longer imprisonment than if on conviction he received the legal punishment for the offence, which we can scarcely believe, it was certainly a very ill-considered recommendation. What would be the result? Suppose that in this case the man was really mad and irresponsible for the offence for which he was indicted, and for which the plea of insanity, being in accordance with the recommendation of the judge, was withdrawn, he was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment.‡ He undergoes eighteen months' imprisonment. Such treatment is

* Campbell, 18 November, 1830, s. (Inst.) 236. See also Douglas, 21 January, 1831, s. (Inst.) 236.

+ R. v. Reynolds, Bodmin Summer Ass., 1843.

Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence,' p. 1094.

calculated, according to the opinion of all those who are conversant with mental disease, to aggravate the insanity. He may possibly during his confinement assault a warder, and if the one punishment (the imprisonment) is useless, and that is the ground upon which all punishment of the insane is condemned, the punishment incurred by this breach of prison discipline is also useless. But everything that is useless is not harmless; indeed, we would rather say that everything that is not useful is harmful. So this second punishment, this punishment within a punishment, is highly detrimental, and when the individual has "done" his eighteen months' and goes out into the world, he is more insane than when he went into prison, and the law lets him loose upon society. If he makes another assault and kills some one, who is to blame? The law! The system of the raising of this plea is at present unsatisfactory.

All that will be necessary for our purpose here will be the consideration of the connection of this plea with regard to one class of acts, as the careful consideration of the peculiar forms of mania which lead to the commission of acts of a certain character will indicate in what way the rules here laid down have to be modified with relation to any other criminal offences.

If

It is quite evident that in many cases of mania no question of responsibility can arise. If a maniac breaks a dozen windows, our anger is turned not against him, but against those who had the charge of him. We ask, "Why was he allowed to do it?" We know that the manifestation of our anger would have no effect upon the lunatic himself, and experience has taught us to regard all manifestations under such circumstances as useless and absurd. a stone hurts us we at once direct our anger against the person who threw it, although the natural feeling is to resent the injury, and to vent the feelings of anger and resentment upon the proximate cause of the suffering. This is proved by the fact that children will kick the furniture. So our experience has taught us that it is utterly absurd to punish lunatics who are in a state of acute mania, as the experience of men has convinced them that it is stupid to be angry with a table which falls on their feet. It is evident that the only difficulty which can arise with regard to questions of responsibility in relation to mania must be in connection with those cases in which the disease is only in one of the earlier stages, or where it is in one of

its partial forms. It is also true that much difficulty has, in times

past, arisen in connection with moral mania. It is necessary, however, for the sake of convenience to consider the medico-legal questions connected with each of these forms of disease separately. With regard, then, to general, intellectual mania no question as to responsibility can arise. We shall, however, consider the civil ability of those who are maniacal in another place. With regard to partial intellectual mania it seems to us reasonable that the insanity which does exist should relieve from responsibility only in case the act, which would otherwise bring the individual within the criminal law, is connected with the erroneous impressions which are traceable to disease. We have seen that for many purposes the monomaniac must be regarded as a sane man. We shall see hereafter that he must be allowed to exercise many of his privileges as a subject, and it is only reasonable to argue that he should be held responsible for many of his acts. A man who believes that he sees a decollated head is not thereby incapacitated from selling an estate, and if that man puts his hand into a neighbour's pocket and takes his handkerchief, there seems to be no reason why he should not suffer the penalty for larceny. Again, suppose a man to imagine that his own father was compassing his death, and if he believed that the only way to preserve his life was by knocking down his father, there is every reason why he should not be punished for assault; the prominent argument being that had any sane man been placed in the real position in which the monomaniac believed himself placed, he would have done exactly what the insane man did. Now the law would not have held the sane man guilty of assault, and as the maniac's beliefs are as real to him as the perceptions of the sane man are to him, it would be very unjust to punish him. That the connection between the insane delusion and the quasi-criminal act is almost invariably close and easily distinguished, makes the carrying out of this view, which has been urged as the correct one by Foderè and Hoffbauer, exceedingly easy. Many medical jurists have, however, argued that it is not by any means easy to trace the connection between any idea and any act in a sane mind, and that the difficulty is infinitely increased when the mind is diseased. Georget has said, "In conversing with patients on topics foreign to their morbid delusions, you will generally find no difference between them and other people. They not only deal in common-place notions, but are capable of appreciating new facts and trains of reasoning. Still

more, they retain their sense of good and evil, right and wrong, and of social usages to such a degree, that whenever they forget their moral sufferings and delusions they conduct themselves in their meetings as they otherwise would have done, inquiring with interest for one another's health, and maintaining the ordinary observance of society. They have special reasons even for regarding themselves with a degree of complacency; for the most part, they believe that they are victims of arbitrary measures, fraudulent contrivances, and projects of vengeance or cupidity, and thus they sympathise with one another in their common misfortunes. Accordingly the inmates of lunatic asylums are rarely known to commit those reprehensible acts which are regarded as crimes when dictated by sound mind, though the most of them enjoy considerable freedom. They often talk very sensibly of their interests, and some even manage their property perfectly well.

"Those patients who are insane on one point only, more or less limited, may have experienced some severe moral disorders which influence the conduct and actions of the individual without materially impairing his judgment. Those who conduct themselves so well in the asylum in the midst of strangers with whom they have no relations, and against whom they have conceived no prejudice nor cause of complaint, and in quiet submission to the rule of the house, are no sooner at liberty in the bosom of their families than their conduct becomes insupportable; they are irritated by the slightest contradiction, abusing and threatening those who address the slightest observation to them, and working themselves up to the most intolerable excesses. And whether the reprehensible acts they commit are really foreign to the predominant idea or not, ought we to make a being responsible for them whose moral nature is so deeply affected ?"* From this statement of what he considers to be facts he infers that it would be unjust to punish the monomaniac for his criminal acts, while it is just to allow him to retain his civil ability. Now in some respects the statement is not correct, and in every respect the inference is erroneous. The statement that lunatics in an asylum sympathise with each other on account of the consciousness of common misfortunes is not borne out by our own experience or by that of some of those whom we have consulted and who have had the amplest means of verification or refutation. With

*Discussion Medico-légal sur la Folie,' p. 10.