the former case the prisoner was an old offender, and had been in prison twenty times before, such punishments would seem disproportioned to the gravity of the offence, and that disproportion would be an ample text for a sensational article. All these cases require to be inquired into, and, to our thinking, if the law on this subject is carefully studied, it will present a very considerable amount of sound and rational uniformity. It seems to us, after a somewhat careful examination of this subject, that definite principles, be they right or wrong, which do exist in relation to questions of responsibility, have guided the decisions in these cases, as much as the principles in connection with any other technical matters have guided the discussions in respect of those. After all, our institution of trial by jury is not perfect. Many errors are incident to all human tribunals. But we find that many of the errors which courts of law may have committed are in the main due to the very defective condition of the knowledge of medical men concerning insanity, and the very inefficient way in which they have frequently given their evidence in courts of law. It may be well to consider some of these decisions.' ? 140. Cases in which Delusion has been set up as a Defence.-In one of the cases in which this defence was set up, Wightman, J., stated the law thus: "The delusions which indicate a defect of sanity such as will relieve a person from criminal responsibility, are delusions of the senses, or such as relate to facts or objects, not mere wrong notions or impressions, or of a moral nature, and the aberration must be mental not moral to affect the intellect of the individual. It is not enough that they show a diseased or depraved state of mind, or an aberration of the moral feelings, the sense of right and wrong, although it may be perverted, being still not destroyed; and the theory of a moral insanity, or insanity of the moral feelings, while the sense of right and wrong still remains, is not to be reconciled with the legal doctrine on the subject."" We shall hereafter consider the subject of moral insanity. Our object in this place is to set forth fully the See Macnaghten's Case, 10 Clark & F. 200, 1 C. & K. 130. 2 R. v. Burton, 3 F. & F. 772. BR. INS.-16 various judicial opinions which have been expressed on the legal responsibility of those who are only partially insane. In the Townley case, Martin, B., laid down the principle, that where upon a trial for murder the plea of insanity is set up, the question for the jury is, Did the prisoner do the act under a delusion, believing it to be other than it was? If he knew what he was doing, and that it was likely to cause death, and was contrary to the law of God and man, and that the law directed that persons who did such acts should be punished, he is guilty of murder. Some cases have come before the Courts in the northern half of this kingdom which throw light upon this point. On the 30th and 31st May, 1864, George Bryce was tried at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh for the murder of a woman named Jeanie Seaton. It appeared from the evidence, that the prisoner labored under the delusion that the deceased had spoken of him as a drunken blackguard. Professor Laycock was examined, and expressed his opinion that the prisoner was insane. In charging the jury, the Lord Justice General said, "There are kinds of delusions which are not evidence of insanity," and instanced mistaken beliefs. He then went on to consider what character of delusions would exculpate, and instanced a delusion which made a criminal act in self-defence. In alluding to the theory which had been set up that the prisoner's forgetfulness of the act he had committed was one of the strongest proofs of the insane character of that act, he pointed out that the supposed forgetfulness was negatived by the evidence of the prisoner's conduct, and he said: "The question for you to decide is, Has it been established or has it not, that this act was perpetrated through insanity-insanity in this sense, that the party was bereft of mind, and that he believed, from grounds that acted upon his imagination, that facts had occurred which warranted him in committing violence against the individual?" The jury found the prisoner guilty, but recommended him to mercy, on the ground of his low mental organization. Again, where the panel was charged with stabbing and cutting a police officer Reg. v. Townley, 3 Foster & F. 839. See Levitt's Case, Cro. Car. 538. * Bryce, 4 Irvine, (Justiciary,) 506. * who had taken him into custody, it appeared that the prisoner had been riotous in the streets, that he was going about in a wild way and in a very bad plight, and that he entertained a delusion that he was the lawful son of the Duke and Duchess of York. The jury were directed to make up their mind whether the delusion led to the crime, and they found the panel guilty as libeled.' We cannot say that we agree wholly with the opinion expressed in another case by a Scotch Judge, who said that there was "no such thing admitted in law as partial insanity-give it whatever name you choose, monomania or any thing else. As was well said by Lord Brougham, That being or object which is called mind, if unsound in one point is unsound in every respect, so long as that which causes the unsoundness exists in the mind." **The learned Judge added: "The panel must be shown to be unable, by the visitation of God, to do what his duty to God requires, to struggle and overcome his passions, which every man possessed of reason may."2 Shaw, C. J., in the case of The Commonwealth v. Rogers, to which we have already had occasion to refer, says: "Monomania may operate as an excuse for a criminal act" when "the delusion is such that the person under its influence has a real and firm belief of some fact not true in itself, but which, if it were true, would excuse his act, as where the belief is that the party killed had an immediate design upon his life, and under that belief the insane man kills in supposed self-defence. A common instance is where he fully believes that the act he is doing is done by the immediate command of God, and he acts under the delusive but sincere belief that what he is doing is by the command of a superior Power, which supersedes all human laws and the laws of nature." In another case, a nice but admirable distinction was drawn between delusions which compel the act, and delusions which are connected with the subject of the act, but are really beside it, and are used as a pretext, and are not using the individual. There the jury were charged that if a person otherwise rational commit a 1 Whelps, 1 Broun, 378. Smith & Campbell, 2 Irvine, 1. 3 Report by Biglow & Bemis, p. 277. See also U. S. v. Holmes, 1 Clifford, 98, homicide, though affected with delusions on subjects with which the act is connected, he is criminally responsible if he were capable of the perception or consciousness of right and wrong as applied to the act, and had the ability, through that consciousness, to choose by an effort of the will whether he would do the deed. 141. The real difficulty in Cases of Monomania.Although the principles of the law as enunciated by various Judges are perfectly clear, the real difficulty arises in connection with the question whether such a disease as monomania exists, and if that be decided in the affirmative, then in deciding when a person who manifests delusions is laboring under this disease and is not otherwise insane; for it must be remembered that delusions may be the early symptoms of wide-spread and general mental disorder. It is also to be borne in mind that in many cases there is real difficulty in discovering whether an admitted delusion has or has not influenced the act, the character of which is in question. One point may be separately noted in this place, although it seems to us to be contained in the answers of the Judges, and it is this, that any delusion which deprives a person of the power of judging either of the actual state of facts, or of the power of judging of the appropriate conduct in regard to real circumstances, would be a good defence. A case put by Lord Erskine will illustrate this point. "Let me suppose," he said, "the character of an insane delusion consisted in the belief that some given person was any brute animal, or an inanimate being, (and such cases have existed,) and that, upon the trial of such a lunatic for murder, you, being on your oaths, were convinced, upon the uncontradicted evidence of one hundred persons, that he believed the man he had destroyed to have been a potter's vessel, that it was quite impossible to doubt that fact, although to other intents and purposes he was sane, answering, reasoning, acting as men not in any manner tainted with insanity, converse and reason and conduct themselves. Suppose, further, that he believed the man whom he destroyed as a potter's vessel to be the property of another, and that he had malice against such supposed person, and that he meant to injure him, knowing the act he was doing to be malicious and injurious, and that, in short, he had full knowledge of all principles of good and evil; yet would it be possible to convict such a person of murder, if, from the influence of the disease, he was ignorant of the relation in which he stood to the man he destroyed, and was utterly unconscious that he had struck at the life of a human being?" And to this question one may answer, certainly not. Under the present law, such an individual would be regarded as irresponsible, and would suffer no punishment on account of the act. If there was any remedy in such a case, it would be one which was applicable to the set of circumstance. which the lunatic supposed real, viz., the breaking a potter's vessel with the intention of giving pain to a person against whom he had an ill will. With regard to the question of the existence of such a disease as monomania, we need say nothing here. We have already considered the question, and will again have to say something in reference to it. As to the discovery of when the delusion exists alone and is not associated with other and wider mental disease, our description of the symptoms will be a sufficient guide to enable any person of even limited experience to distinguish this form of mental disease from others. One case which shows that courts of law do not make mistakes as to this matter may be referred to. A woman named Blyth was tried at Perth on the 29th April, 1852, for the murder of her mother. It appeared that the prisoner had been for some time hypochondriacal, had consulted a medical man, and gone to bed on account of diseases she only supposed herself to labor under. The medical man deposed to the fact that she believed her nose was coming off, and that her hands were turning black. These were the only symptoms of insanity which had manifested themselves previous to the time of the criminal act. The act itself was somewhat indicative of insanity. Without any quarrel, she attacked her mother with the tongs, and repeatedly struck her on the head, and caused such severe injuries that the old woman died in a very few days. After the act, the prisoner, in speaking of her mother, had said that it was time she was dead. Yet Winslow on the Plea of Insanity in Criminal Cases, 6. |