great distress to himself. Lord Campbell tells us that Lord Lyndhurst was governed by delusions of physical and Lord Brougham by those of intellectual vanity, and more than once in Lord Brougham's life was 'his mind clearly off its balance,' and so wild and violent were at times its perturbations that it was considered necessary to place him in seclusion. Among American Judges, analogous illustrations may be found. Judge Brackenridge of Pennsylvania is reported to have, on a very hot day when holding court at Sunbury, gradually taken off his clothes till at last he was naked. Judge Baldwin, of the Supreme Court of the United States, was a hypochondriac. A distinguished New England Judge, it is said, imagined that a dropsical affection under which he laboured was a sort of pregnancy.' All these were to our thinking instances of insanity in sane men.

2147. Sanity in Insane Men.-We have already spoken. at some length with reference to the existence of monomania, and it only remains for us to remark that 1185) there are many people who are only insane in so far as one series of beliefs are concerned. They may not otherwise have the peculiarly strong minds that were in those men we mention, and owing to that circumstance they may, with the same or similar delusion, be madder than any one of these men were. Just as the same disease is a very different thing to two men, one having a bad and the other a good constitution. But still, even those persons who may be classified as monomaniacs, and distinguished from those persons who have illusions which they know to be illusions, or illusions in a healthy mind, are in many respects quite capable of doing all their duties as citizens, and of conducting their own affairs. Suppose a man has a delusion connected with the sense of hearing. Suppose he imagines he hears the rustling of a silk dress-and men of the highest culture may be affected in this way is it to be argued for a moment that such an individual is thus incapacitated from any of the acts of civil ownership, while many of the peasantry, who are unable to read or write, believing in the most degrading superstitions, such as that

Wharton's Mental Unsoundness and Psychological Law, § 140.

the wells are poisoned during epidemics and the like, are to be allowed in every way to exercise those rights to which they are entitled as members of a civil community? Any such theory is untenable. A much more rational principle is that insanity only invalidates a civil act when such comes within the range of the mental impressions which are due to disease.

2148. Delusion Defined.-It is well that the reader should understand what a delusion really is. Many attempts have been made to define it, and for all practical purposes it is easy enough to understand from these what a delusion is in the eye of the law, although some are open to grave logical objections. Thus Sir John Nicholl, in the case of Dow v. Clark, said: "One of the counsel accurately expressed it: it is only the belief of facts which no rational person would have believed;" and again in the same case he said: "Where there is a delusion of the mind there is insanity; that is, where persons believe things to exist which exist only, or at least in degree exist only, in their own imagination, and of the non-existence of which neither argument nor proof can convince them, they are of unsound mind." Again, Lord Brougham defined it as "the belief of things as realities which exist only in the imagination of the patient." Shelford, too, defines delusion as "the fancying things to exist which can have no existence, and are impossible according to the nature of things, as that trees will walk, or statues nod, and which fancy no proof or reasoning will convince."

149. Testamentary Capacity in relation to Delusion. There has been very considerable difference of opinion upon one point connected with this important subject, although we must now regard it as definitely settled that insanity or delusion which was unconnected with the objects of testamentary disposition and which did not actually affect that instrument will not invalidate it. A different opinion has been expressed by some most able Judges, and

■ 3 Addams, 79; and see Hagg.'s Report. Waring v. Waring, 6 Moore Pl. 349.

3 Shelford's Law concerning Lunatics, 2d ed., p. 293. See also Stanton v. Wetherax, 16 Barb. 259, and American Journal of Insanity, April, 1865, p. 575.

it is necessary to consider these opinions, and to see that no conclusion adverse to them is arrived at without care. [186] The case of Dew v. Clark' is interesting in connection. with this subject. The will of a person who had left personal property amounting to £40,000, was called in question on the ground that the testator (Scott) was insane. The plaintiff was the testator's own daughter, to whom only a life interest in a small sum had been bequeathed, while the bulk of the property had been left to his nephews. It was proved that the testator had manifested a morbid dislike and aversion to his daughter. He used to descant upon her vices, her sullen, perverse, and obstinate disposition, and accuse her of faults of which she could not possibly be guilty. His conduct towards her was proved to be inhuman; and it was satisfactorily shown that there was no real cause for all this unnatural feeling, but that, on the contrary, instead of being one of the worst of women, as his insane mood depicted her, she was in fact one of the most exemplary, kind, affectionate, and good. The Court, therefore, in delivering its judgment, said, that the issue was not "whether the deceased's insanity in certain other particulars, as proved by the daughter, should have the effect of defeating a will generally of the deceased, or even this identical will, but whether his insanity on the subject of his daughter should have the effect of defeating, not so much any will (a will generally) of the deceased, as this identical will." And as it was held to be proved that this identical will was the direct result of the morbid delusions which were shown to have existed, it was set aside. The learned Judge concluded his observation on the case as follows: "The deceased's state of mind at the time of making his will is intimately, I think, connected with his state of mind on the subject-matter of his will, understanding by this the disposal by will of his property. If the deceased were at all times of unsound mind on the subjectuatter of his will, he must have been of unsound mind at the time of making his will. To suppose the contrary would be to suppose the deceased both sane and insane at the same time and on the same subject; a supposition, I apprehend,

13 Addams, 79, 205.

equally absurd in a legal and moral point of view. And, subject to these considerations, the question in the end to be determined the point at final issue is not whether the deceased's insanity in certain other particulars, as proved by the daughter, should have the effect of defeating a will generally, or even this identical will, but it is whether his insanity on the subject of his daughter, as also proved by the daughter, should have the effect of defeating, not so much any will (a will generally) of the deceased, as this identical will; and to the decision of that question I am to be understood as solely addressing myself in the following observations : Now, the daughter being in this case the sole next of kin, the deceased's only child, it is quite impossible, I think, to disconnect the daughter from the subject-matter of his will— that is, of his property: they are subjects, in effect, identified. Hence, the deceased's insanity on the subject of his daughter, generally speaking, being proved at all times in my judgment, it follows that his insanity, at the time of making his will, is also proved in my judgment, unless the contrary is to be inferred from the will itself. But the inference furnished by the will itself (and it is for this only that I refer to the dispositive part, to the contents of the will at all,) is quite the other way. For the prominent feature of the deceased's insanity, in respect to the daughter, was aversion or antipathy to the daughter, so pleaded and so proved; and the will is a will plainly inofficious so far as regards the daughter, being a will by which she is, in effect, disinherited-disinherited, too, in favour of parties nearly utter strangers to the deceased, (for so it appears,) though not remotely connected with him by blood, being his sister's children. Therefore, it follows that in my judgment the deceased is proved upon the whole matter to have been insane at the time of making this will: which was the daughter's case. ** Had the contents of the will furnished a contrary inference-had the will, so far as respects the daughter, been in all parts of it an officious will, the conclusion on this head, and so upon the whole case, might have been different: the very contents of the will would in that case have inferred that, however partially insane (insane on the subject of his daughter) the deceased might have been generally speaking,

*

still, that such partial insanity was not in actual operation at the time of his making the will; in which respect the will might have been valid."

It is then, it seems to us, [187] to be admitted that when, as in the case of Dew v. Clark,2 an individual labors under a delusion which is likely to influence the testamentary disposition, such a state of mind should be held fatal to the instrument. Thus, in the case of Greenwood v. Greenwood, it was proved that the testator having during an illnesss received a draught from the hand of his brother, he continued to believe, even after the delirium had passed away, that his brother had administered poison with the view of destroying him. This insane belief led to the execution of the will, which was disputed, and by means of which instrument the brother alluded to was disinherited. This is by no means an uncommon form of insanity. Monomaniacs frequently believe that they are persecuted, and any such act as the administration of medicine, which is generally the duty of some near relation, will become connected with their morbid beliefs, and may lead to the execution of a will excluding those persons from the enjoyment of right and property, who would, had the testator been of sound mind, have been the first objects of his bounty. In such cases, the rule which applies to construction of wills with respect to the testator's intention should be had regard to, and that intention should be evidenced by acts done, and words spoken, before the delusion that influenced the disposition appeared. This rule is at the foundation of the principles of law with regard to the validity of wills and to the succession of property. Such rules must, if they are to be good, be founded upon ordinary feelings of human nature. But the question which naturally arises is, whether a delusion, which can have had no influence upon the testamentary disposition, should be held to deprive the individual laboring under it of the capacity of making a will. This is evidently a question of the utmost importance.

1 See 5 Russ. Ch. Cas. 163.

23 Add. 79, and Haggard's Rep. of Judgment. See also Fulleck v. Allinson, 3 Hagg. 527-547; Billinghurst v. Vickers, 1 Phillim. 191-198; and see Wood v. Wood, 1 Phillim. 357.

33 Curteis' App. xxx.