the facts of this case. The same story might be told of many of those persons one meets each day and never excite a suspicion of insanity. We suspect that the money, of which he had much, and the domain, which was extensive, had something to do with his incarceration in the Bicêtre.

A case mentioned by Hoffbauer' better illustrates what we understand by moral mania. It is a well-known case, and we therefore content ourselves by referring to it. We epitomise a case given in an article upon the subject under consideration, in the "Medical Mirror."2

W. R― was twenty-seven years of age. He had been eight times in the house of correction. His father was an epileptic, and he himself had been subject to convulsions when teething, and at intervals during his after-life. He tortured animals, picked out the eyes of a kitten with a fork. He lied and stole. He was expelled from school as too bad to be kept. He afterwards consorted with the worst characters, was drunken, debauched, dishonest. He attempted, or pretended, to commit suicide. He was utterly false and untrustworthy. He delighted in torturing those patients who were, like himself, confined in the lunatic asylum, and who were too weak to resent injury with violence. He was indelicate in the presence of females, and attempted a rape on his mother and on his sister. Yet, with all, he was intelligent, exceedingly cunning, and (115) while he was actually the victim of epileptic seizures, he was prone to feign fits, and did it with considerable ability. In spite of careful watching, he repeatedly effected his escape. Was exceedingly vain; and, in the presence of some persons, seemed to be remarkably devout. He was ingenious in excusing his errors; and, although exceedingly mischievous, was careful to avoid disagreeable consequences. All these facts indicate the presence of disease; and, we are inclined to believe, that the case above quoted is one in every respect typical of general moral mania; and yet it is not one in which, it seems to us, looking at the function of government as we have described it above, even the presence of this morbid state should protect from

Hoffbauer's Médecine Légale, § 126, p. 132.

*Notes on Moral Insanity," Medical Mirror," vol. iv., No. xlviii.

the consequences of criminal acts. In all the circumstances of the case we have partially described, two things are observable: 1. A fear of personal inconvenience, a dislike of ordinary punishments, and many of the ordinary motives of human nature-as, self-aggrandisement, sexual indulgence, the praise of those whose praise is ordinarily thought of value, personal vanity, and the like; and, 2. An intelligence of such a high order as to enable him thoroughly to understand the relation between a found-out crime and its punishment, for he invariably tried to conceal the commission of the criminal act by lies, hypocrisy, and various clever explanations. And either of those two conditions of health seems to us-where no uncontrollable impulse is proved-to indicate a fit object for punishment. And the writer of the article from which the case is quoted, evidently, although a medical man, tends to the same opinion, for he says:1 "Humane and well-devised punishment must follow all their (the morally insane) misdemeanours: and they must be made to feel that, in certain matters, subjection to a dominant system is an inevitable necessity. The gradual formation of habit is, above all things, to be aimed at." It is quite evident that many such individuals exist amongst us, with a heritage, if not of actual disease, yet of accumulated crime, which is the clay in the hands of that potter, Time, of which insanity is made, who do not restrain their morbid impulses on account of the fear of punishment. But because the law has, by various punishments, failed to make a man honest, to regard him when he again steals as exempted from punishment on account of the number of his crimes-and because it has failed, to do damage to its declaration, by rendering the connection (116) of crime and punishment less invariable, seems absurd. It is just because this consequent and antecedent are not invariably and inevitably connected that some men commit crime, and that those who have a tendency to commit crime through strong passions, habit, or disease, are not restrained. It is true, there are some insane persons whom an invariable sequence will not teach the lesson of life, and whom the pain which is the invariable consequent of

1 Op. cit., p. 739.

violently striking one's head purposely against a stone wall, will not teach to refrain from that act. When such a state of mind exists, whether it arises from imbecility or mania-intellectual or moral-it is absurd to punish. In most of the cases of moral mania which have been brought under our notice, the tendency to sin is, doubtless, due to disease; but it is not so strong that an absolute certainty of proximate suffering could not restrain from the commission of the criminal act—indeed in many cases it is not stronger than the tendency which exists in those persons that circumstances have brought to sin, and that habit has made criminals; and as it is for the latter class that laws are enacted, it seems to us, the former class are co-heirs with them in the advantages to be derived from the infliction of punishment. Another case may be quoted to illustrate this position: it is a case "where, with great natural shrewdness, general information, and gentlemanly manners, where no delusion or incongruity of thought can be detected, there exists an inveterate desire to torment and irritate those around: to enjoy the dissension and disputes which ensue, and to violate every rule of decency and delicacy by obscenities of look, word, and action, when these objects can be accomplished without detection." We imagine that the case just quoted, and the following case, which we take from Prichard, prove that in many of the relations of the morally insane to the State, they may, for all the purposes of just governmental discipline, be regarded as sane; and that, in many respects, those who are afflicted with moral insanity must be treated in the same way as those in whom we can only discover moral turpitude.

“Mr. H. P—had been for many years confined in a lunatic asylum, when, an estate having devolved upon him by inheritance, it became necessary to subject him anew to an investigation. He was examined by several physicians, who were unanimous in the opinion [117] that he was a lunatic; but a jury considered him to be of sound mind, attributing his peculiarities to eccentricity, and he was consequently set at liberty. The conduct of this individual was the most eccen

Crichton Institution Report for 1850, p. 26.

2 Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine, Art. Insanity, p. 834.

tric that can be imagined; he scarcely performed any action in the same manner as other men: and some of his habits, in which he obstinately persisted, were singularly filthy and disgusting. For every peculiar custom he had a quaint and often ludicrous reason to allege, which indicated a strong mixture of shrewdness and absurdity. It might have been barely possible to attribute all these peculiarities, as well as the morbid state of temper and affection, to singularity in natural character, and to the peculiar circumstances under which this person had been placed. But there was one conviction deeply fixed on his mind, which, though it might likewise be explained by the circumstances of his previous history, seemed to constitute an instance of maniacal delusion. Whenever any person, whom he understood to be a physician, attempted to feel his pulse, he recoiled with an expression of horror, and exclaimed, 'If you were to feel my pulse, you would be lord paramount over me for the rest of my life."" "The result has proved," this author goes on to say, "that confinement is not always necessary in cases of this description. Mr. H. P— has remained at liberty for many years, and his conduct, though extremely singular, has been without injury to himself or others."

2174. Concluding Remarks.This is one case, and many others might be collected in which an illiterate jury have, in spite of medical evidence, succeeded in doing the right thing; but it is also a case which shows how very frequently moral insanity is connected with intellectual delusion. Indeed, we are convinced that many observers have not-in their anxiety to prove the fact of a kind of insanity which exists independently of any prominent intellectual symptoms-been sufficiently careful to look for signs of the existence of that which they did not wish to see. Many people, like Nelson-when he was told that there was a signal from the Admiral's ship commanding his return-put the telescope to their blind eye, and say, "I cannot see any

See also a case given by M. Devergie in the Mémoires de l'Académie Imp 'riale de Médecine, tome xxiii., p. 1, Paris, 1859; and Bulletin de l'Academie Imperiale de Médecine, tome xxiv., p. 566.

thing." So Dr. Ray' quotes the case of the Earl Ferrers, who was executed in 17602 for the murder of his steward, in illustration of what he regards as moral insanity. Dr. Ray does not, in the [118] description he gives of the condition of the accused-in which he asserts that the disease was in a more advanced condition-state that it was proved that his lordship was occasionally insane, and incapable, from his insanity, of knowing what he did, and of judging of the consequences of his actions. He labored under the delusion that his relations and friends had formed a conspiracy against him, and he regarded Johnson, his victim, as an accomplice. His conduct was of such a character as to convince those who knew him of his insanity. That the verdict of guilty may have been erroneous, and that the sentence and execution may have been inexpedient, is true, but that the accused labored under moral mania seems to us false. In another place, we point out the relation of those afflicted with intellectual mania to the State: here we would-while we praise the caution of our courts of law in hesitating to recognize moral insanity, and point out that, from the rarity of cases in which this disease is unaccompanied by very prominent intellectual symptoms, very little injustice has been done, in consequence of the law's unwillingness to recognize this kind of insanity-censure the dogged persistence of lawyers who will not, even in the present state of medical psychology, and with the amount of evidence which has been accumulated, admit that there can, or ought to be, a recognition of such a form of disease by our criminal law.3

Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, p. 119.

See Hargrave's State Trials, vol. x., p. 478.

3 See further on this subject Kraft Ebing's essay in Friedreich's Blatter, Sept. 1871; Lehrbuch des Deutschen Strafrechts, by Dr. Berner, Professor of Jurisprudence in Berlin University, Leipzig, 1871; Morels Traité Theorique des Maladies Mentales, vol. i., p. 310; Griesinger on Mental Diseases, Syd. Soc. ed., § 140.