the years of discretion. In the case of Reg. v. Perkins,' Alderson, B., said: "It is certainly not the law that a child under seven cannot be examined as a witness. If he shows sufficient capacity on examination, a Judge would allow him to be sworn." In many respects idiots are to be regarded as children, and their evidence, where it is unsatisfactory, will have failed in its value in virtue of the same, or similar qualities, which takes from the excellence of the testimony of very young children.

2 447. Circumstances, and their Influence upon the Evidence given.-The circumstances of the examination, as bearing upon the evidence of imbeciles, should always be taken into consideration. The unusual circumstances which accompany legal proceedings in a court of justice-the presence of listeners, those forcep-questions of counsel which bring information to the birth, the feeling of impending evil, or, at least, discomfiture, which is present in most minds when in a witness-box, have the effect of altering the relation of the individual to his actual remembrances; and this may, or may not, have more effect upon the person whose intellect is impaired than upon him who has, to use the ordinary phrase, his wits about him. Although some writers seem to imagine that these formalities would tend to have a greater influence upon the imbecile than upon the sane man, it is difficult to see why it should be so. Want of sentiency is callousness. Stones are thoroughly apathetic. And so it is that it is only to acutely sensitive minds that the novel is a [306] matter for wonder. Those of very inferior mental capacity can go through the world without ever having a tremor. All low forms of life have more or less tendency to inanimacy.

2448. The Unveracity of Imbeciles.-Only one other point with regard to the evidence of those persons who suffer from defective development of the faculties remains to be mentioned. In almost all forms of insanity, as well as in idiocy, there is a serious impairment of those powers by

12 Moo. C. C. 139.

Many insane perMany sane men de

which men distinguish right from wrong. sons have an actual pleasure in lying. light in playing practical jokes. All practical jokers are utterly stupid, and very often they are more, they are blameworthy. To insane persons, lying bears the semblance of a practical joke. The ingenuity required for the successful uttering of a lie is a pleasurable exercise of the faculties; and they often lack the power to appreciate the many motives which preponderate upon the other side and would compel any reasonable man to speak the truth. But some men calculate that a lie would suit their purposes better than the truth. They have not found that absolute honesty is politic, but they would not lie if they thought it was against their interest. The motive of actual pleasure in the purposeless perpetration of a deception is not present. But many insane persons do lose this guiding principle. They have actual pleasure in the untruth, irrespective of any good to be obtained by its means. Just as the miser has lost sight of the real purpose and pleasure of money, and delights only in getting, so the insane, or many of them, delight in lying. Under such circumstances, it can be understood that there is extreme difficulty in trusting in many cases to the evidence of persons of unsound mind-a difficulty which, it seems to us, has not been thoroughly appreciated by many writers on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity.

449. The Psychology of this Unveracity.-It is probable, as has been stated above, that this habit of untruthfulness may have been induced. in the first instance, by a want of capacity in the individual to understand the real evil resulting from a certain course of conduct. Indeed, this is a very common form of error, even amongst those who are not insane; and it is for the better guidance of such persons that the practice of adding the obligation of an oath in a court of justice to the other obligations which exist in the ordinary motives of mankind, has been introduced. And as habits are much more readily formed in a weak mind than in a strong one, so persons whose mental capacity is defective

Bacon speaks of a "natural but corrupt love of the lie itself."

very rapidly become the puppets of this string of customs, and lies become the only habitual exercise of their minds. These facts ought to be borne in mind. The habitual untruthfulness of most persons of unsound mind is known to all those who have had any experience in the treatment or care of the insane.

2450. The Value of the Testimony of Dements.-Very old men do not make such good witnesses as those who are in the prime of life; and when the ordinary decay of old age has passed into that other and direr decay which is called dementia, their capacity is likely to be still more limited. One circumstance with regard to the evidence of dements is worthy of especial notice: the memory loses its latest impressions the first, and while all trace of recent events has disappeared, there is a distinct remembrance of many remote incidents. Thus, while the imbecile's memory may be trusted with regard to the events of yesterday, more reliance may be placed upon the dement's memories of twenty years ago than of what took place only an hour gone by. In all cases where the competency of the evidence of old men in the early stage of dementia is in question, care should be taken to ascertain how far his memory is really of the facts, and how far he is confounding what he has been told concerning the circumstances with what he has himself witnessed. The examination of such a witness shonld extend to other circumstances than those on which his testimony is required for the ends of justice, in order that the real calibre of his conservative faculty may be ascertained. In the later stages of dementia, in which complete incomprehension, or later still, when all the animal instincts are lost, and nothing remains but bare physical existence, no question as to evidence can arise. Many disputes arise in regard to the competence of dements to testify; but a careful examination, conducted in the way that has been indicated, will, it seems to us, in all cases lead to a satisfactory conclusion as to the amount of reliance which is to be placed upon the testimony offered.

451. The Value of the Testimony of Persons Laboring under Partial Mania.—308 That a man laboring under

partial intellectual mania may, in some cases, be a trustworthy witness is true. But it is also true that in many cases such a person could not offer reliable evidence. It has been urged that such a person might state that to be true which was only true in a subjective sense, that the "dagger of the mind" might be mistaken for a real dagger, and that cases may and do occur in which such unfounded beliefs are substituted for observed experiences is doubtless a fact. But these cases are not very numerous, and there are many instances in which the events which fell under the notice of the insane individual are so remote from the subject of his delusion that he is quo ad that experience, and the narration of it a sane man.

2452. The Influence of Delusional Beliefs upon the Capacity of Witnesses.-Even in cases where a delusion seems so all-embracing as to modify a man's opinion concerning any possible state of facts-as, for instance, where the individual believes himself to be God-there is really such a separateness between the real life of the individual and his delusion that it may not in any way influence his testimony as to a certain state of facts. Indeed, the reality of the belief that an insane man has in his delusions or illusions seems to us to have been much exaggerated. There is constantly present to the lunatic's own mind a consciousness of the unreality of the impression. The whole of nature and past experience is arrayed against the evidence which a man has for his illusion; and, while he is a man, he cannot totally disregard the evidence of reason. The belief in a delusion is, we are convinced, very often far from being firm; and this very uncertainty will often render the individual who labors under a delusion a more credible witness than he might be expected to be. The actual, thorough, and persistent belief in the real existence, as an object of sense, of what is only an object of that inner sense which is cognizant of delusions, would utterly incapacitate an individual from bearing testimony as to any set of circumstances which might go to make up that concrete which we call an event. But the fact is, that that real conviction of the truth of illusional or delusional impressions does not exist, and those who have taken it for

granted that the grounds of firm belief in the case of a delusion were as certain as those for the belief in any of the phenomena which are made known to us by means of the external senses are in error. In this way, matters which would, to ordinary reasoners, seem closely connected with the delusion of the monomaniac, are 309 really dissociated in the actual life of the individual by that wonderful despotism of facts which no delusion can set at naught. In this way, when the individual is known to possess a somewhat scrupulous regard for truth, the harboring of a delusion seems to be an insufficient ground for the rejection of his testimony. In many instances, monomaniacs are capable of conducting affairs of the utmost complexity. They are often possessed of shrewdness and intelligence, which enables them to carry on business with care and precision. They gain, by a long course of upright conduct, the respect and confidence of their neighbors; and it would be absurd to assert that those whom the common sense and daily intercourse of mankind has pronounced, in the most satisfactory way by acts, to be reliable in the affairs of life, should be looked upon as untrustworthy when called upon to give evidence.

453. Difficulty of Arriving at a Conclusion as to Credibility of Testimony.-In many cases it is well that the evidence of the insane person should be received, and that the question of credibility should be left to the jury after the ex parte statements of counsel, and the direction of the Judge. The difficulty of arriving at a conclusion with regard to the credibility is, however, greater than it has been represented to be. The motives for truth and falsehood are the guides to such a decision. In the case of a sane man, it is not difficult to ascertain what his motives would be under any conceivable circumstances. The experience of mankind is evidence on the point; but in the case of a lunatic, such a guide does not avail one. The ordinary motives are not those which influence the conduct of the insane. Every selfish act of a sane man is leavened with some unselfishness-every hellward tendency is redeemed by a little reaching up to heaven; but in the case of a lunatic, it is not so. They are almost invariably selfish-large-heartedness is a rare virtue in the in