78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



empted from punishment : it must be a man that is totally deprived 

 of his understanding and memory, and doth not know what he is 

 doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast ; such a 

 one is never the object of punishment." In this respect a wide dis- 

 tinction was maintained between civil and criminal cases ; for while 

 the law would not allow exemption from punishment for criminal acts 

 unless the reason was entirely gone, it invalidated a person's civil acts, 

 and deprived him of the management of himself and his affairs, when 

 his insanity was only partial, and when the act voided had no discov- 

 erable relation to it. A man's intellect might not be sufficient to 

 enable him to conduct his affairs, and to dispose of his property, 

 though quite sufficient to make him responsible for a criminal act : it 

 was right to hang for murder one who was not thought fit to take care 

 of himself and his affairs. 



It was at the trial of Hadfield, in 1800, for shooting at the king 

 in Drury Lane Theatre, that Lord Hale's doctrine was first discredited, 

 and a step forward made for the time. The attorney-general, who 

 prosecuted, had appealed to this doctrine, and told the jury, in accord- 

 ance with it, that, to exempt a person from punishment on the ground 

 of insanity, there must be a total deprivation of memory and under- 

 standing. Mr. Erskine, who was counsel for the defense, argued for- 

 cibly in reply, that if such words were taken in their literal sense, " no 

 such madness ever existed in the world ; " that in all the cases that 

 had filled "Westminster Hall with complicated considerations, "the 

 insane persons had not only had the most perfect knowledge and recol- 

 lection of all the relations they stood in toward others, and of the 

 acts and circumstances of their lives, but had in general been remark- 

 able for subtlety and acuteness ; and that delusion, of which the crimi- 

 nal act in question was the immediate unqualified offspring, was the 

 kind of insanity which should rightly exempt from punishment. De- 

 lusion, therefore, where there is no frenzy or raving madness, is the 

 true character of insanity." There was no doubt that Hadfield knew 

 right from wrong, and that he was conscious of the nature of the act 

 before he committed it; he manifested design in planning and cunning 

 in executing it ; he expected also that it would subject him to punish- 

 ment, for this was his motive in committing it; still it was plain to 

 everybody that he was mad, and that the act was the product of his 

 madness. The result was that he was acquitted, the acquittal not hav- 

 ing taken place in consequence of a judicial adoption of delusion in 

 place of the old criterion of responsibility, as it has sometimes been 

 said, but having been rather a triumph of Erskine's eloquence, and of 

 common-sense over legal dogma. 



In the next remarkable case, that of Bellinghara, who was tried for 

 the murder of Mr. Spencer Perceval, in 1812, a conviction took place, 

 and the prisoner was executed, although it was perfectly clear that he 

 had acted under the influence of insane delusions ; the attorney-general, 



