LAW AND INSANITY. yg 



who prosecuted, declaring, and Chief-Justice Mansfield, who tried the 

 case, concurring, " upon the authority of the first sages in the country, 

 and upon the authority of the established law in all times, which has 

 never been questioned, that although a man might be incapable of con- 

 ducting his own affairs, he may still be answerable for his criminal acts, 

 if he possess a mind capable of distinguishing right from wrong." 

 Note here, then, that a modification had now been made in the test of 

 responsibility ; in place of its being required that the sufferer, in order 

 to be exempt from punishment, should be totally deprived of under- 

 standing and memory, and know not what he was doing, no more than 

 a brute or a wild beast — in place, that is, of what might be called the 

 " wild-beast" form of the knowledge-test, the power of distinguishing 

 right from wrong was insisted on as the test of responsibility. The 

 law had changed considerably without ever acknowledging that it had 

 changed. Let it be observed, however, that it was the power of dis- 

 tinguishing right from wrong, not in relation to the particular act, but 

 generally, which was made the criterion of responsibility in this case ; 

 for Lord Mansfield, speaking of the kind of insanity in which the 

 patient has the delusion of being injured, and revenges himself by 

 some hostile act, said that, "if such a person were capable, in other 

 res2)ects, of distinguishing right from wrong, there was no excuse for 

 any act of atrocity which he might commit under this description of 

 derangement. It must be proved beyond all doubt that, at the time 

 he committed the atrocious act, he did not consider that murder was 

 a crime against the laws of God and Nature." ^ 



Thus far it is evident that principle was changing and practice was 

 uncertain. After the old "wild-beast " form of the knowledge-test 

 had been quietly abandoned, when the enunciation of it caused too 

 violent a shock to the moral sense of mankind, we find two theories 

 acted upon in practice : in the case of Hadfield the existence of delu- 

 sipn instigating the criminal act was the reason of his acquittal ; in 



^ Dr. Ray thus comments upon this doctrme : " That the insane mind is not entirely 

 deprived of this power of moral discernment, but on many subjects is perfectly rational 

 and displays the exercise of a sound and well-balanced mind, is one of those facts now 

 so well established, that to question it would only display the height of ignorance and 

 presumption. The first result, therefore, to which the doctrine leads is, that no man can 

 successfully plead insanity in defense of crime ; because it can be said of no one who 

 would have occasion for such a defense, that he was unable in any case to distinguish 

 right from wrong. . . . The purest minds cannot express greater horror and loathing of 

 various crimes than madmen often do, and from precisely the same causes. Their ab- 

 stract conceptions of crime, not being perverted by the influence of disease, present its 

 hideous outlines as they ever were in the healthiest condition ; and the disapprobation 

 they express at the sight arises from sincere and honest convictions. The particular 

 criminal act, however, becomes divorced in their minds from its relations to crime in the 

 abstract; and, being regarded only in connection with some favorite object which it may 

 help to obtain, and which they see no reason to refrain from pursuing, is viewed, in fact, 

 as of a highly-laudable and meritorious nature. Herein, then, consists their insanity — 

 not in preferring vice to virtue, in applauding crime and deriding justice, but in being 



