LAW AND INSANITY. 81 



ticular act with which the accused was charged. Moreover, it was to 

 be put in reference to the particular act at the time of committing it. 

 Did he at the time know the nature and quality of the act he was 

 doing ? These two points have been overlooked sometimes by hostile 

 critics, who have condemned the rule enunciated, as though it referred 

 to a knowledge of right and wrong generally. One may object to 

 the rule as a bad one, and because it is calculated to mislead a jury, 

 who are very likely to be misled by the existence of a general knowl- 

 edge of right and wrong in the accused person to judge wrongly 

 concerning his knowledge of the particular act at the time, but it 

 must be allowed at the same time that it will, if strictly applied, cover 

 and excuse many acts of insane violence. Of few insane persons who 

 do violence can it be. truly said that they have a full knowledge of the 

 nature and quality of their acts at the time they are doing them. Can 

 it be truly said of any person who acts under the influence of great 

 passion that he has such a knowledge at the time ? 



The rule thus laid down, difiering so much from that which was 

 enunciated and mercilessly acted upon in Bellingham's sad case, was, 

 however, limited in its application by a formidable exception. In 

 reply to the question — " If a person, under an insane delusion as to 

 existing facts, commits an offense in consequence thereof, is he thereby 

 excused?" — the judges declared that "on the assumption that he 

 labors under partial delusion only (whatever that may mean), and is 

 not in other respects insane, he must be considered in the same situa- 

 tion as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delu- 

 sion exists were real. For example, if, under the influence of delusion, 

 he supposes another man to be in the act of attempting to take his 

 life, and he kills that man, as he supposes, in self-defense, he would be 

 exempt from punishment. If his delusion was that the deceased had 

 inflicted a serious injury to his character and fortune, and he killed 

 him in revenge for such supposed injury, he would be liable to pun- 

 ishment." Here is an unhesitating assumption that a man, having an 

 insane delusion, has the power to think and act in regard to it reason- 

 ahly ; that, at the time of the ofiense, he ought to have and to exer- 

 cise the knowledge and self-control which a sane man would have and 

 exercise, were the facts with respect to which the delusion exists real ; 

 that he is, in fact, bound to be reasonable in his unreason, sane in 

 his insanity. The judges thus actually bar the application of the 

 right-and-wrong criterion of responsibility to a particular case, by 

 authoritatively prejudging it ; instead of leaving the question to the 

 jury, they determine it beforehand by assuming the possession of the 

 requisite knowledge by the accused person. One of them, however, 

 Mr. Justice Maule, so far dissented as to maintain that the general 

 test of capacity to know right from wrong in the abstract ought to be 

 applied to this case as to other cases. 



But this is not all the uncertainty which appears in these answers. 



