578 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



vation, which hardly any one who has practical knowledge of 

 insanity would dispute, that there are very few lunatics who 

 do not know what they are doing when they do insane acts, 

 and it is an elementary truth of psychology, although English 

 judges seem not to be aware of it, that the impulses to action, 

 sane or insane, come not froui the intellect, but from the 

 aifective nature. To hold an insane person responsible for not 

 controlling an insane impulse of the nature of which he is 

 conscious is in some cases just as false in doctrine and as 

 cruel in practice as it would be to hold a man who is con- 

 vulsed by strychnia responsible for not stopping the convul- 

 sions because he is all the while quite conscious of them." 



Dr Maudsley proceeds to cite a case in which Mr. Justice 

 Brett told the jury that "it was not enough to show that a 

 man was mad or had what medical men called an 'uncon- 

 trollable impulse,' for, even assuming this, the law did not 

 absolve him from the consequences of his act. He knew 

 what he was doing, and if he knew that it was wrong then 

 he Avas responsible for it. That had been declared to the 

 House of Lords by the Judges of England many years ago, 

 and by the law so declared judges and juries were equally 

 bound." 



The learned Judge refers here to the answers given by the 

 Judges of England to questions put to them by the House 

 of Lords in 1842 upon the subject of insane delusions, and 

 their effect upon the criminal responsibility of persons subject 

 to them. These answers are carefully considered by Sir 

 James Stephen, and he thus expresses the conclusion at 

 which he arrives (p. 183): — 



" The question, ' What are the mental elements of respon- 

 sibility?' is, and must be, a legal question. It cannot be 

 anything else, for the lueaning of responsibility is liability to 

 punishment ; and if criminal law does not determine who are 

 to be punished under given circumstances, it determines 

 nothing. 



" I believe that by the existing law of England those 

 elements (so far as madness is concerned) are knowledge 

 that an act is wrong, and power to abstain from doing it ; 

 and I think it is the province of judges to declare and 

 explain this to the jury." 



Although this expression of opinioil on the part of Sir 

 James Stephen is not of course binding on any other judge, 

 yet the weight attaching to it is so great, and is so con- 

 formable to common sense and to the principles which ought 



