3IO NATURE AND MAN. 



On the automatist theory, a drunkard who deserts a comfortable 

 home for the tap-room (I make large allowance for those who 

 have //^comfortable homes), who neglects an attached wife and 

 loving children for the society of profligates, and who, with ample 

 means of higher enjoyment, surrenders himself without a struggle 

 to the allurement of sensual pleasure, and at last renders himself 

 amenable to the law by fatal outrage on the patient wife who has 

 long borne with his brutality, is no more a subject of moral repro- 

 bation than poor Hartley Coleridge ; who, when he strayed from 

 the loving care of his friends, would be found in the parlour of 

 some rural public-house, delighting the rustics with his wonderfid 

 stories, and indulging to his heart's content in the unlimited beer 

 which the publican was only too glad to allow him. When, on 

 the other hand, the subject of a strong hereditary alcoholic craving 

 maintains a daily conflict with his tempter, uses every means he 

 can think of to avoid or weaken its seductions, puts forth all his 

 energy in resisting them, and, through occasional failures, comes 

 off on the whole victorious, the consistent automatist can have 

 no other approbation to bestow upon him, than that which he 

 would accord to a self-governing steam-engine or a compensation- 

 balance watch. 



5. Further, the existence of the ideas cuiTently attached to 

 the words duty and responsibility, is an evidence of the acceptance 

 by Mankind at large, of the belief that every normally-constituted 

 individual has a power of choice and se/f-reguIation,~^^ oughi" 

 necessarily implying "can." And this evidence is not invalidated 

 by the discrepancy which must always exist between legal and 

 moral responsibility. For the law, looking mainly to the pro- 

 tection of society, necessarily deals rather with acts than with 

 motives ; and punishments must often be inflicted with a de- 

 terrent view, which we may not regard the criminal as having 

 morally deserved. 



Thus, in the rescue of the Fenian conspirators at Manchester, 

 the men who made the attack on the prison-van which involved 

 the death of police-sergeant Brett, were doubtless animated by 

 what they deemed noble and patriotic motives. They had no 

 ill-will towards Brett individually; but, as the Judge laid it down 



