132 Insanity and Grime. 



beings. No one has ever pretended that all men are respon- 

 sible in equal degree for their actions. The divine, the moral- 

 ist, and the popular voice, all exclaim, concerning one offender, 

 that his offence is aggravated by his position and circumstances; 

 while they say of another, that his error admitted of much 

 excuse. Morally, the duty of each is to make the best use he 

 can of the faculties assigned to him, and unless we. could prove 

 that all men were born with equally good organizations and 

 lived under equally beneficial conditions, we could not establish 

 the theory that all were equally worthy of praise when they 

 did right, or equally deserving of blame when they did wrong. 

 But while we are compelled to recognize responsibility as exist- 

 ing in different degrees amongst persons whom we have no 

 right to consider insane, and also among' those to whom that 

 epithet may be applied, our jurisprudence can only take cogni- 

 zance of differences that are obvious and clear. There is a ' 

 sense in which all sane criminals may be considered insane, for 

 serious crime is seldom committed until habits have been 

 formed, by which animal propensities have been encouraged to 

 gain the upper hand. Such cases arc, however, widely distin- 

 guished from actual cerebral disease, and it is the determina- 

 tion of the existence or nonexistence of disease that imposes 

 upon our tribunals one of their hardest tasks. If an accused 

 person has the obviously defective brain of an idiot, and his 

 mental manifestations have always corresponded with the idiotic 

 type, no difficulty is felt. The trouble begins when an indi- 

 vidual has been deemed sane up to commission of a crime, and 

 we have to take the crime itself, with all its attendant circum- 

 stances, as part of the evidence by which insanity may bo 

 demonstrated. » 



Tl 10 ideas of insanity enshrined in tho decisions and tlicia 

 of our most eminent judges arc so obviously absurd that it is 



oifihiDg Ihcy could over have been tolerated in any society 

 pretending bo civilization. In Bellingham's case, Lord Mans- 

 field bold l lie jury, bhat before the prisoner could bo acquitted 

 <m the plea of insanity, "it must be proved beyond .-ill doubt 

 did cot consider murder "was a, crime against the laws 

 of* God and nature;" and in McNaughten's case, when the 

 House of Lords propounded certain questions to the judges, 

 Mr. .Justice ttaule replied, " bhat bo render a person irrespon- 

 sible for crime on account of unsoundness of mind, I he unsoumd- 

 of mind should, according bo the law, as it has long been 

 understood and l.wld, be such i b bo render him incapable of 

 knowing right from wrong." Chief Justice Tin dal brought legal 

 ivniiiiii/ to a climax by informing their Lordships that "we" 

 (the judges) " are of opinion, bhat notwithstanding bhe party 

 accused did the act complained of, with a view, under the influ- 



