296 



Tlie Plea of Insanity. 



" No man can serve two masters. I am Philip King of Macedonia, 

 lawful son of Mary Queen of Scots, born in Philadelphia. I have 

 been happy enough ever since I saw General Washington with a silk 

 handkerchief in High street. Money commands sublunary things, and 

 makes the mare go; it will buy salt mackerel made of ten-penny nails. 

 Enjoyment is the happiness of Virtue. Yesterday cannot be recalled. 

 I can only walk in the night-time when 1 eat pudding enough. I 

 shall be eight years old to-morrow. They say R. \V. is in partnership 

 with J. W. 1 believe they are about as good as people in common — 

 not better, only on certain occasions, when, for instance, a man wants 

 to buy chincapins, and to import salt to feed pigs. Tanned leather 

 Avas imported first by lawyers. Morality with virtue is like vice not 

 corrected. L. B. came to your house and stole a coffee-pot, in the 

 twenty-fourth year of his majesty's reign. Plum-pudding and Irish 

 potatoes make a very good dinner. Nothing in man is comprehensi- 

 ble in it. Born in Philadelphia. Our fore-fathers were better to us 

 than our children, because they were chosen for their honesty, truth, 

 virtue and innocence. The Queen's broad R. originated from a forty- 

 two pounder, which makes too loud a report for me. I have no more 

 to say. I am thankful I am no worse this season, and that I am sound 

 in mind and memory, and could steer a ship at sea, but am afraid of 

 the tiller. * * * Son of Mary Queen of Scots. Born in Phila- 

 delphia. Born in Philadelphia. King of Macedonia." 



There can be no doubt of insanity in this example ; but it may be 

 considered as a sound and pretty well-established doctrine, that a de- 

 lusion in a sane person does not relieve him from responsibility. 



It is important, also, to notice that an insane delusion is a good de- 

 fense, only when the act charged as a crime was the offspring of such 

 delusion. 



The defense of "irresistible impulse" is rejected by the English 

 courts, but is recognized as valid in some American authorities. In 

 Iowa, Chief Justice Dillon, delivering the opinion of the Supreme 

 Court in the case of Felter, tried for the murder of his wife, said, — 

 "The capacity to distinguish right and wrong is not in all cases a safe 

 test of criminal responsibility. If a person commit a homicide, know- 

 ing it to be wrong, but driven to it by an uncontrollable and irresist- 

 ible impulse, arising not from natural passion but from an insane con- 

 dition of the mind, he is not criminally liable." The *Mrresistible 

 impulse " allowed by some courts as a valid defense is not, it must be 

 remembered,'' 772 or<7? insanity " as already defined ; it is not the stress 

 of passion, nor is it the expression of malignant depravity ; it is the 

 overpoiuering force of insanity. 



There is not so wide a difference, practically, on the question of legal 

 insanity, as an affluent and varied nomenclature naturally suggests. 



Dr. Folsom, in the same number of the North American Review 



