Tlie Plea of Insanity, 305 



The court and legal profession may also do much to correct this 

 evil. To them it is well known, and peculiarly obnoxious ; and there 

 is no class of men who are quicker to see and condemn, and more 

 prompt to remedy any practice which obstructs the due and pure 

 administration of justice than the much abused lawyers. 



It is exceedingly desirable that the courts throughout the Union 

 should harmonize upon the question, — What constitutes legal insanity ? 

 It is also important that they should adopt a uniform rule in respect 

 of the burden of proof. Such agreement would relieve trials of much 

 confusion and embarrassment, and tend to certainty and uniformity 

 in the administration of criminal law. It could not then well be, as 

 now, that a criminal, tried in New Jersey and sent to the gallows, 

 would, if tried in Indiana for the same offense, and on the same evi- 

 dence, be acquitted. 



But what is needed most of all, perhaps, is a sound and wholesome 

 public opinion on the subject; an opinion that shall embody itself in 

 legislative enactments, sustain courts in the administration of penal 

 law, and furnish spinal qualifications to juries. 



There is a morbid, ill-directed sympathy, a tender sentimentality, 

 abroad in the land, which expends itself upon the assassin, while over- 

 looking the desolate home and broken-hearted friends of his victim. 

 Weak men and silly women seek the murderer's cell, and strew it with 

 flowers, with as much fervor of sentiment as the religious devotee 

 visits the shrine of his idolatry. The tendency of this sickly senti- 

 mentality is, to disarm justice and break down the safe guards of so- 

 ciety. It often pervades the jury box, and sometimes finds a respon- 

 sive chord in the breast of the judge. 



One most deplorable effect is the stimulus given to lynch-law. On 

 the occurrence of some peculiarly atrocious crime, the popular indig- 

 nation IS aroused, and bold, impulsive men, lacking confidence in the 

 ordinary and lawful methods of justice, take the law into their own 

 hands, and inflict swift vengeance ! 



Such acts of unlawful violence are severely and justly condemned; 

 yet it cannot be denied that they are often prompted by that deep- 

 seated abhorrence of murder, and innate sense of its guilt that drew 

 from Cain the cry of terror, — '^Every one that findeth me will slay 

 me." 



The remedy must be sought in a uniform, well-adjusted system of 

 criminal jurisprudence, which, administered by magistrates and juries 

 possessing intelligence, and the combined attributes of justice and 

 mercy, and sustained by a sound and vigorous public opinion, will 

 protect the innocent, and mete out just and sure punishment to the 

 guilty. 



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