i88 5 .] 
59 
“ Mignonette ” Case. 
But there is one agency which may derange the mind, 
intellectually and morally, in degrees varying progressively 
from a mere evil temper up to raving madness, and which 
must and will, in its more advanced stages, be regarded as 
rendering persons brought under its influence for the time 
being irresponsible. This agency is hunger, in anything 
beyond the degree in which it ensures a healthy appetite. 
To this agency public attention has been lately drawn by 
the case of the Mignonette , — lamentable in itself, and surely 
not less lamentable as to the way in which it has been 
treated by the highest judicial authorities in this self-styled 
enlightened age and country. 
If we consider the effects of hunger we shall find that, 
even in a very moderate degree, it renders men eminently 
morose and cantankerous. Everyone can testify as to the 
impolicy of asking any man for a favour, or even for an aCt 
of simple justice, shortly before lunch or dinner, as the case 
may be. 
But instead of a man in normal health, who knows that 
a meal awaits him at the usual time, let us take that of a 
man who even voluntarily abstains from food for an entire 
day, or takes for a longer time nourishment in merely 
homoeopathic doses. As instances may serve the Russian 
peasant during his strict Lent, and the Turk during his 
Ramadan. It is difficult to imagine the degree of “ envy, 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness” which at this time 
prevails. Suffice it to say that assassinations and malicious 
injury to persons and property are far more common, to an 
extent statistically recognised, than in any other portion of 
the year of equal length. It may not be considered a 
digression if we point to the absurdity of recognising fasts 
as a means of moral and religious discipline, when their de- 
moralising effects are so clearly manifest. 
We may go a step further: of all mortals the most 
malignant to their fellows are the ascetics, of all creeds, 
with whom fasts are interrupted only by insufficient food. 
With these men we find not merely the moral sense per- 
verted, but the intellect is manifestly deranged. They see 
strange visions ; they hear strange voices, and receive super- 
natural injunctions to deeds of cruelty. 
We may perhaps here be permitted to refer to an expe- 
rience of our youth. Making a pedestrian tour along with 
two friends, in a beautiful but very thinly-peopled country, 
we crossed a mountain ridge at a wrong point, and entered 
a region perfectly desert, where for at least thirty-six hours 
no food was procurable. We were so hungry that we could 
