A NEW PLEA FOR THE OLD BAILEY.
Novsurx is not less required—and it is more attended to—in the performances at the Old Bailey than in those either of Parliament or the Theatres. The plea of " alibi" may indeed be placed on a par with the stalest " stock-piece " ever kept by a manager to fill out odd nights, or with the monotonous sing-song of "free trade," "education," or " state of Ireland," chanted session after session "without variations" in the House of Commons. But at the Old Bailey, every week brings up its new plea : a merit that cannot be ascribed to any of the other great houses, which are often reduced (especially the Theatres) to the necessity of pirat. ing its lucky hits.
Among the recent novelties at the Old Bailey, " monomania " has perhaps had the longest run. The managers there, however, ap- pear to know their real interest as little as managers elsewhere. It is not every tragedy that can keep the stage after a burlesque of it as SHAKSPERE'S do ; and therefore, "monomania," which was at first brought out as a grand serious melodrama—a plea for horrible murders—was necessarily withdrawn, as soon as a wicked wit put it forward as an excuse for thieving. A new plea is in rehearsal to supply its place. A young man, charged at Worship Street, this week, with stealing a linen sheet from his landlady, was defended by his brother, on the ground that the theft was committed " under mesmeric influence." The plea is ingenious. Granted that the mesmeric influence places the patient entirely at the command of the operator, and that the patient, on awaking, forgets entirely what passed while be was in the mesmeric trance, it is clear that a dishonest person who becomes an expert manipulator may easily obtain pilfering-agents who can- not betray him. The Magistrate at Worship Street dismissed the plea rather cavalierly : but any leading counsel of the Old Bailey, who feel the attractions of their eloquence on the wane, would do well to occupy this yet uncultivated field. Two of them, by study- ing the opposite sides of the question under Drs. — and for a month or two, and then getting a clever culprit to play into their hands, could not fail to create a great sensation, and furnish a valuable contribution to the next volume of the "English Causes Celebres."
It is a precisian age ; and people are quite as ready to scrutinize rigidly the tendency of Old Bailey pleas as of stage-plays. It will be said, that if there is truth in mesmerism, such a discussion would set the dishonest upon a safe plan of thieving. It certainly is a dangerous weapon to put into their hands. A man who could send sleep-walkers to pilfer or commit burglaries would reap all the harvest of his unconscious emissary's exertions—would be safe from detection ; and even his tool might escape unscathed if caught in the fact, (being manifestly in a state of somnambulism,) if not caught so often as to excite suspicion. But, luckily, the same powerful agency is equally at the command of the honest. It would only be necessary to add a Mesmeric Corps to the Detective Police force. Indeed, it is worth considering, whether such an addition ought not to be made to the staff immediately. A dozen apt subjects for mesmerism, kept in the state of clairvoyance from nightfall to daybreak at the principal Police-stations, and each directed to apply his miraculous vision to a certain " beat" during the dark hours, would be worth twelve hundred waking constables.
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