24 JUNE 1843, Page 14

LEGAL SETTLEMENT OF THE MONOMANIA QUESTION.

THE opinions of the Judges on the points submitted to them in relation to monomania, go, as might have been expected, to esta- blish that, under a strict interpretation of the law, all maniacal offenders, short of those who are impelled by the destructive im- pulse without the slightest concurrent action of any one faculty of the intellect, (a state the very possibility of which will be ques- tioned by most physiologists,) are to be denied the plea of insanity. The culprit may have committed his offence under the influence of insane delusion ; it may indeed have sprung solely out of that de- lusion; but if it can be proved that he was possessed of sufficient reasoning power to know that be was " acting contrary to the law," he is still liable to punishment.

This decision narrows the plea of insanity to the lowest possible limit ; and, as we have intimated, it would, if strictly adhered to, scarcely admit of application in any case of mania. It would be difficult to find, among all the instances of acquittal on the ground of insanity, any number of cases in which it was or could have been clearly proved that the culprit was unconscious that he was acting contrary to law. HADFIELD had this consciousness to its full extent ; as was proved by the fact, that, wishing to die, he fired at the King in order that the law might terminate his own life ; while almost all cases of murder committed by religious lunatics have taken place under the impression that it was their duty to perform the deed, and to offer themselves as martyrs to the punish- ment that was to follow. It now appears, that in all these cases, where an acquittal has been granted, the Judges have acted under erroneous views.

It is the duty of the Judge to instruct the Jury, that " every man is to be considered of sane mind unless it is clearly proved in evidence to the contrary " : and in what does the test of insanity consist ? In the case of murder, in proving that the culprit was unconscious that murder is contrary to law. Now this can never be accomplished. It is impossible for a Jury to infer that an indi- vidual who possesses intellectual consciousness of any kind can be wanting in this. If, therefore, it can be proved on behalf of the Crown, that the prisoner was aware of the common fact that two and two make four—that fire burns—that the pulling of a trigger of a loaded pistol will be followed by a discharge—or any other ordinary sequence—it is impossible for them to avoid the inference that he was also conscious of the equally common fact that murder is followed by punishment. Under this test there would scarcely be found a patient in Hanwell or Bedlam that might not be brought within the sphere of responsibility.

From the definition of the Judges it is clear that the ac- quittal of M'NAVGHTEN was illegal. He was quite capable in many instances of discerning right from wrong as well as the average of his fellow-creatures. He suffered from a specific and not from a general disorder of the mind ; and this disorder, affecting his perceptions upon certain points, led to peculiar acts of outrage in connexion with those points : in other respects he was suffi- ciently rational. No doubt, therefore, can be entertained, that upon the recurrence of a similar case, a different result must be looked for, and that the culprit will be condemned to death.

This prospect, which seems to afford satisfaction to some, would, if past experience were allowed to speak, stimulate the Legislature to an immediate modification of the existing law; a law which the increasing knowledge and humanity of the age had gradually dttd silently suffered to become to a certain extent obsolete, and which now, by the clear statement of the Judges, stands out in its naked barbarity. The matter has yet to be settled in harmony with coth- mon sense; and all attempts towards that end must be based upon a careful reference to the large class of facts which bear upon the effects of death-punishments in general. The time is past when we could legislate from sentiment in defiance of reason : and if the object of those who declaim against M`NALIGHTEN'S ac- quittal is really the safety of society and not the mere gratiflCa- tion of blind revenge, let them look to the results of that acquittal, and confess the error of those anticipations by which their clamour against it was originally accompanied. We were told that it would be the signal for every sane man of murderous disposition (to use an Hibernicistn) to slaughter his enemies and set up a plea of insanity, and that the life of no public individual would be safe. What was really the result? Before the acquittal and during the panic ge- nerated by the press, many miserable creatures were apprehended as dangerous; but after that verdict was recorded, not a single outrage took place, with the exception of the farcical absurdity of the idiot at St. Paul's. Rarely has a period passed in which so few crimes of violence have been committed, as from the close of that trial to the present time : and when it is recollected that the executions of the preceding summer were followed not only by numerous out- rages, but by an attempt on the life of the Sovereign by an indi- vidual who bad been present at one of these exhibitions, the public will perhaps feel little inclined to regret, that in M‘NsuGuTeri's case a mistake of the Judge caused the prisoner to be condemned to the most severe fate that human imagination can conceive, in- stead of being sentenced by the momentary pangs of a public death-struggle to afford a day's pleasure to a brutal mob, and, by stimulating their morbid appetite for inflicting pain, to lead to the very calamities which these " examples" are intended to avert.