Frederick Baker, the attorney's clerk who out up a little
girl at Alton, has been sentenced to death, and the day of his execution cuss been fixed. No one doubts his guilt, or that his guilt deserves • the highest penalty, but serious doubts are entertained of his :sanity. He was always esteemed peculiar, and so strong was his tendency to suicide, that he was watched on one occasion by a policeman through a long walk. His father years ago had an attack of acute mania, with `homicidal tendencies, and another -relative is now in an asylum for the same reason. Then the act itself, in its motiveless atrocity, is not that of a sane man, and the 'entry of the murder in the prisoner's own diary can be explained on no theory except that of insanity. It is urged, on the other hand, that his fellow-clerks saw no insanity in him, and that he knows right from wrong ; but the doubt in the case seems too strong to justify execution. Until our whole theory of punish- anent is changed, we cannot hang the mad without unsettling all the principles of the public mind. We might as well hang a man for a murder in his sleep, or for tumbling off a roof on to a passer-by. There may be danger to society without moral responsibility, but there cannot be guilt.
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