After a ten days' hearing, the inquiry direoted to be
held into the state of mind of the Marquis Townahend was con- cluded last Saturday afternoon. The jury found that the Marquis was a person of unsound mind so as to be incapable of managing his affairs, but that he was capable of managing himself, and was not dangerous to himself or others. The result of this verdict is to extricate the Marquis Townshend from the hands of the parties who have been quarrelling over the right to control his actions, to secure his personal liberty, and to entrust the management of his estate to a trustee or trustees appointed by the Lord Chancellor. Mr. Justice Bucknill, who tried the case, rendered a public service by his resolute endeavour to confine the inquiry to the main issues of the case and to restrict the discussion of painful and irrelevant details. Where people on the border- land of sanity fall under the influence of people on the borderland of crime ugly things will always happen, but we see nothing in this case to warrant sweeping generalisations as to the corruption of the upper classes. The fairness of the verdict and the conflict of evidence between the " alienists" show conclusively how undesirable it would be to leave the ultimate settlement of such questions to medical experts.
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