The second reading of the Insane Prisoners' Bill was taken
on Monday night. Our objection to the measure, that it provides no security to the public for the criminal's insanity, leaving it, as before, to the certificates of the visiting justices and their surgeons, and only imposing more explicitly on the Secretary of State the responsibility of judging whether or not their certificates were warranted by the evidence, was taken up both by Mr. Hardy, who wanted a public commission on every such insane prisoner, and Mr. M. Smith, who thought the matter should be tried by an ordinary jury. To this Sir George Grey's only objection was that it would entail "great delay." " Delay " is not apparently thought so material an evil by the law that such a delay as this, for the ends both of justice and public satisfaction, which is almost as important, should be made so much of. Townley was kept upwards of four months before his trial ; another month might have sufficed, and would scarcely have rendered his suspense more pro- tracted than it actually was.
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