amined, for the greater part of a day, in this very place, an unfortunate gentleman who had indicted a most affectionate brother, together with the keeper of a mad house at Hoxton, for having imprisoned him as a lunatic; whilst, according to his evidence, he was in his perfect senses. I was, unfortunately, not instructed in what his lunacy consisted, although my instructions left me no doubt of the fact; but, not having the clue, he completely foiled me in every attempt to expose his infirmity. You may believe that I left no means unemployed which long experience dictated; but without the smallest effect. The day was wasted, and the prosecutor, by the most affecting history of unmerited suffering, appeared to the judge and jury, and to a humane English audience, as the victim of the most wanton and barbarous oppression: at last Dr. Sims came into court, who had been prevented, by business, from an earlier attendance;and whose name, by the bye, I observe to-day in the list of the witnesses for the crown. From Dr. Sims I soon learned that the very man whom I had been above an hour examining, and with every possible effort which counsel are so much in the habit of exerting, believed himself to be the Lord and Saviour of mankind; not merely at the time of his confinement, which was alone necessary for my defence; but during the whole time that he had been triumphing over every attempt to surprise him in the concealment of his disease. I then affected to lament the indecency of my igno

Fant examination, when he expressed his forgiveness, and said, with the utmost gravity and emphasis, in the face of the whole court, "I AM THE CHRIST;" and so the cause ended. Gentle. men, this is not the only instance of the power of concealing this malady; I could consume the day if I were to enumerate them; but there is one so extremely remarkable, that I cannot help stating it. Being engaged to attend the assizes at Chester upon a question of lunacy, and having been told that there had been a memorable case tried before Lord Mansfield in this place, I was anxious to procure a report of it; and from that great man himself (who within these walls will ever be reverenced, being then retired in his extreme old age, to his seat near London, in my own neighborhood) I ob tained the following account of it: "A man of the name of Wood," said Lord Mansfield, "had indicted Dr. Monro for keeping him as a prisoner (I be lieve in the same mad-house at Hoxton) when he was sane. He underwent the most severe examination by the defendant's counsel without expos ing his complaint; but Dr. Battye, having come upon the bench by me, and having desired me to ask him what was become of the PRINCESS whom he had corresponded with in cherry-juice, he showed in a moment what he was. He answered, that there was nothing at all in that, because, having been (as every body knew) imprisoned in a high tower, and being debarred the use of ink, he had no other means of correspondence but by writing

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his letters in cherry-juice, and throwing them into the river which surrounded the tower, where the princess received them in a boat. There ex isted, of course, no tower, no imprisonment, no writing in cherry-juice, no river, no boat; but the whole the inveterate phantom of a morbid imagination. I immediately," continued Lord Mansfield, "directed Dr. Monro to be acquitted; but this man, Wood, being a merchant in Philpot Lane, and having been carried through the city in his way to the mad-house, he indicted Dr. Monro over again, for the trespass and imprisonment in London, knowing that he had lost his cause by speaking of the Princess at Westminster; and such," said Lord Mansfield, "is the extraordinary subtlety and cunning of madmen, that when he was crossexamined on the trial in London, as he had successfully been before, in order to expose his madness, all the ingenuity of the bar, and all the authority of the court, could not make him say a single syllable upon that topic, which had put an end to the indictment before, although he still had the same indelible impression upon his mind, as he signified to those who were near him; but conscious that the delusion had occasioned his defeat at Westminster, he obstinately persisted in holding it back."*

Now, gentlemen, let us look to the application of these cases. I am not examining, for the pre

*This evidence at Westminster was then proved against him by the short-hand writer.

sent, whether either of these persons ought to have been acquitted, if they had stood in the place of the prisoner now before you; that is quite a distinct consideration, which we shall come to hereafter. The direct application of them is only this: that if I bring before you such evidence of the prisoner's insanity as, if believed to have really existed, shall, in the opinion of the court, as the rule for your verdict in point of law, be sufficient for his delivę. rance, then that you ought not to be shaken in giv ing full credit to such evidence, notwithstanding the report of those who were present at his apprehension, who describe him as discovering no symptom whatever of mental incapacity or disorder; because I have shown you that insane persons frequently appear in the utmost state of ability and composure, even in the highest paroxysms of insanity, except when frenzy is the characteristic of the disease. In this respect, the cases I have cited to you, have the most decided application; because they apply to the overthrow of the whole of the evidence (admitting at the same time the truth of it), by which the prisoner's case can alone be encountered.

But it is said, that whatever delusions may overshadow the mind, every person ought to be responsible for crimes, who has the knowledge of good and evil. I think I can presently convince you, that there is something too general in this mode of considering the subject; and you do not, therefore, find any such proposition in the language of the celebrat

ed writer alluded to by the Attorney-General in his speech. Let me suppose that the character of an insane delusion consisted in the belief that some given person was any brute animal, or an inanimate being (and such cases have existed), and that upon the trial of such a lunatic for murder, you firmly, upon your oaths, were convinced, upon the uncontradicted evidence of an hundred persons, that he believed the man he had destroyed, to have been a potter's vessel; that it was quite impossible to doubt that fact, although to all other intents and purposes he was sane; conversing, reasoning, and acting, as men not in any manner tainted with insanity, converse, and reason, and conduct themselves: suppose further, that he believed the man whom he destroyed, but whom he destroyed as a potter's vessel, to be the property of another: and that he had malice against such supposed person, and that he meant to injure him, knowing the act he was doing to be malicious and injurious; and that, in short, he had full knowledge of all the principles of good and evil; yet would it be possible to convict such a person of murder, if from the influence of his disease, he was ignorant of the relation he stood in to the man he had destroyed, and was utterly unconscious that he struck at the life of a human being? I only put this case, and many others might be brought as examples to illustrate, that the knowledge of good and evil is too general a description.

I really think, however, that the Attorney-General and myself do not, in substance, very mate