Prisoner, in naming me for his Counsel, has not obtained the assistance of a person who is disposed to carry the doctrine of insanity in his defence, so far as even the books would warrant me in carrying it. Some of the cases, that of Lord Ferrers for instance, which I shall consider hereafter, distinguished from the present, would not, in my mind, bear the shadow of an argument, as a defence against an indictment for murder; I cannot allow the protection of insanity to a man who only exhibits violent passions and malignant resentments, acting upon real circumstances; who is impelled to evil from no morbid delusions; but who proceeds upon the ordinary perceptions of the mind.-I cannot consider such a man as falling within the protection which the law gives, and is bound to give, to those whom it has pleased God, for mysterious causes, to visit with this most afflicting calamity.

He alone can be so emancipated, whose disease (call it what you will) consists, not merely in seeing with a prejudiced eye, or with odd and absurd particularities, differing, in many respects, from the contemplations of sober sense, upon the actual existences of things; but, he only whose whole reasoning and corresponding conduct, though governed by the ordinary dictates of reason, proceed upon something which has no foundation or existence.

Gentlemen, it has pleased God so to visit the unhappy man before you ;-to shake his reason in its citadel ;-to cause him to build up as realities, the

most impossible phantoms of the mind, and to be impelled by them as motives irresistible: the whole fabric being nothing but the unhappy vision of his disease-existing no where else—having no foundation whatsoever in the very nature of things.

Gentlemen, it has been stated by the AttorneyGeneral, and established by evidence, which I am in no condition to contradict, nor have, indeed, any interest in contradicting, that, when the Prisoner bought the pistol which he discharged at, or towards His Majesty, he was well acquainted with the nature and use of it;-that, as a soldier, he could not but know that in his hands it was a sure instrument of death;-that, when he bought the gunpowder, he knew it would prepare the pistol for its use ;-that, when he went to the playhouse, he knew he was going there, and every thing connected with the scene, as perfectly as any other person.-I freely admit all this: I admit, also, that every person who listened to his conversation and observed his deportment upon his apprehension, must have given pre cisely the evidence delivered by His Royal Highness the Duke of York; and that nothing like insanity appeared to those who examined him.-But what then? I conceive, Gentlemen, that I am more in the habit of examination, than either that illustrious person, or the witnesses from whom you have heard this account; yet I well remember (indeed I never can forget it), that since the Noble and Learned Judge has presided in this Court, I examined, 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 madhouse 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

rant 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. Gentlemen, 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 inan 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 neighbourhood) I obtained 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 believe in the same mad-house at Hoxton) when he was sane. He underwent the most severe examination by the Defendant's Counsel without exposing his complaint; but Doctor Battye, having come upon the Fench 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

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but by writing his letters in cherry-juice, and throwing them into the river which surrounded the tower, where the Princess received them in a boat. There existed, 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 cross-examined 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

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