ing and stealing. We know of one lady who stole her children's pocket-money to satisfy her insane craving.

Much interest is connected with the question as to whether the dipsomaniac ought to be confined in a lunatic asylum; whether the law has any right to interfere with the liberty of a man to make himself drunk when he pleases; whether it be like the lord mentioned by De Quincey, who used to say, "Please God, I shall be drunk upon Saturday next," or be like him who was always what the Scotch call "boozy," so much so that some country folk surmised that it would be some time before he came to his senses either in heaven or hell, and that then he would wake to the sound of the last trump with a headache. But looking at the subject from an 1148 ordinary common-sense view, we believe that, as in many cases it can be proved that an individual has lost entire control over his actions, in certain relations of which incessant drunkenness is the significant fact, and as to deprive such a person of liberty for a season is to do him no wrong, but rather the compulsory right of making him abstain from what day by day gains an ascendancy over him, and day by day renders ultimate recovery and useful citizenship less and less possible, it is well to resort to restraint in cases in which these facts are capable of being proved. That habits can be formed under an absolutely necessary abstinence we do not doubt, and we believe that the careful diminution of the excitant as the ordinary human sentiments begin to operate beneficially, can only be properly trusted to a medical man. In the northern half of this kingdom many persons laboring under dipsomania are confined in houses set apart for their detention, and we are informed that there is at least one similar institution in the United States. There are doubtless many persons confined in those institutions that cannot with any propriety be called insane, but we would ascribe this circumstance to the irregular method of confinement of patients in these establishments, which are not under the ordinary control and supervision of the Commissioners in Lunacy, and to the ignorance which exists with regard to this disease in the profession generally. But when we come to examine the legal relations of intemperance, we shall have another

and better opportunity of considering this and some cognate questions.

PART IV.-PYROMANIA.

? 220. Arson.-The malicious and wilful burning of the house or the outhouse of another man' is looked upon by the law as a felony. Until recent times, the setting fire to such a building, any person being therein, was punishable by death, and even at the present time it is, if need be, punishable by penal servitude for life. It is not merely the setting fire to a dwelling-house that constitutes the crime of arson, but he who burns a church or chapel, office, mill, malthouse or granary, or any building used in trade or manufacture, or farm-building, etc., is guilty of felony. Under the old law, the mere setting fire to a building did not fall within the description incendet et combussit, and did not, therefore, amount to the crime of arson. Under the statute now in force, however, the offence consists in setting fire to a building, and therefore it is not necessary [149] that it should be burned or actually consumed. There is one word of some importance in the definition of this crime, and that is the word malicious. Malice as we use the word in the world-means ill-will, hatred, accompanied with a desire to injure the object of the sentiment; but malice in law consists in "the wilful doing of a prohibited or injurious act without lawful excuse;" or in law it is understood to mean any wicked or mischievous intention. In a prosecution for murder, which in the indictment is alleged to have been committed "of malice aforethought," it is not essential to show that the prisoner bore any ill-will to his victim, nor would any proof of the absence of enmity be a good defensive excuse if the charge was made out in every other respect; and the word malice, as used in the definition of arson, has this meaning. If the burning is

1 See 24 and 25 Vic. c. 100.

Cr. L. Com. 6th Rep. p. 52, per Littledale, J.; McPherson v. Daniels, 10 Barn. & C. 272.

See per Best, J., Rex v. Harvey, 2 Barn. & C. 268; Reg. v. Cooke, 8 Car. & P. 582; Rex v. Farrington, Russ & Ry. 207.

not malicious, it only amounts to a trespass, for no amount of carelessness or negligence can fill out the meaning of the word malice. A servant, however, whose duty it is to be careful, who through negligence sets fire to a house or outhouses, may be sent to the house of correction for eighteen months.

2221. Pyromania.-Notwithstanding the severity of the punishment which the law has prudently associated with a proved commission of the crime of arson, the offence is not unfrequently committed, and upon very many of the occasions where houses, farm-buildings, and the like, are set fire to, it is by those who are under the influence of the temporary excitement to which psychologists have given the name of pyromania. Many insane persons, from the simple desire to destroy; from the wish to burn the house down, that they may perish by a sort of quasi-suicide; from the mere wish to give annoyance, will, upon occasion, set fire to anything within their reach; but such cases do not fall within the meaning of the word pyromania. That a propensity to set fire to, and to look at the burning of, anything that will burn, does in some morbid conditions find its way to prominence in the democracy of mind, and makes a despotism of that republic, seems certain. It is certainly curious that what seems to ordinary men the means of a very limited gratification should in the mind diseased be the cause of a perfect ecstacy of excitement.

? 222. As to Motives.150 What a grand history might be written of the lives of motives. Every age has its own loadstar motive. Every country has some motive which to it is more valuable than life, for which it will make war, for which it will starve and perish. And individual minds have god-motives, which rule them, some right, some wrong. But the power of motives varies in every individual mind, and in the same individual at different times and seasons. Who can look back and say, as he remembers the self of a year ago, I am the same man now that I was then? I am influenced by

But see Reg. v. Davies, 1 Foster & F. 69.

the same desires, and to the same extent? No one can say so, and speak truth. Men's minds are as unstable as the sea, which has shifting tides on shifting sands. But some laws can be deduced even from those changes. The same objects are not sought after by boys and men: the same motives are powerful or powerless as the mind is weak or strong-as the life has many objects which minister to it, or few.

223. The Love of Bright Objects.-There is one liking of children which men put away to a great extent with other childish things, and that is the love of the gaudy. The higher a man is in the intellectual scale the less he cares for mere brightness: the weaker the mind is the more will be its enjoyment in a blaze. Fireworks are for children or imbeciles: the little peepy stars which nobody looks at strike a man like Kant dumb. We believe that a close connection exists between this love of the bright and glaring and the propensity which we have already considered of theft in connection with glittering objects. Any brightness has an extraordinary influence over rudimentary minds. It is to be noted that the dress of men as they become more civilized becomes less gaudy. The moth dies with a "puff" in the candle. Pigeons will forsake home for the sake of a mirror. And one of the

most deadly baits used in fishing is the " spoon bait," which is bright and glittering. We believe, then, that the propensity to incendiary acts is connected with this inherent principle of weak minds, and as a proof, or sort of proof, of the assertion, we may state that this disorder is more frequently found in girls than in boys, and that in almost every case it occurs in early life, either about or under the period of puberty. We conclude that this motive has more force at such a time, owing to the development of the sexual functions, which invariably withdraws energy from the mental state. Marc is of opinion that it is manifested at this period in consequence of an abnormal or irregular development of those functions, which would bear out our theory if it could be proved to be true.

224. Where Act is dictated by Revenge.[151] Many cases, however, occur in which the act seems to have been

dictated by feelings of revenge. And in such cases, even although there may be mental weakness, there does not appear to be sufficient ground either to regard it as pyromania or to hold the individual irresponsible for the act. In the other class of cases, where the impulse is so strong as to be in fact. irresistible, where the motives for not committing the crime, as looked at from the point of view of the accused, were as strong as they could be for doing it—as where the property was a man's own and uninsured-and still the act was done, there is good ground for regarding the individual as insane, although no very prominent intellectual features of disease may be discoverable.

225. In connection with Delusions. When it is associated with delusions the conclusion of the insane origin of the act can generally be traced, as in a case where a girl believes that God has told her to burn down a certain church, or that her mission is to give light to the world by setting fire to haystacks. But there are many instances in which no delusion could be discovered, in which the act was in precisely the same relation to the individual that we have found the appropriation of property to be in some cases, and where the only reason that can be given by the individual is that "She couldn't help it." Jonathan Martin set fire to York Minster. There could be no doubt as to his insanity, even apart from this act. It is interesting to observe in his mind, as manifested in all his pictures, that love of the gaudy which we have been considering. He paints in colors which almost wound the eye.

1

226. Cases of Pyromania. Thus, Marc mentions the case of a boy of sixteen, who, after struggling with an impulse to set a friend's father's house on fire, at last yielded, or after a year could not restrain the impulse.2 Ray mentions the case of "a girl of quiet, inoffensive disposition, and whose character had hitherto been exemplary, who made seven different attempts at incendiarism, in a village near Cologne.

! Cases of pyromania, as an incident of insanity, are given in Friedrich's Blatter for 1870, p. 33, and for 1871, p. 262.

Marc. vol. ii.. p. 291.