Insanity in this new posture, and view it in this new light. And, at the very first glance, we recognise the extreme simplicity and convenience of the practice thus recommended. One simple deed, one single punishment for all alike! Quick, sharp, stern, cheap retributive justice-but such justice as no painter or sculptor ever yet imagined; the bandage very tight over the eyes, the scales nowhere! If, instead of talking of Justice, Smollett had spoken of Mercy, he would have commanded my sympathy, though I must have withheld my assent; for I know enough of madmen to believe that the very kindest thing we could do to most of them would be to kill them; and this is equally true of many a victim of hopeless, incurable bodily suffering. But to talk of Justice and the punishment of the Insane in the same breath is to outrage both Logic and Humanity.

In my next section I shall submit the question of the proper treatment of the Insane Homicide to the searching ordeal of figures.

SECTION V.

THE LANGUAGE OF FIGURES.

As men recede from nature, and approach nearer and nearer, by successive developments, to that artificial state which we call civilisation, they abandon more and more such cheap rights as revenge in exchange for the more costly processes of law. But, in doing so, they do not forget that revenge itself has always blended with it a rude sentiment of equality and justice. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe," "life for life," is the language. of nature; as "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," is the key-note of all primitive legislation. As life becomes more artificial, distinctions come to be made between murder and manslaughter, and the shedder of blood by misadventure is provided with means of escape. At length when sinfulness ceases to be looked upon as the sole source of crime, and madness comes to be recognised as an important element in our social life, and a madman becomes a shedder of blood, and is tried for murder, the question of responsibility and the plea

of insanity force an entrance among the other difficult questions which exercise and perplex our courts of law.

Retaining the punishment of death, as the nations are wont to do that display the truest tenderness for human life, it is their constant aim to restrict it to those homicides who cannot be shown to suffer from any form of mental unsoundness. To handle such laws with effect, judges and juries must be patient, intelligent, and enlightened, and the public must not only restrain that natural indignation against the shedder of blood, which not to feel would be a fatal sign of national decadence and decay, but they must resist to the uttermost that subtle form of cruelty which, losing sight of the manifold and wide-spreading miseries that murderers inflict on innocent persons, concentrates all its pity on the criminal himself, keeping up that incessant outcry against hanging and flogging which disgraces the times in which we live, just as the strange indifference to life and sensitive respect for property of our ancestors throw discredit upon them.

But, happily, that state of things has passed away, and we may now claim to have realised Lord Hale's happy medium, avoiding equally "inhumanity towards the defects of human nature, and "too great an indulgence to great crimes." From this via media two misapprehensions threaten to draw or drive us. The first is an exaggerated estimate of the number of persons on whom the sentence of death is carried into effect; the second a like exaggeration of the efficacy of the punishment of death as a deterrent of the crime of murder. The first

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is obviously open to correction by figures: the application of the numerical method to the second is not so apparent at first sight. I will treat the two questions in their turn.

1. Those who condemn the death punishment on principle will attach little importance to figures, but those who would retain it, will not think the worse of it if it should demonstrate its own efficiency by the small number of persons to whom it ultimately applies. For it should be well understood that, thanks to the merciful spirit in which the law is administered, and to the successive acts of elimination to which the original figures are subject, trials for murder, averaging 67 per annum, dwindle down to executions averaging 11, and even falling as low as 4 in one year, as was the case in 1871. Nor is this an exceptionally low figure; for I find that no less than three times in the seventy years, from 1805 to 1874 inclusive, the number of executions in a year fell to 5. This happened in the years 1806, 1838, and 1854. The largest number recorded in a year is 25, and that number presents itself twice; once in 1813, again in 1817, but never since that date-the second year after the battle of Waterloo.

I may add, as a fact of great interest, that the figures of the table from which I am quoting confirm in a very striking manner the truth first established by John Howard, that crimes of violence decrease in times of war, and are subject to a marked increase in times of peace. This is what a little reflection would lead us to expect, for many of the men who stain our peaceful

annals by deeds of violence, naturally transfer their operations to foreign lands when war breaks out.

It is also very interesting to observe the large fluctuations that occur in these figures from year to year, how the 5 executions of 1806 grow to 16 in the year following, and the 4 of 1871 rise to 15 in 1872, while the 8 executions of 1865 are intermediate between the 19 of 1864 and the 12 of 1866.

The interest which attaches to these figures is not diminished when they are reduced to ratios of twentyfive millions, which may be roughly taken as the existing population of England and Wales. These curious fluctuations do not disappear even when we gather the figures into groups of ten years. In the seventy years from 1805 to 1874 inclusive there are seven such periods, and these are the figures that represent the executions in those intervals of time; all calculated to the scale of 25 millions:

312, 351, 222, 171, 127, 171,* 116.

I have marked with an asterisk the decade which interrupts the rule of progressive decrease from the maximum of 351 (being the decade which comprises the early years of peace) down to 116, which displays the smallest figure for the ten years ending 1874. It will be seen that this figure is barely one-third of the maximum, 351.

Taking one year with another of this last period of ten years, it appears that the average number of annual executions has reached the low figure of less than twelve,