we expect sane persons, of equal intelligence, and similarly situated, to pursue.

If derangement, which is insanity, mean only what we have assumed, how absurd is it to be looking to detect whether memory, hope, joy, fear, hunger, thirst, reason, understanding, wit, and other faculties, remain? So long as life lasts, they never cease to abide with man, whether he pursue his straight and natural way, or the crooked and unnatural course of the lunatic. If he be diseased, his faculties will not cease to act. They will only act differently. It is contended here that the prisoner is not deranged because he performed his daily task in the State Prison, and his occasional labor afterward; because he grinds his knives, fits his weapons, and handles the file, the axe and the saw, as he was instructed, and as he was wont to do. Now, the Lunatic Asylum at Utica has not an idle person in it, except the victims of absolute and incurable dementia, the last and worst stage of all insanity. Lunatics are almost the busiest people in the world. They have their prototypes only in children. One lunatic will make a garden, another drive the plough, another gather flowers. One writes poetry, another essays, another orations. In short, lunatics eat, drink, sleep, work, fear, love, hate, laugh, weep, mourn, die. They do all things that sane men do, but do them in some peculiar way. It is said, however, that this prisoner has hatred and anger, that he has remembered his wrongs, and nursed and cherished revenge; wherefore, he cannot be insane. Cowper, a moralist who had tasted the bitter cup of insanity, reasoned otherwise:

"But violence can never longer sleep

Than human passions please. In ev'ry heart
Are sown the sparks that kindle fi'ry war;
Occasion needs but fan them and they blaze,
The seeds of murder in the breast of man."

Melancholy springs oftenest from recalling and brooding over wrong and suffering. Melancholy is the first stage of madness, and it is only recently that the less accurate name of monomania has been substituted in the place of melancholy. Melancholy is the foster-mother of anger and revenge. Until 1830, our statutory definition of lunatics was in the terms "disorderly persons who, if left at large, might endanger the lives of others." Our laws now regard them as merely disorderly and dangerous, and society acquiesces, unless madness rise so high, that the madman slays his imaginary enemy, and then he is pronounced sane.

The prisoner lived with Nathaniel Lynch, at the age of eight or nine, and labored occasionally for him during the last winter. Lynch visited him in the jail, and asked him if he remembered him, and remembered living with him. The prisoner answered, Yes. Lynch asked the prisoner whether he was whipped while there, and by whom, and why. From his answers, it appeared that he had been whipped by his mistress for playing truant, and that he climbed a rough board fence in his night-clothes and fled to his mother. Upon this evidence, the learned professor from Geneva College, Dr. SPENCER, builds an argument that the prisoner has conception, sensation, memory, imagination, and association, and is most competent for the scaffold. Now, here are some verses to which I would invite the doctor's attention:

"Shut up in dreary gloom, like convicts are,

In company of murderers! Oh, wretched fate!

If pity e'er extended through the frame,

Or sympathy's sweet cordial touched the heart,

Pity the wretched maniac who knows no blame,

Absorbed in sorrow, where darkness, poverty, and every curse impart."

Here is evidence not merely of memory and other faculties, but of what we call genius. Yet these verses are a sad effusion of Thomas Lloyd, a man-slaying maniac in Bedlam.

The first question of fact here, gentlemen, as in every case where insanity is gravely insisted upon, is this:

IS THE PRISONER FEIGNING OR COUNTERFEITING INSANITY? What kind of man is he? A youth of twenty-three, without learning, education, or experience. Dr. SPENCER raises him just above the brute; Dr. BIGELOW exalts him no higher; and Dr. DIMON thinks that he has intellectual capacity not exceeding that of a child of ten years, with the knowledge of one of two or three. These are the people's witnesses. All the witnesses concur in these estimates of his mind.

Can you conceive of such a creature comprehending such a plot, and standing up in his cell in the jail, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, and month after month, carrying on such a fraud; and all the while pouring freely into the ears of inquisitors curious, inquisitors friendly, and inquisitors hostile, without discrimination or alarm, or apparent hesitation or suspicion, with "child-like simplicity," as our witnesses describe it, and with "entire docility," as it is described by the witnesses for the people, confessions of crime which, if they fail to be received as

evidences of insanity, must constitute an insurmountable barrier to his acquittal?

I am ashamed for men who, without evidence of the prisoner's dissimulation, and in opposition to the unanimous testimony of all the witnesses, that he is sincere, still think that this poor fool may deceive them. If he could feign, and were feigning, would he not want some counsel, some friend, if not to advise and assist, at least to inform him of the probable success of the fraud? And yet no one of his counsel or witnesses has ever conversed with him, but in a crowd of adverse witnesses; and for myself, I have not spoken with him in almost two months, and during the same period have never looked upon him elsewhere than here, in the presence of the Court and of the multitude.

Would a sane man hold nothing back? admit everything? to every body? affect no ignorance? no forgetfulness? no bewilder-. ment? no confusion? no excitement? no delirium?

Dr. RAY, in his Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, (p. 333) gives us very different ideas from all this, of those who can feign, and of the manner of counterfeiting:

"A person who has not made the insane a subject of study, cannot simulate madness, so as to deceive a physician well acquainted with the disease. Mr. HAASLAM declares that to sustain the character of a paroxysm of active insanity, would require a continuity of exertion beyond the power of a sane person. Dr. CoNOLLY affirms that he can hardly imagine a case which would be proof against an efficient system of observation.

The grand fault committed by impostors is, that they overdo the character they

assume.

The really mad, except in the acute stage of the disease, are, generally speaking, not readily recognized as such by a stranger, and they retain so much of the rational as to require an effort to detect the impairment of their faculties.

Generally speaking, after the acute stage has passed off, a maniac has no difficulty in remembering his friends and acquaintances, the places he has been accustomed to frequent, names, dates, and events, and the occurrences of his life. The ordinary relations of things are, with some exceptions, as easily and clearly perceived as ever, and his discrimination of character seems to be marked by his usual shrewdness.

*

*

A person simulating mania will frequently deny all knowledge of men and things with whom he has always been familiar.”

And now, gentlemen, I will give you a proof of the difference between this real science and the empiricism upon which the counsel for the people rely, in this cause. JEAN PIERRE was brought before the Court of Assizes in Paris, in 1824, accused of forgery, swindling, and incendiarism. He feigned insanity. A commission of eminent physicians examined him, and detected his imposture by his pretended forgetfulness, and confusion in answering interrogatories concerning his life and history. The most prominent of these questions are set down in the books.-Ray, p. 338.) VOL. 1-28.

I submitted these questions and answers, with a statement of JEAN PIERRE'S case to Dr. SPENCER, and he, governed by the rules which have controlled him in the present cause, pronounced the impostor's answers to be evidence of insanity, because they showed a decay of memory.

Again, gentlemen, look at the various catechisms in which this prisoner has been exercised for two months, as a test of his sanity. Would any sane man have propounded a solitary one of all those questions to any person whom he believed to be of sound mind? Take an instance. On one occasion, Dr. WILLARD, a witness for the people, having exhausted the idiot's store of knowledge and emotion, expressed a wish to discover whether the passion of fear had burned out, and employing Mr. Morgan's voice, addressed the prisoner thus: "Bill, they're going to take you out to kill you. They're going to take you out to kill you, Bill." The poor creature answered nothing. "What do you think of it, Bill?" Answer: "I don't think about it-I don't believe it." "Bill," continues the inquisitor, with louder and more terrific vociferation, "they're going to kill you, and the doctors want your bones; what do you think of it, Bill?" The prisoner answers: "I don't think about it -I don't believe it." The Doctor's case was almost complete, but he thought that perhaps the prisoner's stupidity might arise from inability to understand the question. Therefore, lifting his voice still higher, he continues: "Did you ever see the doctors have any bones? Did you ever see the doctors have any bones, Bill?" The fool answers: "I have." "Then where did you see them, Bill?" "In Dr. Pitney's office." And thus, by this dialogue, the sanity of the accused is, in the judgment of Dr. WILLARD, completely established. It is no matter that if the prisoner had believed the threat, his belief would have proved him sane; if he had been terrified, his fears would have sent him to the gallows; if he had forgotten the fleshless skeleton he had seen, he would have been convicted of falsehood, and of course have been sane. Of such staple as this are all the questions which have been put to the prisoner by all the witnesses. There is not an interrogatory which any one of you would put to a child twelve years old.

Does the prisoner feign insanity? One hundred and eight witnesses have been examined, of whom seventy-two appeared on behalf of the people. No one of them has expressed a belief that he was simulating. On the contrary, every witness to whom the

inquiry has been addressed, answers that the sincerity of the prisoner is beyond question.

Mr. JOHN R. HOPKINS says: "I watched him sharply to discover any simulation, but I couldn't. There was no deception. If there had been I should have detected it." ETHAN A. WARDEN, President of the village of Auburn, with whom the prisoner had the most extended conversation, says: "I suppose he thought he spoke the truth."

IRA CURTIS, Esq., testifies: "It did occur to me whether the prisoner, with his appearance of sincerity, was attempting to play off a game of imposture. The thought vanished in a moment. There was too much before me. I have no doubt of his sincerity. I don't believe it is in the power of all in this room to teach him to carry on a piece of deception for fifteen minutes, because he would forget what he set about."

Dr. HERMANCE says: "He spoke with so much sincerity."

The Rev. JOHN M. AUSTIN says: "He did not dissemble. I should suppose him the shrewdest man in the world if he did dissemble. I have not the slightest doubt that there was no attempt to dissemble."

The tenor of the testimony of all the witnesses for the prisoner, learned and unlearned, is the same.

The witnesses for the people, learned and unlearned, concur.

Dr. BIGELOW says: “He has betrayed no suspicion of me. He has manifested entire docility to me."

Dr. SPENCER describes the manner of the witness in giving all his answers, as " entirely frank."

Dr. CLARY concludes the question of sincerity against all doubt. He says: "It seemed to me that he either thought he was reading or that he meant to deceive, and I don't think the latter, for he always seemed to be very frank."

It being thus absolutely settled, gentlemen, 'that the prisoner does not simulate insanity, I pass to the second proposition in this defence, which is, that

IT IS PROVED THAT THE PRISONER IS CHANGED.

I shall first ask you to compare him now with himself in the earlier and happier period of his life.

NATHANIEL HERSEY, a witness for the people, a colored man, knew the prisoner seven years ago, and says: "He was a lively, smart boy, laughed, played, and was good-natured; understood as well as any body; could tell a story right off; talked like other folks.”

This is the testimony of an associate of the prisoner at the age of sixteen.

JOHN DEPUY is a brother-in-law of the accused, and has known him more than twelve years. This witness says: the prisoner "was an active, smart boy, lively as any other you could find, a good boy to work; set him to work any where and he would do it; sociable and understood himself, and had some learning; could read in the spelling book pretty well; could read off simple reading lessons in the spelling book, smooth and decent."

DAVID WINNER, a colored man, was the friend and companion of the parents of the prisoner. He says: "When this boy was twelve or thirteen years old, he was a pretty sprightly lad, sensible, very lively. I saw no difference between him and any other boy of sense, at that time."

NATHANIEL LYNCH, a witness for the people, in whose house the prisoner was an inmate at the age of eight years, says: "He was a lively, playful boy, almost always smiling and laughing, and appeared to be a lively, laughing, playful boy."

DANIEL ANDRUS, a witness for the people, testifies that he employed the prisoner eight years ago, and talked with him then as he would with any other laboring man.