and not the actual knowledge. That is to say, the man must be in such a state of mind that it is his own fault if he does not steadily view, and pass a judgment agreeing with the judgment of the law, upon the quality of the act before him. A man may know that an act is right, or think that it is right, and yet be perfectly able to know that the law thinks it wrong; and if he is so circumstanced he is responsible to the law notwithstanding his private opinion, for the law tolerates no acts done in opposition to it, however honestly.

"He must be disabled by mental disease. It is not any disability that will be enough. A man may be disabled by passion or by prejudice from following the reasoning of the law; but unless it is mental disease which so disables him, either by weakening his intellectual powers generally, or by introducing into the circumstances of the case delusions of such a nature as to prevent his accurately judging whether the proposed act is wrong, he will not be excused.

"His disability must refer to the specific act. It must be observed that it is not required that the prisoner should be entirely destitute of all knowledge of right and wrong. This limitation was probably introduced by the Judges from the Scotch law. In Alison's Principles of the Criminal Law, it is said, 'The great characteristic of insanity which originates in the general case, in an excessive turning of the mind to its own affairs, consists in an alienation of reason with reference to itself, and in the illusions under which it labours, and the chimeras it has nourished in regard to its own concerns. Few men are mad about others, or things in general,-many about themselves. Although, therefore, the pannel understands perfectly the distinction between right and wrong, yet, if he labours, as is generally the case, under an illusion and deception as to his own particular case, is thereby disabled from applying it correctly to his own conduct, he is in that state of mental alienation which renders him not criminally answerable for his actions.'

"He must be disabled from knowing that the act is wrong. It is upon this word that the greatest questions have arisen. I have before remarked upon the reasons why the difficulties which have been connected with it appear to me to be exaggerated. I will now attempt to show, that without any theory of morality at all, or in connexion with any such theory whatever, a very distinct sense may be attached to this word, and very distinct questions raised upon it for a jury. It must be observed, in the first place, that wrong means that which the law, and not that which the prisoner considers wrong. If it were not so, a man not believing in morality at all could not be protected by any amount of madness, for as he did not believe in wrong when he was sane, he could not be prevented from perceiving that an action was wrong by madness. Speaking with reference to any rule whatever, I think that in common language there would be a distinction between an irregular and a wrong act. The one violates the letter, and the other the spirit of the rule. If, in working a multiplication sum, a person were, instead of multiplying 7 by 7, to write 77's in a line and add them up, he would act irregularly; if he were to compute them to amount to 50, he would act wrongly.

"A somewhat analogous distinction, I think, obtains between what is merely illegal and what is wrong. A man may be said to act illegally who does some act which violates the letter of the law. If he acts illegally, knowing but disregarding the reasons which induced the Legislator to make the law, he does wrong,

"Thus, if a man had just a sufficient glimmer of reason left to remember as a fact that people were hanged for murder, but not enough to know the circumstances connected with murder which make it criminal, namely, the distress and insecurity which it causes, I think that he might well be said to be disabled by disease from knowing that murder was wrong. Upon any theory of * "Page 465."

morality whatever, the circumstances which surround an act give that act its moral character, and the ability to distinguish enough of these to be able to appreciate the reasons of the law in forbidding the act, is surely a very different thing from the vestiges of memory which would suggest that the act was forbidden.

"Some acquaintance with the reasons of the law is presumed continually in its administration. If it were not so, the maxim that the law is the perfection of reason, and that what is no reason is no law, would be a mere boast, whereas, in fact, the greater part of the law of contracts and of wrongs-the law which regulates the common transactions of life-has grown up from the rational amplification of various elementary principles and rules. It may, therefore, be presumed that the criminal law is not a mere set of iron regulations punishing all who violate them, without regard to any other reason for doing so than the sic volo sic jubeo of irresponsible power, but a system laid down for the government of rational beings, whose responsibility depends upon their possession of such an amount of reason as may enable them to appreciate the grounds of some of those obvious enactments, without which no society ever existed.

"I think that the word wrong is thus understood by juries in general. If it were necessary to be more explicit, I should be inclined to think that the following would be very nearly equivalent to the ordinary question proposed to them,-Was the prisoner prevented by mental disease from appreciating the reasons for which the law has forbidden the crime of which he is accused, or from applying them to his own case?

Applying the rule of law thus interpreted to the various cases which may arise, I think it will be approved of by common sense, and I much doubt whether any other would. To take the vexed questions of what are called moral and impulsive insanity: Can any course be suggested more reasonable than that of saying, Let these strange impulses be shown to be as they are often called irresistible, and they shall exempt the subject of them from punishment, because they sustain a traverse of the averment in the indictment that the act done was wilful?

"If the law is to rest satisfied with proof, not of an irresistible, but merely of an unresisted impulse, it gives a sanction to all sorts of crime, yet the person is as undeniably under the impulse of disease when he feels a resistible as when he feels an irresistible impulse. To illustrate this, I would refer to the case, which is still fresh in general recollection, of Mrs. Brough. Let us consider how far the public would have been satisfied if that case had been determined upon the ground that any person suffering under insanity was to be acquitted. I assume hypothetically that the facts of the case were theseas at any rate they well may have been,―That the woman, being unfaithful to her husband, thought of murdering her children from a sort of Medea-like fury, and that a rush of blood to the head acting on an excited brain was the immediate occasion of that thought being transmuted into action; in short, that if she had either been chaste or healthy the act would not have been done. As the law now stands, the question for the jury on this state of facts would be, whether, under all the circumstances of the case, the act was voluntary? If the law were altered, the question would have been, had disease anything whatever to do with the act? This mode of treating the case would have prevented the question as to whether the impulse was irresistible from being even raised. The law having declared that any insane impulse should be a justification, the only question would have been the existence of such an impulse. As it was, the verdict gave ground to many criticisms, even though it was in effect that the impulse was irresistible. Suppose the result of the trial had only been to show that there was such an impulse, what would have been the feeling on the subject?

"Apply the law as it stands to the case of insane delusions. Bellingham, I will suppose (for in all these cases I assume the facts merely for the sake of illustration), shot Mr. Perceval, because he was under an insane delusion that Mr. Windham had injured him, and under a sane delusion that the person at whom he had fired was Mr. Windham. A verdict of not guilty, under the law as it now stands, would have been equivalent to saying, the disease in Bellingham's mind, which produced the delusion, extended so far that he was incapable of understanding that the law would regard him as causing a public and private calamity, and as setting a bad example. A verdict of not guilty under the proposed amendment of the new law, would be consistent with a state of the prisoner's mind, affording as little excuse for what he did as his mistake as to the identity of his victim.

"Or take the case of Hadfield. Hadfield thought that he was our Lord; that it was necessary for the salvation of the world that he should die; that he ought not to kill himself; that firing at George III., or in his direction, he should be hanged, and that the world would be saved.

"Interpret wrong in this case to mean illegal, and Hadfield could not have been acquitted. The very reason of his conduct was, that his act was illegal, and that he should be punished for it; and yet if he were punished it is hard to say who ought to be acquitted. The verdict of not guilty actually returned amounted to this. True it is, that Hadfield knew what he was doing, and knew that he was breaking the law, but his delusions introduced into his mind a set of considerations-surrounded the act he was doing with a set of circumstances, which entirely prevented his estimating its character.

"Upon the facts which I have stated, I think no one will doubt that Belling ham was rightly punished (though, in fact, his trial was unjust, on account of the refusal of the Judge to postpone it for the collection of evidence), and that Hadfield was rightly acquitted. Could any course except that adopted by the law have secured that result?

"A suggestion, originating, according to Mr. Prichard, with the German jurist Hoffbauer, has been made, that the delusion should, for the purposes of justice, be considered as real; and that principle has to a certain extent been adopted by the fourteen Judges in their judgment referred to above. If a person,' ask the Lords, under an insane delusion as to existing facts, commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?' The Judges answer, assuming that he labours under such partial delusion only, and is not in other respects insane, we think he must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real.' It will be observed that the Judges do not say that the existence of an insane delusion, which, if real, would not justify the act done, may not be evidence to go to the jury on the question as to whether the prisoner knew that the act he was doing was wrong. Great injustice might be done to prisoners if this were not so.

"At the last Summer Assizes at Derby, a man was tried for murdering his child. It was proved that he believed that God had ordered him to do so; and he accordingly did it without concealment, but with every possible instance of contrivance and premeditation. Whether, if the delusion had been the fact, he would not have been still punishable in foro humano, is an extremely doubtful question. Persons with a settled sane conviction of such a doctrine-as was the case with the Thugs-were punished for what they did in consequence of it; but that such a delusion would or might introduce circumstances into the case, which would interfere with the estimate which the prisoner would form of the quality of the act he was doing, cannot be doubted, and a jury might very naturally say, a man under such a delusion could not be expected to understand that his action fell within the scope of the reasons which have induced the Legislature to forbid the murder.

"The law as it at present stands affords the insane every immunity consistent with the safety of society; for though mere proof of the existence of some insane delusion, or of what are called the moral and impulsive forms of insanity, will not per se justify a verdict of not guilty, yet it will in general raise such a presumption that the prisoner did not know that the particular act of which he was accused was wrong, that, in the absence of any proof of express malice, the jury will generally acquit upon that ground.

"In Buranelli's case-tried at the March Sessions at the Old Bailey-many instances of singularity of conduct on the part of the prisoner were given in evidence, and it was proved that he laboured under a positive delusion as to the symptoms of a particular complaint by which he was afflicted. There were, however, circumstances in the case which seemed to show that he had had a quarrel with the man whom he put to death. He was accordingly convicted and executed. If he had killed some one whom he had never seen before, and entirely without apparent motive, those circumstances, coupled with the strangeness of his conduct and the delusion of which he was the victim, would in all probability have procured his acquittal.

"I could hardly find an instance which illustrates more clearly the position for which I am contending; namely, that however the burden of proof may in the course of the investigation be shifted from one side to the other, the question to be ultimately solved is and ought to be, was the prisoner able to know that the act he was doing was wrong? The various misunderstandings which have taken place upon this subject mostly arise from confounding together the thing to be proved, and the means of proving it.

"No doubt proof of insanity generally, or of insane delusion specially, is strong presumptive evidence of the prisoner's irresponsibility; but it is evidence merely, and evidence of the effect of which the jury is the proper judge, and whatever faults may be found with juries, no one will charge them with giving too little weight to such evidence.

"I doubt whether it is possible to put a case of a person who wilfully and maliciously commits a crime whom the public would not wish to punish, if all the circumstances of the case were before them. I doubt whether any course of proceeding could make a nearer approach than is made by the present rules of law to the provision of means for the punishment of all such persons, and the exemption of all others.

"It is now an admitted principle of jurisprudence that the object of punishment is the prevention of crime, and that except in so far as it has that tendency it is an evil. The rules of law with respect to the punishment of madmen are in entire agreement with this principle, for it is notorious that mad people in general are as much acted upon by fear as those who are sane, as to those acts which are in any way under their own control. The cunning with which they will often conceal their insanity when examined on commissions of lunacy proves this conclusively. The law as it now stands recognises in their case the distinction that it would be useless to punish them for acts of which they cannot appreciate the criminality, because for such acts they would not anticipate punishment. A man, for example, might abstain from murder because he might suppose that he would be hanged for it; but that would not induce him to abstain from breaking crockery, yet he might be under a delu

*

* "When Martin, the incendiary of York Minster, was to be tried, various inmates of a madhouse were talking over his case. One of them remarked, 'Oh, they cannot punish him; he is one of us.' I have somewhere read of a madman who tried desperately to kill his keeper, and on being overpowered cried out, I will murder you yet; they can't hang me for it; I am mad!'

"In the debate in the House of Lords, on the 13th March, 1843, on this subject, Lord Brougham said, that Sir H. Halford had told him that madmen were as much, if not more liable to be influenced by fear than others."

NO. XXXII.

sion that he was breaking crockery when, in fact, he was killing another man. So, too, it would be useless to punish a man for an act which though in fact wrong he could not recognise as such on account of delusion. If a man fancied that God had ordered him to put another person to death, the fear of punishment would deter him but slightly, if the delusion were strong, probably not at all; for the mere fear of pain or of death has less deterring influence over persons contemplating crime, than the fear of that universal and solemnlypronounced disapproval of which an ignominious death is the outward and visible sign. In the case which I have supposed, this element of punishment would be quite wanting, for the man would say, 'If they knew the true quality of my action, they would approve of it. They put me to death not for what I have done, but for something else which they falsely suppose me to

have done.'

"It has been ingeniously argued, that the punishment of the sane is enough to deter from crime both sane and insane, and that upon this ground madmen might be exempted from punishment.

66

Nothing so entirely weakens the force of any course of conduct as capricious exceptions resting on no principle. Suppose it were enacted that out of 1000 persons convicted only 999 should be punished, and that every man on conviction should draw lots for the chance, would not the most ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us that such an enactment would diminish enormously the preventive effects of the law? The implied confession, that criminal law is only conventionally and traditionally necessary, that it is to be put into execution as reluctantly as possible, that crimes are not of much real importance, but that to satisfy existing prejudices they must be punished, would go far to destroy the moral force of any law whatever. I can see nothing but a less glaring form of this error in the proposal to free all madmen from responsibility; surely the proper course is not to snatch at an excuse for freeing a whole class from punishment, but to ascertain dispassionately the reasons which make it inexpedient to punish most of the members of that class, to extend impunity to those to whom those reasons apply, and to no others. This course the law at present adopts; can any other be suggested which would not involve it in gross injustice and inhumanity, or commit it to metaphysical and medical propositions of the truth of which it has no special means of judging?"

CLAIM OF PRIORITY IN THE REFORMATION OF THE
TREATMENT OF THE INSANE.*

In the last January number of this Journal, p. 72, we had occasion to refer to our previously strongly expressed conviction that to Pinel is due all the glory of having transformed the abode of the lunatic from a dungeon to a drawingroom or library. (January, 1854, p. 152.) We then alluded to our sentiments upon this well known fact in the history of Psychological Science, in consequence of a counter-claim recently advanced by M. Brierre de Boismont, on behalf of a comparatively obscure psychologist, M. Daquin, of Chambery. To that claim we gave the respect and attention to which we deemed it entitled from the high reputation of its advocate. A descendant, however, of the great Pinel has come forward to challenge the statements of M. Brierre de Boismont. Dr. C. Pinel vindicates the title of his illustrious ancestor to the exalted and glorious position hitherto accorded to him by his contemporaries and by posterity.

Justice to the memory of Pinel, and to the filial vindication thereof by his "De la Réforme de Traitement des Aliénés." Par Dr. C. Pinel, Neveu. pp. 16. Paris: 1855.