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 OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND PLEAS IN BAR OF EXECUTION.

In the preceding pages we have endeavoured to lay down such rules, and to draw attention to such points, as may enable medical witnesses to assist the ends of Justice in detecting the perpetration of crime; another duty remains: having discovered the guilty, questions may yet arise, as to whether the criminal is or is not a proper subject for the severity of the law; 1st, in respect of natural incapacity, as in the case of infants and idiots a nativitate; 2d, of accidental incapacities, as in lunacy and temporary derangement of intellect. So also it may be a medical question whether a prisoner stands mute of malice, or by the visitation of God; and 3dly, of temporary unfitness for punishment, as where judgment on a female is to be respited, by reason of her pregnancy; to these we shall add the plea of non-identity, for though we have already stated that personal identity does not appear to us to be a subject peculiarly appropriate to medical jurisprudence, yet as the greater number of writers on this subject have so considered it, we should not be warranted in omiting all notice of the subject.

"It is clear that an infant above fourteen and under twenty-one is equally subject to capital punishments, as well as others of full age; for it is prœsumptio juris, that after fourteen years they are doli capaces, and can discern between good and evil; and if the