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 252 might be unable to control the impulse to destruction.” Now it is not a little remarkable, that in this instance, and despite of this testimony, the gentleman who conducted the prisoner’s defence—and who, to judge by the report, really did for him all that could be done, which was not much—seems to have felt that he could not substantiate the plea of insanity, and therefore did not produce any medical witnesses on the trial. We are accustomed in such cases, in the Criminal Courts, to the presence of such gentlemen as Dr. Conolly, Dr. Forbes Winslow, and others, who have devoted particular attention to the pathology of the human mind. No man of professional mark was forthcoming, although it had been elicited from the prisoner’s father, in cross-examination for the defence, that his wife’s mother was a lunatic, and that she had died in Peckham Lunatic Asylum; that one of his own brothers (that is, an uncle of the prisoner’s) had died in a lunatic asylum; and that his own father had been two or three times in a lunatic asylum. Surely, if all this was true, here was a very good foundation on which to rest a plea of insanity. All that would have been needed would have been to carry this kind of evidence one step further, and to have shown that at some period or other of his life the prisoner himself had given signs of mental aberration. Here was proved insanity on both sides—it may almost without stretch of propriety be said in such a case that the burden of proving sanity rested on the prosecution. What could be done was done. Dr. Duncan, in whose service he had lived for three months, was produced in the witness-box, and he stated that he had never noticed anything in the prisoner’s conduct which could suggest that his mind was in any way affected. “Of course,” said Dr. Duncan, “I saw him very frequently, and I did not notice anything peculiar about him.” More than this, it was shown that the prisoner had made a proposal to the Argus Insurance Company to insure poor Mary Wells Streeter’s life for 100l., and that on the 19th of July he came to the office in the company of a young woman who paid the premium. The policy was delivered to the prisoner. This was scarcely the act of a man whose mind was deranged. Ignorant of law he may have been, but it is most probable that the same degree of ignorance would be found in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred amongst all persons in his own class of life. Of course, it is not worth while to murder your mother, your two brothers, and the girl whom you are courting, for the sake of 100l.—(what is the exact sum for which murder does become a gainful speculation?)—but at least here was a motive such as would be likely to have weight with an unscrupulous ruffian in full possession of his reason. William Youngman, for aught we know to the contrary, was quite as sane at the time he committed the crime, and during his trial, as any other murderer who has stood in the dock at the Old Bailey.

It is needless to insist at length upon the point that in reality a jury must be told in all cases that every man is presumed to be sane, and to be possessed of a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes until the contrary is proved to their satisfaction. This cannot be too emphatically expressed; but when this is done, surely the old doctrine, with regard to insanity as a plea in criminal cases, is lax enough, and favourable enough to a prisoner without introducing the modification proposed by Dr. Duncan. It is but justice, however, to Dr. Duncan to give him the benefit of a letter which he addressed to the editor of the “Times,” and which was published on Saturday last in the columns of that journal. In them he states that, so far from wishing to prove the prisoner irresponsible for his acts, “he was prepared to give a very positive opinion as to an entire absence of any symptom of insanity, or even eccentricity, during the period of his service.” So far in the particular case Dr. Duncan has put himself right with the public, but he adheres to his general doctrine. He gives it as his belief that a person “may have his intellect perfect, while his emotions, at the same time, have become morbidly deranged.” Again, he says, “The possibility of homicidal mania is no more to be discarded than the cleptomania, or the irresistible impulse so frequently indicated by some ladies of purloining.” If this be so, what is society to do with an offender who murders a fellow-creature, and pleads “irresistible impulse?” Every murderer may be acting under irresistible impulse. How is the intensity of the impulse to be measured? We do not profess to have a scientific knowledge of the pathology of the mind, but would suggest it as a probability, that wherever true homicidal mania exists, other symptoms of mental aberration will not be found wanting. In Oxford’s case, what Lord Denman said to the jury might, at first sight, bear out Dr. Duncan’s view; but how carefully the Chief Justice afterwards guarded his first proposition. “If some controlling disease is, in truth, the acting power within him which he cannot resist, then a man will not be responsible,” or, as Dr. Duncan puts it, “he may be unable to control the impulse to destruction.” Lord Denman, however, went on to say: “The question is, whether the prisoner was labouring under that species of insanity, which satisfies you that he was quite unaware of the nature, character, and consequences of the act he was committing; or, in other words, whether he was under the influence of a diseased mind, and was really unconscious at the time he was committing the act that it was a crime.” That is a very different thing. Consciousness, as above, or unconsciousness, is the true test of criminality, not the degree or intensity of the homicidal impulse. The old course is the proper one, which is simply to ask the jury if a prisoner has—or rather had at the time when the crime was committed—a sufficient degree of reason to know right from wrong. We might well tremble at the consequences if it was once established that a man’s mind might be right in all points, save a tendency to commit murder. It is idle in cases of insanity—as far as the administration of criminal law is concerned—to lose ourselves in fine-drawn distinctions. If a man knows what he is about when he commits a crime, he is amenable to justice, no matter how strong his inclination may be to violate the law.