Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/88

78 from punishment: it must be a man that is totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast; such a one is never the object of punishment." In this respect a wide distinction was maintained between civil and criminal cases; for while the law would not allow exemption from punishment for criminal acts unless the reason was entirely gone, it invalidated a person's civil acts, and deprived him of the management of himself and his affairs, when his insanity was only partial, and when the act voided had no discoverable relation to it. A man's intellect might not be sufficient to enable him to conduct his affairs, and to dispose of his property, though quite sufficient to make him responsible for a criminal act: it was right to hang for murder one who was not thought fit to take care of himself and his affairs.

It was at the trial of Hadfield, in 1800, for shooting at the king in Drury Lane Theatre, that Lord Hale's doctrine was first discredited, and a step forward made for the time. The attorney-general, who prosecuted, had appealed to this doctrine, and told the jury, in accordance with it, that, to exempt a person from punishment on the ground of insanity, there must be a total deprivation of memory and understanding. Mr. Erskine, who was counsel for the defense, argued forcibly in reply, that if such words were taken in their literal sense, "no such madness ever existed in the world;" that in all the cases that had filled Westminster Hall with complicated considerations, "the insane persons had not only had the most perfect knowledge and recollection of all the relations they stood in toward others, and of the acts and circumstances of their lives, but had in general been remarkable for subtlety and acuteness; and that delusion, of which the criminal act in question was the immediate unqualified offspring, was the kind of insanity which should rightly exempt from punishment. Delusion, therefore, where there is no frenzy or raving madness, is the true character of insanity." There was no doubt that Hadfield knew right from wrong, and that he was conscious of the nature of the act before he committed it; he manifested design in planning and cunning in executing it; he expected also that it would subject him to punishment, for this was his motive in committing it; still it was plain to everybody that he was mad, and that the act was the product of his madness. The result was that he was acquitted, the acquittal not having taken place in consequence of a judicial adoption of delusion in place of the old criterion of responsibility, as it has sometimes been said, but having been rather a triumph of Erskine's eloquence, and of common-sense over legal dogma.

In the next remarkable case, that of Bellingham, who was tried for the murder of Mr. Spencer Perceval, in 1812, a conviction took place, and the prisoner was executed, although it was perfectly clear that he had acted under the influence of insane delusions; the attorney-general,