Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/89

Rh who prosecuted, declaring, and Chief-Justice Mansfield, who tried the case, concurring, "upon the authority of the first sages in the country, and upon the authority of the established law in all times, which has never been questioned, that although a man might be incapable of conducting his own affairs, he may still be answerable for his criminal acts, if he possess a mind capable of distinguishing right from wrong." Note here, then, that a modification had now been made in the test of responsibility; in place of its being required that the sufferer, in order to be exempt from punishment, should be totally deprived of understanding and memory, and know not what he was doing, no more than a brute or a wild beast—in place, that is, of what might be called the "wild-beast" form of the knowledge-test, the power of distinguishing right from wrong was insisted on as the test of responsibility. The law had changed considerably without ever acknowledging that it had changed. Let it be observed, however, that it was the power of distinguishing right from wrong, not in relation to the particular act, but generally, which was made the criterion of responsibility in this case; for Lord Mansfield, speaking of the kind of insanity in which the patient has the delusion of being injured, and revenges himself by some hostile act, said that, "if such a person were capable, in other respects, of distinguishing right from wrong, there was no excuse for any act of atrocity which he might commit under this description of derangement. It must be proved beyond all doubt that, at the time he committed the atrocious act, he did not consider that murder was a crime against the laws of God and Nature."

Thus far it is evident that principle was changing and practice was uncertain. After the old "wild-beast" form of the knowledge-test had been quietly abandoned, when the enunciation of it caused too violent a shock to the moral sense of mankind, we find two theories acted upon in practice: in the case of Hadfield the existence of delusion instigating the criminal act was the reason of his acquittal; in