Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/91

Rh act with which the accused was charged. Moreover, it was to be put in reference to the particular act at the time of committing it. Did he at the time know the nature and quality of the act he was doing? These two points have been overlooked sometimes by hostile critics, who have condemned the rule enunciated, as though it referred to a knowledge of right and wrong generally. One may object to the rule as a bad one, and because it is calculated to mislead a jury, who are very likely to be misled by the existence of a general knowledge of right and wrong in the accused person to judge wrongly concerning his knowledge of the particular act at the time, but it must be allowed at the same time that it will, if strictly applied, cover and excuse many acts of insane violence. Of few insane persons who do violence can it be truly said that they have a full knowledge of the nature and quality of their acts at the time they are doing them. Can it be truly said of any person who acts under the influence of great passion that he has such a knowledge at the time?

The rule thus laid down, differing so much from that which was enunciated and mercilessly acted upon in Bellingham's sad case, was, however, limited in its application by a formidable exception. In reply to the question—"If a person, under an insane delusion as to existing facts, commits an offense in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?"—the judges declared that "on the assumption that he labors under partial delusion only (whatever that may mean), and is not in other respects insane, he must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real. For example, if, under the influence of delusion, he supposes another man to be in the act of attempting to take his life, and he kills that man, as he supposes, in self-defense, he would be exempt from punishment. If his delusion was that the deceased had inflicted a serious injury to his character and fortune, and he killed him in revenge for such supposed injury, he would be liable to punishment." Here is an unhesitating assumption that a man, having an insane delusion, has the power to think and act in regard to it reasonably; that, at the time of the offense, he ought to have and to exercise the knowledge and self-control which a sane man would have and exercise, were the facts with respect to which the delusion exists real; that he is, in fact, bound to be reasonable in his unreason, sane in his insanity. The judges thus actually bar the application of the right-and-wrong criterion of responsibility to a particular case, by authoritatively prejudging it; instead of leaving the question to the jury, they determine it beforehand by assuming the possession of the requisite knowledge by the accused person. One of them, however, Mr. Justice Maule, so far dissented as to maintain that the general test of capacity to know right from wrong in the abstract ought to be applied to this case as to other cases.

But this is not all the uncertainty which appears in these answers.