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24 tween good and evil. And there was an intance in the lat century, where a boy of eight years old was tried at Abingdon for firing two barns ; and, it appearing that he had malice, revenge, and cunning, he was found guilty, condemned, and hanged accordingly. Thus alo, in very modern times, a boy of ten years old was convicted on his own confeion of murdering his bedfellow; there appearing in his whole behaviour plain tokens of a michievous dicretion : and, as the paring this boy merely on account of his tender years might be of dangerous conequence to the public, by propagating a notion that children might commit uch atrocious crimes with impunity, it was unanimouly agreed by all the judges that he was a proper ubject of capital punihment '. But, in all uch cafes, the evidence of that malice, which is to upply age, ought to be trong and clear beyond all doubt and contradiction.

II. econd cafe of a deficiency in will, which excues from the guilt of crimes, aries alo from a defective or vitiated understanding, viz. in an idiot or a lunatic. For the rule of law as to the latter, which may eaily be adapted alo to the former, is, that "furious furore olum punitur." In criminal caes therefore idiots and lunatics are not chargeable for their own acts, if committed when under thee incapacities: no, not even for treaon itelf. Alo, if a man in his found memory commits a capital offence, and before arraignment for it, he becomes mad, he ought not to be arraigned for it ; becaue he is not able to plead to it with that advice and caution that he ought. And if, after he has pleaded, the prioner becomes mad, he hall not be tried ; for how can he make his defence? If, after he be tried and found guilty, he loes his enes before judgment, judgment hall not be pronounced; and if, after judgment, he becomes of nonane memory, execution hall be tayed: for peradventure, ays the humanity of the Englih law, had the prioner been of found memory, he might have alleged ome Rh