Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/543

purports to supply. It is embodied in Stephen, and Sir Henry Hawkins, it is high answers given by the judges to questions time they were revised. We regard, how propounded to them by the House of Lords ever, with considerable apprehension the after the acquittal of Daniel Macnaughton proposal that the revision should take the form in 1843, on the charge of having murdered of questions put to the judges by the House Mr. Drummond, the private secretary of of Lords. We should have thought that this Sir Robert Peel; and it makes the guilt or species of catechism had already been suffi innocence of a person accused of crime, and ciently discredited by the experiment of 1843; defended on the ground of insanity, depend and we know of no other authority for the on whether he did or did not " know the proposition that the House of Lords has a nature and quality " of his act at the time of right to question the judges except in the committing it. Against this standard of exercise of its legislative or judicial func responsibility the British Medical Associa tions. What is wanted is that some bar tion is now in full tilt, and not without rister should be found of sufficient daring reason. The " rules in Maenaughton' s to challenge the authority of the Macnaugh Case" represent accurately enough the state ton " rules " in defending a prisoner on of medical knowledge in 1843, and are still whose behalf a plea of insanity is put for comparatively harmless when judiciously ward. There is every reason to believe that manipulated. But they ignore the fact the mental soil of the Bench is already not that mental disease may, and docs, impair unprepared for such a suggestion. And, in any event, the point would be brought be its victims' wills, as well as their other facul ties; and, after the criticisms that have been fore the Court for Crown Cases Reserved passed upon them by judges so eminent as — a tribunal undoubtedly competent to the late Lord Coleridge, the late Sir James decide it. — Saturday Review.