Chapters in the English Law of Lunacy.
435
very difficult to determine the invisible line are loci classici in the best sense of the that divides perfect and partial insanity, term. but it must rest upon circumstances duly to In 1723 Edward Arnold was tried at be weighed and considered both by judge Kingston for firing at and wounding Lord and jury, lest on the one side there be Onslow. The judge was Mr. Justice Tracy. a kind of inhumanity towards the defects of It was shown that the prisoner labored human nature or, on the other side, too under delusions and imagined that Lord great an indulgence given to great crimes. Onslow sent devils into his room at night to The best measure I can think of is this : disturb and plague him. Mr. Justice Tracy told the jury that a such a person, as prisoner, in order to laboring under mel be acquitted on the ancholy distempers ground of insanity, hath yet, ordinarily, must be totally de as great understand prived of his under ing as a child of four standing and memory teen years hath, is and not know what such a person as may he is doing any more be guilty of treason than an infant, a or felony." brute, or a wild beast. Here we have the Of course Arnold was earliest legal criterion convicted after this of punishable in summing up; but the sanity. Sir James capital sentence Stephen demolished passed upon him was it in two brilliant afterwards commuted sentences. " Surely to one of imprison no two states of mind ment for life, at Lord can be more unlike Onslow's instance. than that of a healthy Mr. Justice Tracy has boy of fourteen and often been severely that of a man labour criticised for his adop ing under melan SIR NICOLAS TINDAL tion of this ignorant choly distempers. and inhuman test, The one is healthy immaturity, the other diseased maturity, and which has been scornfully styled the " wild between them there is no sort of resem beast " theory. But no one who keeps in view blance." The phrase " partial insanity" is the asylum system which was in vogue in his also quite misleading and has been produc day, and for a century later, and the deadly tive of great mischief in the development of regularity with which it must have reduced our criminal law. But we shall deal with all forms of insanity to the type of either this point later on. At present it may suffice mania or dementia, will be disposed to to notice the fact of the advance made by reflect too strongly on the memory of a Hale on the views of Coke. Let us now judge who declined to extend to a prisoner take a few of the causes célèbres which led to whose disease did not conform to either of the growth of the English law in regard to those types the protection of the law. the criminal responsibility of lunatics. We The next case in the series with which shall confine our attention to those that we are dealing is that of Earl Ferrers, who
