sanity, to which if he had not been a prisoner he would have been entitled under the Lunacy Act, 1890. 2. A prisoner on being arraigned may not plead, and yet neither the prosecution nor the defense may suggest that he is insane, or his insanity may be practically admitted by the prosecution. In these unoppcsedcases a few medical wit nesses are examined sometimes by the de fense at the instance of the judge, some times by the prosecution; a verdict is returned in accordance with the evidence, and an order for the prisoner's detention during the Queen's pleasure is made by the court, and counsel for the defense may sub mit that a prisoner is unfit to plead, while counsel for the prosecution may maintain the contrary. Here the onus probandi of course rests on the defense. 3. If the jury empaneled to determine the issue find that the prisoner is sane upon arraignment, the defense may still raise the plea that he was insane at the time of committing the offense with which he is charged. 4. The defense of the prosecution may insist that the ac cused is unfit to plead, while the latter main tains the contrary. The case of Bellingham, who was tried for the murder of Mr. Perceval in 18 12, and who thanked the attorney gen eral of the day for making light of the plea of insanity, which his counsel had set up on his behalf, is a locus classicits in this con nection. In Reg. -v. Pearce (1840,9 Car. and Payne, 667) it was decided that counsel defending a prisoner may set up on his be half the defense of insanity although his client objects to it. Here Mr. Justice Bosanquet allowed the prisoner to suggest questions to be put by his lordship to the witnesses for the prosecution to negative the supposition that he was insane, and also allowed additional witnesses to be called on his behalf for the same purpose. 5. The accused may be mute upon arraignment. Here a jury is empaneled to inquire "whether the prisoner stands mute out of malice or by the act of God." If the ver
dict is " mute out of malice," a plea of not guilty is entered, and the trial proceeds in the usual way; if it is " mute by act of God" an order is made for his detention. Even after a prisoner is sentenced, an in quiry is frequently instituted as to the state of his mind by order of the Home Office, and if the experts are in doubt as to his sanity, he is treated as a criminal lunatic. Laurie, the arson murderer, escaped the scaf fold owing to a post-trial inquiry of this sort. We have referred above to the section in the Act of 1800 which was designed to secure the person of the sovereign from attack. It failed of its purpose, at least in sofar as the present reign is concerned. Shortly after Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, quite a mania seized a certain class of the weak-minded public. Edward Oxford set the example in 1840. He was clearly insane and was acquitted on that ground. Other offenders of stronger senses but equal vanity followed suit. Then the legislature intervened and enabled the judges to annex a sound whipping to the ordinary punishment in such cases. This amendment of the law effectually stamped out the desire for notoriety which led boys and youths to present loaded and unloaded firearms at Her Majesty or threaten to strike her with sticks, as she drove out and in among her people. Life at Broadmoorwas sketched in some detail in a previous num ber of THE GREEN BAG (Vol. V, page 165), and we need not here repeat vhat was there said as to the regime of this great asylum, or the violence which its three leading physicians, Dr. Meyer, Dr. William Orange and Dr. Daniel Nicolson, have suffered at the hands of its inmates. It may be interest ing, however, to give a few notes as to some of the patients. Daniel Macnaghten was for ten years after his trial under the care of Sir Charles Hood. But as Broadmoor was not then in existence, it may suffice to state that his mind gradually decayed from the ordinary
