Chapters in the English Law of Lunacy. shall influence his will in disposing of his property and bring about a disposal of it which, if the mind had been sound, would not have been made." In the case of Boughton т. Knight, Sir James Hannen laid down the law in similar language. "There must be a memory to recall the several persons who may be fitting objects for the testator's bounty and to comprehend their relationship to himself and their claim upon him; a sound mind does not mean a perfectly bal anced mind, free from all influence of preju dice, passion or pride : the law does not say that a man is incapacitated from making his will if he proposes to make a disposition of his property moved by capricious, frivolous, or even bad motives. Eccentricities, as they are commonly called, of manner, of habit, of life, of amusements, of dress, and so on, must be disregarded; but there ¡s a limit be yond which one feels that it ceases to be a question of harsh, unreasonable judgment of character, and that the repulsion which a parent exhibits towards one or more of his children must proceed from some mental de fect in himself." It may be rather interesting to contrast English with American law on this subject before concluding the present series. Each had a preliminary period in which testamen tary capacity was a question of fact. Each has now arrived at the same goal. Testame.itary capacity is a question of fact once more. Each has had its metaphysical pe riod in which an external standard was set up for the determination of a testator's power. But whereas the English courts held insanity to be so subtle and all pervading a disease that any, the least degree of it, was
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fatal to civil capacity, the American courts seem at one time to have leaned to the view that nothing but absolute idiocy or a-mcntia would destroy it. Take, for instance, the case of Alice Lispenard (26 Wendell, 255). She was mentioned in her father's will as an im becile : was washed and dressed like a child, even when thirty-five years of age; her head wagged from side to side; she dribbled at the mouth; had sudden fits of anger so that she would strike children; would sit for hours in front of a window and continue in that po sition even after the shutters were closed; had a vacant stare; drank beer and wine, and was often intoxicated, even in the middle of the day. Senator Verplanck said : "To es tablish any standard of intellect or informa tion beyond the possession of reason in its lowest degree, as in itself essential to legal capacity, would create endless uncertainty, difficulty or litigation, would shake the security of property, and wrest from the aged and infirm that authority over their earnings and savings which is often their best security against injury or neglect .... the law, therefore, holds that weak minds differ from strong ones only in the extent and power of their faculties; but unless they betray a total loss of understanding or idiocy or delusion, they cannot properly be con sidered unsound." This was the Waring v. Waring of American law with a different inference from the common postulate. American law, too, found its Banks т. Goodfellow in the Parish will case (Delafield v. Parish, 25 N. Y. 9), which is too familiar to American lawyers to need ex position, even if an English lawyer were competent to expound it.
