man at work with his spade, and slew him. His career was then cut short by his arrest.

On his examination, the court decided that there was no cause for a judiciary trial, as the involuntary and indiscriminate fury of Mounin was too clearly the offspring of disease to leave any doubt about the matter.

During the pursuit, Mounin was twice fired at with ball, and was wounded in the eye, upon which he threw himself into the stream of a mill-pond; but a gentleman having followed him, he was there seized and overpowered. On being questioned afterwards when in confinement, Mounin said that he recollected well having killed the three men, and especially one of them, a relation of his own, whom he greatly regretted; but he added that in his paroxysms of frenzy, he saw nothing but flames, and that blood was then most delightful to his view. At the end of a few days' imprisonment, he seemed to have entirely recovered his reason, but subsequently he relapsed.

V. A fifth case of the same kind occurred at Paris in September 1825. VATELOT, aged twenty-nine years, a gendarme, in passing the Place Louis Quinze, suddenly struck at the Sieur Chardon with his sabre. The latter turned round, and asked what he meant. "I know you," said Vatelot; " you are my enemy, and I will give it you.' He then aimed another blow at Chardon, and after pursuing him for a little with his drawn sword, left him. He next struck the Sieur Bellon on the head, and aimed two strokes at M. Avenel, who accompanied Bellon; then threatened two other gentlemen, and lastly, sabred a lady standing at a door, and vanished. He had been drinking, but was not intoxicated. These acts have all the characters of those committed by furious maniacs. Like Mounin, Vatelot "maltreated without distinction all who fell in his way, and made other successive attempts at homicide without being driven to it by any of the passions which lead to crime, but by a fatal frenzy which urged him to shed the blood of any one." This is the distinction made by the court alluded to in the former case between crime and disease, and it is very characteristic : Vatelot was nevertheless condemned.

Such are a few of the French cases that have been placed upon record since we brought the similar instances of Lecouffe and Feldtman before the notice of our readers; and we stop here not because the stock is exhausted, but simply because by citing more we should extend the narrative to an unreasonable length, and because we wish before concluding to give a brief account of several which have occurred in our own country.

*Vol. iii. p. 365.

VI. About the middle of last century, as we are informed by Dr Smollett, in his Continuation of Hume's History of England, LAURENCE Earl FERRERS, a nobleman of a violent spirit, who had committed many outrages, and, in the opinion of all who knew him, given manifold proofs of insanity, at length perpetrated a murder, which subjected him to the cognizance of justice. His deportment to his lady was so brutal, that application had been made to the House of Peers, and a separation effected by act of Parliament. Trustees were appointed, and, at the Earl's own request, Mr Johnson, who had been employed in the family almost all his life, was appointed manager of his estates. The Earl imagined that all his relations were conspiring against him (a very usual feature of insanity), and that Johnson was an accomplice. Fired with this supposed collusion and other ill-treatment, his Lordship wished to turn out Mr Johnson from his farm; but finding that he had not the power, he determined to gratify his revenge by assassination. Accordingly he ordered Johnson to attend with his papers on a certain day; this the latter did, and was desired to walk into an inner room. All the male servants were at this time absent on one errand or another, and only three women left in the house. The Earl locked the door, warmly expostulated with Johnson, and insisted on his signing a paper acknowledging himself à villain, under pain of being instantly shot. Johnson remonstrated against such cruelty, and deprecated the Earl's unjust indignation. The Earl was deaf to his entreaties, commanded him to kneel and implore Heaven's mercy, and then shot him. Mr Johnson fell over in great agony, which for the moment excited the Earl's pity, and made him have his victim carried to bed, a surgeon instantly sent for, and Johnson's family informed of what had happened; he even seemed extremely anxious for his recovery. At the same time he explained to Mr Johnson's daughter and to the surgeon that his intention had been to kill him outright. He then drank immoderately to support his spirits, declaring that he did not repent of what he had done, that Johnson was a villain that deserved his fate, and that if he died he would surrender himself for trial before the House of Peers. He drank to intoxication, and then his hate returned. He would not allow Johnson to be removed to his own house, but would keep him near himself" to plague the villain." He then went to Johnson's room, abused and insulted him, threatened to shoot him through the head, and was with difficulty restrained from using violence. Next morning Johnson died in great

agony.

Earl Ferrers was upon this apprehended, when endeavouring to make his escape. He threatened resistance at first, but on being conveyed to the Tower, he became calm, composed, and

unconcerned. His understanding, naturally good, had been cultivated; and his arguments and remarks were very rational, even when his conduct was frantic.

The people cried aloud for vengeance, and government gave up the offender to the justice of his country. In his defence before the House of Peers he pleaded insanity, and called many witnesses who proved that lunacy was in the family and affected several of his relations; that he himself was beset with unfounded jealousy of plots and conspiracies, unconnected ravings, sudden starts of fury, denunciations of unprovoked revenge, frantic gesticulations, and a strange caprice of temper; that a solicitor of reputation had renounced his business in the full persuasion of his being disordered in his brain; and that long before this unhappy event, his nearest relations had deliberated upon the expediency of taking out a commission of lunacy against him, and were prevented only by the apprehension of being convicted of scandalum magnatum should the jury find him to be compos mentis-a circumstance, says the historian, the more likely to have happened that his madness appeared in his conduct and not in his conversation. A physician skilled in this branch decided him to be insane; and all his neighbours had long regarded him as mad: one noble lord declared in the House of Peers, so long before as on the passing of the bill for separation from his wife, that he looked upon him as a maniac, and that if some effectual step was not taken to divest him of the power of doing mischief, he did not doubt but that they should have occasion to try him for murder! Notwithstanding all this, his lordship was found guilty of murder, and, on the 5th of May 1760, was taken from the Tower and hanged at Tyburn. He dressed gaily for the occasion in a light coloured suit of clothes embroidered with silver, and, although displeased at being executed like a common felon, behaved with composure and propriety. He took an opportunity of declaring that he had no malice against Mr Johnson, and that the murder was owing to a perturbation of mind occasioned by a variety of crosses and vexations. He also disclaimed being insane, and said that he had reluctantly adopt-ed that plea at the request of his friends.

Several idiotic or insane persons have of late years been tried for murder, before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, and, apparently through ignorance of the physiology of the brain on the part of the prosecutor and judges, have been condemned and executed.

VII. The first whom we shall notice is a young man named JOHN BARCLAY, executed at Glasgow for the murder of Samuel Neil son, on the 10th October 1832, in his house at Cambusnethan.

When brought before the Court of Justiciary, Barclay's appearance and conduct were so strikingly those of idiocy, that instead of proceeding with the examination of witnesses, the case was postponed till medical evidence should be obtained, to decide whether or not he was a fit subject for trial. An opinion in the affirmative having been given, Barclay was put to the bar, and the deed having been clearly proved, he was pronounced guilty, but "strongly recommended to mercy on account of the weakness of his intellect." That this recommendation was well founded is very apparent. Barclay murdered Neilson for whom he had previously shewn affection, and stole from him three onepound notes, and a watch. But so little sense had he of having done wrong, or of his own situation, that he hovered about almost without disguise, and, while going to spend part of the money with the first person he spoke to, he dropt first one and then another note at his feet, as a child would have done. When questioned, he could see no difference between killing a man and killing an ox, except that he "would never hear him fiddle again;" and so little did he know of the nature of the watch, that he regarded it as an animal, and, when it stopped from not having been wound up, believed it had died of cold from the glass being broken. In his parish, he was familiarly known as duft Jock Barclay," and the clergyman, who knew him well, always" regarded him as imbecile, and had never been able to. give him any religious instruction, and did not consider him a responsible being ;" and yet he was held accountable to man, although he could not be made to understand his duties to God!

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Even, independently of such evidence, the Advocate-Depute (if the report of his speech in the Glasgow Argus of 25th April 1833, be correct) sets the question at rest by making the extraordinary statement," that the pannel, though found to be weak, crazy, irritable, and capricious," "was perfectly responsible for his actions." It is impossible to divine by what train of argument the prosecutor arrived at such a conclusion, but it leaves no doubt of the fact that Barclay's weakness of mind was recognised by all parties from the Judge downwards; notwithstanding which, and the earnest recommendation of the jury, he was executed at Glasgow on 14th May 1833, to the distress of thousands who, with every abhorrence of the crime for which he suffered, could not help regarding him as a victim sacrificed for being an idiot rather than for murder. We have seen a cast of Barclay's head, which is extremely defective in the intellectual region.

Much stress has been laid on Barclay's "knowing right from wrong," as affording indisputable proof of his being a moral agent. This, however, is a most fallacious and cruel argument. Every one conversant with unsound mind knows familiarly that

a patient often not only knows that the deed which he is impelled to commit is wrong; but that, after struggling in vain against the inclination, he will, horror-struck at his own wickedness, but unable to resist it, even give a hurried scream of warning to his intended victim to save himself! It has sometimes happened with the best and fondest of mothers (as in the case above quoted from Dr Marechal), that, in the form of insanity occurring after childbirth, they have been suddenly seized with an irresistible impulse to destroy the infant on which they doated, and have saved it only by timely calling for assistance. Some infants have been sacrificed in this dreadful way, to the subsequent horror of the parent. In such cases, the knowledge that the deed is sinful and cruel is complete; but will any one venture to say that therefore the guilt on the part of the mother is equally positive? If parents possessing high moral feelings and affections are thus unable to resist the sudden impulse of disease, ought the poor, "weak, crazy, and irritable" idiot to be more responsible for the commission of crimes, the nature and consequences of which he has not intellect enough to comprehend?

VIII. At the very time when Barclay was before the Court at Glasgow, JOHN STEWART was under trial at Perth for the murder of his wife, near Dunkeld, also in October 1833, under circumstances which excited a strong suspicion of insanity. It appeared in evidence that he had been under confinement, as a lunatic, about eighteen years before, and had then attempted suicide; and the probability of his insanity at the time of the murder was greatly strengthened, if not positively proved, by the fact of his having been long subject to epileptic fits, which, sooner or later, almost always derange the mind; and by his having been sour, morose, and subject to low spirits, ever since his first illness. Some of the witnesses, however, having declared Stewart to be in their opinion perfectly rational, he was found guilty, by a plurality of voices, and condemned to death; but afterwards, on a strong representation of the facts, he was most wisely respited, and the public was spared the painful spectacle of seeing a fellow-creature sent to the gallows to atone for being diseased.

IX. In addition to these cases, we may refer to that of WILLIAM HALL, minutely detailed in the Scotsman newspaper of 1st June 1833. Hall cruelly murdered and mutilated a young boy at West Craigs, without any conceivable motive, and, when first seen, stared so wildly and behaved so strangely, that no doubt of his insanity was entertained. But after his apprehension, he exhibited so much rationality, and even acuteness, as to dispel that impression from the minds of those who were not aware that, in certain forms of derangement, the intellectual powers