[503]. The Commissioners are selected by the Lord Chancellor, who generally appoints experienced Barristers; some benefit might arise if two of the Censors of the College of Physicians were added to the commission.
[504]. On foreign proceedings in the nature of Commissions of lunacy, see Sylva v. Da Costa. 8 Ves. 316. Ex p. Gillam, 2 Ves. jun. 587.
[505]. In this case an Irish Peeress was committed for not producing her husband.
[506]. The supposed lunatic should have due notice, and the Commission be executed near the place of abode. Ex parte Hall. 7 Ves. 261, for it is his privilege to be at the execution of it. Ex parte Cranmer.
[507]. A lunatic who would have been convicted of a capital crime but for the plea of lunacy, may recover, and claim his liberty, as was the case of Hadfield, who shot at his late Majesty, and who presented a petition for enlargement to the House of Commons. It is more than doubtful whether such applications should ever be complied with; a man restored to sanity under coercion may very quickly relapse when he becomes his own master; a moderate quantity of spirits, or exposure to other irritation, may readily produce a paroxysm which may be attended with fatal consequences, either to the party himself, or, to some other. Public policy therefore requires a continuance of the restraint, however painful to the individual. If there be one case which admits of relaxation less than another, it is where injuries of the head have produced the insanity. For the trial of Hadfield, see 19 How. St. Tri. 1281.
[508]. Delirium, a word employed by the Romans, had its origin from the process of ploughing; for when the oxen deviated from the line to be pursued, they were said to be de lira, out of the track; and this figure was transferred to the deviations of the human intellect, when it erred from the established course. Delirium, says Dr. Cullen, may be shortly defined,—“In a person awake, a false judgment arising from perceptions of imagination, or from false recollection, and commonly producing disproportionate emotions.” It is of two kinds; as it is combined with pyrexia and comatose affections: or, as it is entirely without such combination; in the latter case it is named Insanity.
[509]. There frequently exists an illusion as to particular things, to which, says Dr. Male, men of genius are sometimes subject, which leads them to indulge eccentric whimsies and extravagant fancies, whilst on every other subject their perception is clear, and their conclusions correct; instances of this kind abound in every treatise on insanity, and may be traced from the earliest period of history. Pythagoras believed that he had lived in prior ages, and inhabited different bodies, and that in the shape of Euphorbus he had assisted in the siege of Troy. Tasso fancied himself to be visited by a familiar spirit, with whom he conversed aloud (Hoole’s Life of Tasso). The hero of the celebrated romance of Cervantes, exhibits a well-drawn picture of this species of insanity; and although in a less attractive costume, how frequently do we recognise Don Quixote in every rank and description of society? If, says a celebrated writer, the circle in which this absurdity revolves is so very small as to touch nobody, a man is only what is then called singular in that respect; but if its orbit is extended so as to run foul of other people, he is then called a madman, and is confined.—Armata, Part II.
[510]. The admirers of modern Tragedy might be reasonably alarmed if their approvals should be too strictly construed into symptoms of madness.
[511]. The case of Miss Butterfield, which we shall have other occasion to refer to, is somewhat similar in effect to this. Mr. Scawen had left Miss B. a considerable legacy; but being impressed by his surgeon with the idea that she had poisoned him with corrosive sublimate, he turned her out of his house and altered his will. Mr. S. died, and so evidently by mercurial poison, that Miss B. was tried for the murder, but was acquitted, there being no evidence that she was the person by whom the poison had been administered, and a considerable probability that it had been contained in some quack medicines which Mr. S. had taken. Under such circumstances a restoration of her legacy might have been expected either from the liberality of the next of kin, or from the interposition of a Court of Equity.
[512]. Continued by 19, and made perpetual by 26 Geo. 3, c. 91.