Answer.—"An exceedingly strong indication of unsoundness of mind. A propensity to commit acts without an apparent or adequate motive, under such circumstances, is recognised as a particular species of insanity, called lesion of the will: it has been called moral insanity."
Question.—"From the conversation you have had with the prisoner, and your opportunity of observing him, what do you think of his state of mind?"
Answer.—"Essentially unsound: there seems a mixture of insanity with imbecility. Laughing and crying are proofs of imbecility—assisting me to form my opinion.... When I saw him, I could not persuade him that there had been balls in the pistols—he insisted that there were none. He was indifferent about his mother when her name was mentioned. His manner was very peculiar: entirely without acute feeling or acute consciousness—lively, brisk, smart—perfectly natural—not as if he were acting, or making the least pretence. The interview lasted about three quarters of an hour."
Last Doctor.—"A practising surgeon for between three and four years. Had attended the prisoner's family."
Question.—"What is your opinion as to his state of mind?"
Answer.—"Decidedly that of imbecility—more imbecility than anything: he is decidedly, in my judgment, of unsound mind. His mother has often told me there was something exceedingly peculiar about him, and asked me what I thought. The chief thing that struck me was his involuntary laughing: he did not seem to have that sufficient control over the emotions which we find in sane individuals. In Newgate, he had great insensibility to all impressions sought to be made on him. His mother once rebuked him for some want of civility to me; on which he jumped up in a fury, at the moment alarming me, and saying 'he would stick her.' I think that was his expression."
Questioned by the Counsel for the Crown.—"I never prescribed for the prisoner, nor recommended any course of treatment, conduct, or diet whatever. I never gave, nor was asked for any advice. I concluded the disease was mental—one of those weak minds which, under little excitement, might become overthrown."
With every due consideration for these five gentlemen, as expressing themselves with undoubted sincerity and conscientiousness; with the sincerest respect for the medical profession, and a profound sense of the perplexities which its honourable and able members have to encounter in steering their course, when called upon to act in cases of alleged insanity—encountering often equally undeserved censure and peril for interfering and for not interfering—we beg to enter our stern and solemn protest on behalf of the public, and the administration of the justice, against such "evidence of insanity" as we have just presented to the reader. It may really be stigmatised as "The safe committal of crime made easy to the plainest capacity." It proceeds upon paradoxes subversive of society. Moral insanity? Absurd misnomer! Call it rather "immoral insanity," and punish it accordingly. Is it not fearful to see well-educated men of intellect take so perverted a view of the conditions of human society—of the duties and responsibilities of its members? Absence of assignable motive an evidence of such insanity as should exempt from responsibility! Inability to resist or control a motive to commit murder a safe ground for immunity from criminal responsibility!—that "criminal responsibility which," as the present Lord Chancellor, in replying for the Crown in Oxford's case, justly remarked, "secures the very existence of society."
Let us look at another aspect of this medical evidence given on this memorable occasion. Doctor the first pronounced his authoritative decision solely on the evidence given in court: influenced, it may be, by his having, many years before, been called in to attend the prisoner's father when labouring under symptoms of poisoning by laudanum. Doctor the second gave merely speculative evidence, without, as it would seem, having even seen the prisoner, and founded solely on what passed at the trial. Doctor the third never saw the prisoner before the trial but once, and then for "perhaps half an hour," on the first day of the trial, or the day before it! How potent that half hour's observation! Doctor the fourth saw the prisoner with doctor the third, for "perhaps three-quarters of an hour!" Doctor the fifth was a practising surgeon of not four years' standing—owning how "short a time he had been in practice." Let us only surrender our understandings to this queer quinary, and we arrive at a short and easy solution—very comfortable, indeed, for the young gentleman at the bar, who is doubtless filled with wonder at finding how sagaciously they saw into the thoughts which had been passing through his mind—the precise state of his feelings, views, objects, and intentions, when he fired at the Queen. But in the mean time we ask, can it be tolerated that medical gentlemen should thus usurp the province of both judge and jury? We answer, no! and shall place here on record the just and indignant rebuke of Mr Baron Alderson to a well-known medical gentleman, who had thus authoritatively announced his conclusion on the recent trial of Robert Pate.
Dr——.—"From all I have heard to-day, and from my personal observation, I am satisfied the prisoner is of unsound mind."