The argument by which jurors are supposed to be influenced, viz., that no one in his senses would commit that which is the very negation of a law of nature is, in fact, an aggravation of the offence. If tenable it would excuse every criminal from blame, and would apply the more powerfully in proportion to the intensity of the crime.
To murder a mother, or a daughter, is as much repugnant to a sensible man, as to murder himself; but if none but lunatics could commit such crimes, no one would be culpable at all.
And, therefore, by the law of our land, if a lunatic even murder himself in a lucid interval, he is felo-de-se, as much as any man, and if he murder another man in a lucid interval he is as much a murderer as any other man. See 1 Hawkins, P.C., cap. ix., ss. 2 and 3.
At the present time, the absence of a sound mind in cases of self murder, is the constant presumption of jurymen, who by avoiding a verdict of felo-de-se, commit an amiable perjury, to save, as they say, the reputation of the deceased among his survivors.
Now at one time the English law prescribed for the suicide an inglorious burial in the highway, with a stake driven through the body; and the vicarious punishment of his friends by the forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the Crown.
No definite legal authority can be given for this form of burial; Blackstone does not mention it.
It was abolished in 1823 by 4 George IV., c. 52; by this statute no Coroner should issue a warrant for the burial of a suicide in any highway, but it was enacted that the corpse should be buried privately in any churchyard or burying ground between 9 and 12 at night without any religious rites.
This enactment has been further amended by Acts 43 and 44 Victoria c. 41, and 45 and 46 Victoria, c. 19 (1882), which provide that the body of a suicide may be buried either silently, or with any such orderly, or Christian religious service at the grave, as the person in charge of the body thinks fit, or I would add, can procure.
There is of course no clause compelling any minister of religion to perform any definite burial service.
But I have no doubt that in such cases there would be no difficulty in finding some clergyman to use forms of prayer at the grave, which would be satisfactory to the relatives. The law was formerly evaded as follows: if it seemed likely that a verdict of felo-de-se would be found, the inquiry was adjourned, and in the meantime the body was buried under a warrant from the Coroner.