Letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, bart. on the responsibility of monomaniacs for the crime of murder / by James Stark.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, bart. on the responsibility of monomaniacs for the crime of murder / by James Stark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    uV knowing that they were doing wrong in murdering their fellotv* creatures,—in such cases they cannot be considered responsible in law for their actions. All the decisions show this to be law. After referring to the opinions of several other judges, (also quoted above,) the Lord Chancellor continued :—' No alteration has taken place in that law, or in the way in which the Judges administered it who presided at the late trials. (The Times, 14th March 1843.) Lord Brougham freely concurred in all that had fallen from bis Noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, in the most luminous statement with which he had favoured the House. • • • • « He had most clearly stated what the law was in respect to a defence founded upon insanity. But still the accountability of persons to the law of the land was but little understood. Some minds, by brood- ing over injuries which they had actually received, might not be deluded as to the existence of these injuries, but grossly and griev- ously aggravating the amount of them, might, if it acted upon some malformation of the mind, end in insanity. Such a person might not be the object of punishment to his Maker, but they were human legislators ; they had no means of judging him; they punished for the mere purpose of deterring others from repeating the same crime for which a party had been guilty. A man with such a mind as he had pictured was, undoubtedly, accountable to the law. Upon that subject he would just inquire what was the test laid down by the learned Judges? • • Generally the Judges said that,in order to make a man responsible, he must be capable of knowing right froHn wrong; that was the usual way in which it v^as left to juries. But then, again, some of them said a man must be capable of distinguish- ing between good and evil,—a most difficult thing for many to do; but there was a variation, and a large one too, which was deeply to be lamented. Then came a third distinction,—a man must know what is proper or wicked. Now there were four distinct tests, four different forms of expression, every one more meagre, every one more difficult to lay hold of than the first. He knew what learned Judges meant by right and wrong, but he was not sure that juries did, and he was certain the public did not. First of all came the question did the unfortunate individual know what he was about? Did he know that he was killing a man, that he was depriving a fel- low-creature of his life, or might he not fancy he was destroying some evil spirit, or shooting a bird, or any of the other many delu- sions which they knew had existed in men's minds ? A man in such a case was not a subject for punishment, either at a human or the Divine tribunal. But the^ difficulty always arose after they had as- certained the fact that he knew what he was about, that he took those precautions which a rational man would do to accomplish a particular purpose; then arose the question—did he labour under such a delusion as that he could not distinguish between what the learned Judges called right and wrong? A man n)ight be possessed of such peculiar notions that he might think it a perfectly right thhjg to prostrate to the ground a man of whom he had formed a prejudi- ced or extravagant opinion, • • • • In alluding to Bellingham's