was discussed in the House of Lords, and it was agreed, on the suggestion of Lord Lyndhurst, that the judges should be called upon to declare the correct legal doctrine on the subject of insanity. Five questions were carefully framed for the consideration of the judges, and the answers given by them were regarded as an authoritative enunciation of the law as to insanity. Before touching upon the doctrine of insanity, as judicially defined, it may be well to say something of the crime of MacNaughton.

On the afternoon of the 20th of January, 1843, Mr. Drummond, the private secretary of Sir Robert Peel, who was then Prime Minister, was returning alone to Downing Street, after having just left Drummonds' Bank at Charing Cross. When he was in Whitehall, Daniel MacNaughton came close behind him and deliberately shot him in the back with a pistol. The assailant was immediately seized, and, after a desperate struggle, was overpowered and taken to the police station. As he went, he said, "He" (or "She"-the witness was uncertain which expression was used) "shall not break my peace of mind any longer." Mr. Drummond died on the 25th of January, after great suffering, according to some, but after little suffering, according to others. He bore a strong personal resemblance to Sir Robert Peel, and there is no doubt that MacNaughton intended to shoot, and for a time thought that he had shot, the Prime Minister. When examined at Bow Street, MacNaughton, who was a native of Glasgow, made the following statement:

"The Tories in my native city have compelled me "to do this. They follow and persecute me wherever I "go, and have entirely destroyed my peace of mind. They followed me into France, into Scotland, and "all over England: in fact, they follow me wherever "I go. I cannot get no rest for them night or day. "I cannot sleep at night in consequence of the course

they pursue towards me. I believe they have driven. "me into a consumption. I am sure I shall never be "the man I formerly was. I used to have good health "and strength, but I have not now. They have ac"cused me of crimes of which I am not guilty; they "do everything in their power to harass and persecute me; in fact, they wish to murder me. It can be "proved by evidence. That's all I have to say." The statement was a tissue of delusions. The Tories had never persecuted him, and had never accused him of any crimes or done anything to harass or annoy him in any

way.

The past life of MacNaughton was closely scrutinised on behalf of the Crown. He was the natural son of a turner at Glasgow, and had come to London some months before. He had always been a man of rigorously temperate habits, and had appeared to those associated with him a person of caution, shrewdness, and thrift. Although under thirty years of age, he was in possession of about £750, which he had acquired, as he himself said, "by the most vigilant industry," in his occupation as a turner. He had attended lectures on anatomy in Glasgow, and the surgeon who lectured, and a lawyer who also attended with MacNaughton, declared that they had never seen anything in him to indicate a disordered mind. In spite, however, of the appearance of sanity, it was proved that, for some eighteen months previously to his offence, he had continually represented himself as labouring under a conviction that he was the victim of some such indefinite, mysterious, and incessant persecution as he spoke of in his statement to the magistrates at Bow Street. Ten witnesses from Glasgow were called by Mr. Cockburn, Q.C., the counsel for MacNaughton, to establish his belief that he was being persecuted, and, among them, Sir James Campbell,1 Lord

1 IIe was the father of the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

Provost of Glasgow, to whom, as a magistrate, MacNaughton had applied for protection.

When MacNaughton shot Mr. Drummond, he professed to believe that the Tories were persecuting him. When he first began to labour under his delusion, it was the Jesuits and the Catholic Priests, who, he said, were his persecutors. Afterwards, however, he declared that the Tories were his enemies, and it was because Sir Robert Peel was the Tory. Prime Minister that MacNaughton wished to kill him. There was some evidence that pointed to mental trouble besides the delusion. One of his employees, who was called as a witness, said that, between 1835 and 1838, MacNaughton frequently complained of a pain in his head, and would go and bathe in the Clyde, which was near his premises, in order to get rid of it. Nine physicians and surgeons were called, who unanimously declared that the prisoner was insane and labouring under an irresponsible delusion. Lord Chief Justice Tindal, who, with Mr. Justice Williams and Mr. Justice Coleridge, tried the prisoner, then asked Sir William Follett, the Solicitor-General, who appeared for the Crown, if he had medical evidence to rebut that given for the prisoner. Sir William Follett said that he had not, and the Court then stopped the case, the jury finding the prisoner not guilty on the ground of insanity.

As has been already stated, great public indignation was excited by the verdict, which was condemned by many. writers. Taylor, in his work on Medical Jurisprudence, said he was quite at a loss to understand why a plea of irresponsibility should have been admitted. There can be little doubt, however, that MacNaughton was not a sane man. Mr. Samuel Warren, in an article in Blackwood's Magazine, in which he discussed the Macnaughton Case, described an interview which he had with MacNaughton about seven years after the commission of the crime. He states that MacNaughton complained of always being ill

used, although he was of course treated with the utmost kindness. About four or five years after his crime he took it into his head to "hunger strike" (if one may use a modern phrase), and had to be fed by means of a stomach pump. He grew tired, however, of the process, and eventually resumed his ordinary conduct. The superintendent of the Bethlehem Hospital, who had carefully observed his case, expressed no doubt as to his complete insanity, and Warren himself says that his manner and talk denoted imbecility.

The MacNaughton Case marked an important stage in the development of the law relating to insanity. The legal view of insanity has gradually changed, just as the medical view has done. The horrible madhouse, depicted by Hogarth, has given place to the wholesome and well-equipped mental hospital of modern days, and the law, like science, has been similarly humanised. The old view of insanity, however, was long in disappearing. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after Hadfield, who had been charged with firing at George the Third, was acquitted on the ground of insanity, Windham suggested that an offender, even if insane, should be subjected to some sort of punishment, for the sake of example! Even as late as 1811 Bellingham, who shot Mr. Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister, and who was beyond all question insane, was tried and executed with inhuman haste. It is said that Bellingham, while standing on the scaffold within a few moments of his execution, held out his hand, as if to ascertain whether it were raining, and remarked to the chaplain in a calm and natural tone and manner, "I think we shall have rain to-day." The treatment of MacNaughton showed a marked advance upon the treatment of Bellingham.

The outcry against the acquittal of MacNaughton led, as has been already stated, to the House of Lords consulting the judges on the law as to insanity. Five questions were put to the judges, and were duly answered by them. The

questions and answers are somewhat lengthy, and, as they are so accessible in legal manuals, it is unnecessary to reproduce them. Stated shortly, they lay down that no act is a crime, if the person who does it is at the time when it is done prevented by any disease affecting his mind (A) from knowing the nature and quality of his act, or (B) from knowing that the act is wrong. But it is also laid down that an act may be a crime although the mind of a person who does it is affected by disease, if such disease does not in fact produce upon his mind one or other of the effects just mentioned in reference to that act. In Archbold's Criminal Pleading it is stated that the answers in the MacNaughton Case "have in the main been accepted as laying down the law of England as to the definition of insanity with reference to criminal responsibility." They have, however, since their enunciation, been the subject of much criticism by legal and medical writers, and would undoubtedly have given rise to substantial injustice but for considerable judicial manipulation. It is the latitudinarian spirit in which they have been interpreted which has made acceptance of them possible. Lord Blackburn, for example, said on one occasion that, the rules in MacNaughton's Case notwithstanding, there were "exceptional cases," and thus secured an acquittal in a case where conviction would have been inhuman. The rules cannot now be regarded as a satisfactory guide as to the law of insanity. They are carefully examined, and their numerous shortcomings pointed out by Mr. Wood Renton in his work on Lunacy, and by Sir James Stephen in his History of the Criminal Law. Sir James Stephen2 thought that the law ought to be stated thus:

"No act is a crime if the person who does it is at "the time when it is done prevented either by defective "mental power or by any disease affecting his mind,

1 24th edition, p. 14.

2 Digest of the Criminal Law, Art. 28.