examine the young man whose folly it was desired
that he should pronounce legal imbecility, he
got only the affidavits on one side; that he was
instructed by the solicitor for his accusers; that
he had seen the chief accuser five or six times for
half an hour or an hour at a time; and that he
went wholly upon the assumption that the
information he got from the prosecutor was
correct. He had two interviews with the unhappy
youth, and admits that, " supposing I had met
him with my mind a tabula rasa, I should have
been loth to form the opinion I have expressed
to-day with respect to his imbecility . . . . I
repeat, that the opinion I have stated is partly
founded upon the assumption"— that he, the
doctor, was to believe what he had heard to the
patient's prejudice.

And what opinion, after all, did the doctor
"express to-day"? He said, " Mental unsoundness
may be appreciated; it is easily recognised;
but it cannot be defined." The case under
inquiry, he said, " in medical language would be a
case of amentia." On the other side, said Dr.
Hood, the resident physician to Bedlam, who
should be an authority, " I do not think he
is suffering from 'amentia,' which I consider
an exploded term. He is not suffering from
natural imbecility." "Amentia," said on the
other side Dr. Conolly, the first English authority
upon these matters, " Amentia is an obsolete
term, but when it was used it meant
extreme imbecility. This person is assuredly not
in an imbecile state."

Let us at once declare that we do not for an
instant, or in the remotest degree, attribute to
Dr. Winslow, or to any other of these medical
gentlemen, a conscious action under mercenary
motives. The public danger arising from their
influence would be infinitely insignificant if the
fact were so. They are highly trained men, who
have honestly devoted themselves to a special
study of the most difficult questions that can
occur to a physician. There is no clear dividing
line between sickness and health of rnind;
unsoundness of mind is, no doubt, as various and
common as unsoundness of body; and perfect
health of mind or body is the gift of one man in a
million in civilised society. Every natural defect
of temper is unsoundness. All crime is
unsound; the criminal, as Coleridge said, being
only a fool with a circumbendibus. But we do
not condemn our bodies as unfit for use when
there are corns on our toes, or when the sallow
tinge on our cheeks supplants the hue of health.
We walk even upon one leg, breathe by help
of a single lung, do our duty m the world as far
as our infirmity permits. So it is with the mind.
Every man has his weak place; his twist, his
hobby. One man may rise to honour, and do
noble service to his country, by help of an
unhealthy restlessness that Dr. VVinslow's fingers
would itch to put under lock and key. Dr.
Winslow edits a journal called the Medical
Critic, which is psychological, and likes to point
out how many criminals are lunatics. In honest
truth, every criminal is a lunatic; but he is a
lunatic who would admit, except under the most
obviously exceptional conditions, any such plea
as a bar to responsibility. We even inherit
characters or forms of mind as well as forms of
body, and a neglected untaught man may be no
more able to control this or that evil turn of
character, than he may be able to control the
shape of his nose. Nevertheless, human judges
who are not All Wise, must give up society to
anarchy, or shut their eyes on such metaphysical
distinctions. In all human justice, said
Montaigne, there is an element of injustice
required to make it work.

When our justice, even in search of truth,
gets out of its depth, how far it may be carried
out to sea we learn from the mad-doctors.
There being much unsoundness in the mind of
a wise man, and more in the mind of a fool, a
genuine mad-doctor has only to be supplied
with such a fool as any man may meet a dozen
times a day; and, being prejudiced beforehand
by an attorney with an adverse statement, will
be quite prepared to certify the fool imbecile.

The manner in which the particular youth
of whose name we have had more than enough
was solemnly examined for a certificate of
imbecility by Dr. Forbes Winslow and by Dr.
Thomas Mayo, President of the College of
Physicians, is most edifying to the public.
At the first interview the young man sat at
a table with his judges— strongly prejudiced
against him, as they admit, by their belief in
the instructions of the adverse attorney— and
for two hours he submitted to their adverse
questions that raked up his follies and misdeeds.
The public, knowing the truth as to details, can
now see that as to some points of fact the
doctors had been wrongly instructed. Dr.
Forbes Winslow, for example, felt himself to be
very shrewd in his cross-examination about a
certain contract for the sale of timber, and a
person whom he supposed to have been secretly
and dishonestly at the bottom of it; and he
inquired, If you heard this, and if you heard that,
what should you say then? The young man,
not believing that he ever should truly hear this
or that, discrediting what it is now shown was
not the fact, said only, "I will wait till the
matter comes before the court." This sensible
reply was entered and quoted against him; but
the imbecility here— if so we are to call weakness
of judgment— was on the side of the doctor.
The victim of inquiry was found imbecile by the
doctors for the prosecution, because, they said,
his answers were childish. But the questions
put to him were often worse than childish. Dr.
Mayo owns that he tempted the young man,
whose morals he knew to be loose, with an
extravagant suggestion, which, he says, and
more shame to himself, " he had no reason to
believe well founded." And he considered the
youth's mind unsound, because he treated with
levity the idle accusation. Dr. Mayo is the
President of the College of Physicians, and the
author of Croonian Lectures on the art of giving
evidence in such cases as this; but of all the
evidence in the case, his particular evidence is
the most unreasonable.