prompted by excess of gall. Felonies were
crimes committed felleo animo, with a mind
affected by the gall; and Hale was of opinion
that the reason why a lunatic cannot be guilty
of a crime, is a want of gall. Then again,
maiming is not any kind of wounding, but such
wounding as lessens a man's power of
battling in his own defence. Therefore, it was
ruled that to knock out a man's front tooth is
to maim him; but that he is not maimed
by the knocking out of a grinder: because
with a front tooth he can bite and tear an
enemy, but with a grinder he can only masticate
his food.

Lunatics and idiots, it was said, could not
be criminals for want of gall; yet that they
can destroy life is certain. Dr. Mayo relates
that "an idiot in the hospital of Salzburg
appearing to be singularly insusceptible of fear,
an experiment of an appalling character, and
of appalling consequences, was made upon
him, as a means of putting his susceptibility
to the test. It was proposed to produce in
him the impression, that he saw a dead man
come to life. A person, accordingly, had
himself laid out as a corpse and enveloped in a
shroud; and the idiot was ordered to watch
over the dead body. The idiot perceiving
some motion in the corpse, desired it to lie
still; but the pretended corpse raising itself
in spite of this admonition, the idiot seized a
hatchet, which, unluckily, was within his
reach, and cut off first one of the feet of the
unfortunate counterfeit, and then, unmoved
by his cries, cut off his head. He then calmly
resumed his station by the real corpse." One
sees in such a story what is meant by there
being no gall — or felony in the lunatic. Here
is a ghastly murder without bitterness of
wrath or criminal intent. As little was there
of gall in a French child, five years and a
half old, mentioned by Voltaire. This little
boy, at Lyons, swore against his own mother
minute evidence of sundry horrible offences,
ending with a murder, and the particulars of
throwing the dead body in the Rhone, all of
which turned out to be false. The child having
been suborned by two children of her
accusers, had very nearly sent his mother to
the stake — for sugar-plums!

We have an arbitrary way of fixing
fourteen years as the age in relation to
responsibility for certain capital offences. We
take that age from the East, where puberty
comes early, and it is not the sole trace of an
origin from Constantinople in many of our
statutes.The Code Napoléon is wiser. It
determines that if an accused person be under
the age of — not fourteen, but — sixteen, it
shall be inquired of by the jury whether he
acted with, or without discernment. In the
latter case he is acquitted; but is liable to be
under due control. If, on the contrary, he be
found to have acted with discernment, his
punishment, it is decreed, shall be regulated in
proportion to the full punishment of the
offence, but never equal to it. Our old laws
took little thought at all of any such distinction.
In sixteen hundred and twenty-nine, a
child between the ages of but eight and nine
was hanged for arson at the Abingdon assizes.
As late as the year seventeen hundred and
eighty a boy of fourteen was hanged for
participating in a riot about Catholic Emancipation.
It might be said, however, that a London
street-boy is mature at ten. Account
was given to a parliamentary committee of
one of these unhappy creatures who during
a career of five years had robbed to the
amount three thousand pounds. Besides
numerous minor punishments, he had been
sentenced to death; but, from compassion,
sent to the Philanthropic Asylum instead of
the gallows. Thence he escaped, and was
for another offence transported for life — all,
before the age of thirteen.

There were some niceties connected with,
the judicial treatment of the law of Escheat,
or Confiscation, which led even to a
necessity for bringing torture into common use.
If prisoners liable to confiscation of their
goods were mutes, that is to say refused to
plead, there could be no attainder and
consequently, no escheat. For this reason, in
Sir Matthew Hale's time, it was the
constant practice at Newgate to tie together
with whipcord the two thumbs of any
refractory person, and the whipcord with the
aid of a parson soon produced the desired
effect. If more were required, recourse was
had to the peine forte et dure, the more
horrible form of torture. A case is on
record of a member of an ancient family in
Yorkshire, who, in a fit of jealousy, had
killed three of his children, his youngest
child being from home at nurse. Proceeding
to destroy the infant also, he was
terrified by a storm, which awakened his
remorse. He was arrested; in order to preserve
the estate to his surviving child, he died mute
—under agonies of torture!

A case of a different kind is that of one
William Dalhiot, who, a hundred years ago,
was convicted at the Salisbury quarter-
sessions of petty larceny, for stealing one
penny; whereby his effects consisting of bank
notes to the amount of one hundred and
eighty pounds and twenty guineas in money
were forfeited to the bishop as lord of the
manor. It so happened that the bishop
had a conscience, and gave all the money
back to the family, in this form, namely,
one hundred pounds to the felon's father,
the same to his daughter, and the remaining
twenty shillings to himself. The old
claims on confiscated goods were rarely
however met in this way. Even kings were
careful of the use they could make of such
windfalls, and there was a royal truth
in the answer of James the First to the
widow of Sir Walter Raleigh, who petitioned
for the restitution of Sherbourne Castle, that
he "mun have it for Ker."  Sylla the
dictator is supposed to have been the inventor