The Responsibility of the Insane *1. Medical Testimony and Evidence in Cases of Lunacy. By Thomas Mayo, M.D., F.R.S. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1854.2. Unsoundness of Mind in relation to Criminal Acts; being the Sugden Prize Essay for 1854. By John Charles Bucknill, M.D., Physician to the Devon County Lunatic Asylum. London: Samuel Highley, 1854.3. Unsoundness of Mind in its Medical and Legal Considerations. By J. W. Williams, M.D. Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, Nos. XXXV., XXXVI., XXXVII. 1854-5.

crotchets about "parasitical mental growths" and indefinable scales of secondary punishments of Dr. Mayo. But Englishmen are not likely to forget that a jury is the shield interposed between the governing power and the citizen, in order to protect him from arbitrary and illegal assaults upon his liberty. May not a man's liberty be assailed by the false imputation of insanity ? The thing has been done ; it may be done again : and no greater facility for the perpetration of similar outrages could be given than that of withdrawing a man from the cognizance of the jury by setting up the imputation of insanity. But if juries are sometimes "rough instruments of justice," has not the institution borne, during many centuries, a fair comparison with other modes of administering justice ? The Ecclesiastical Courts, in which skilled persons preside and adjudicate without the presence of juries, have not worked so well as to have found much favour with the public. Abroad, there is an universal tendency to introduce and extend the jury-system of England. But why should juries be disqualified on the ground of their ignorance of psychology? They are not called xvpon to judge of psychology, but of evidence. To contend that juries are not competent to deal with questions of insanity, because they are not psychopathic physicians, is to contend that juries are not competent to deal with questions of engineering, because they are not engineers ; with questions of law, because they are not lawyers ; with questions of science, because they are not scientific; and so on, to the extinction of juries altogether, and the establishment of as many different courts, on the model of the Admiralty or of Ecclesiastical Courts, as there are professions and sciences. Heaven save us from such reforms! We entertain, however, a comforting assurance that the reflecting portion of the public will wait for stronger reasons than have yet been adduced before adopting maxims so revolutionary and so visionary,and that,in the meantime, they will stand by the motto, " Nolumus leges Angliae mutari." We have now arrived at the conclusion of our task. We have examined the three great questions raised in the works before us with care, and have expressed our opinions upon them with freedom and with candour. The psychological doctrines of Dr. Mayo are so peculiar in their nature, and so dangerous in the applications proposed, that we have felt it as an imperative duty to expose their fallacy with all the more freedom, because the professional position of their author might obtain for them an extrinsic authority. The psychological doctrines of Dr. Bucknill are more in accordance with the researches of the most trustworthy of modern physicians. The principal objections we have had to urge against Dr. Bucknill's work are not directed against his views of mental pathology. Few physicians of the present day have given THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INSANE. 23-3 more solid contributions to the science of cerebro-mental disease. His labours in this department have been too well directed and too zealouslypursued not to have guarded him against gross psychological errors. We have been compelled, however, to criticize, with an appearance of severity, the formidable innovations which he has, upon inadequate grounds, proposed in the administration of the law in cases where the question of insanity is raised. But these medico-legal opinions of Dr. Bucknill bear no necessary relation to his psychological tenets ; with the exception of the doctrine of insane responsibility, they are not absolutely incompatible with the soundest principles of medicine. They only betray a mind too eager to contrive artificial reforms, too ready to seek in legislative enactments the remedy for difficulties in practice which arise, not so much from error in the principles of our criminal legislation, as in the differences of opinion about their application in individual cases. This too hasty and meddlesome spirit of change, time and reflection will correct; and we venture to cherish the hope that, one day, Dr. Bucknill will abandon his now favourite doctrines of instituting medical juries; he will admit that it is, on the whole, best that the physician should not travel out of the legitimate paths of medicine, and that he should not seek to be invested with the incompatible attributes of judge, jury, and witness. Of Dr. Williams's thoughtful, logical, and able essay we have had occasion to speak with almost unqualified praise. His views upon the mooted questions between law and medicine regarding insanity are not less sound and temperate than his fundamental psychological doctrines. Such an essay, so well calculated to spread a just appreciation of the medico-legal relations of insanity throughout the professions of medicine and the law, should not be suffered to remain in its present inaccessible position, scattered over three numbers of a quarterly magazine. We strongly urge upon its author the duty of publishing it in a separate and more convenient form.