prefers, and which, while it appeases public indignation, disposes of the case, and is supposed to end all difficulty. But it is beginning to be seen that these summary procedures do not put things to rest. With every new instance of this kind we are again confronted with the-perplexing problem of how far the defective-minded and badly-constituted are amenable to penalties that are prescribed to the mass of the community who are recognized as sane and responsible.
As we have said, insanity is a fact of human nature—troublesome to define, difficult to limit, and often hard to establish, but which must be met and dealt with as a stern reality. Obscure in its manifestations, profound and remote in its causes as it often is, we are liable to encounter it at any time, while it is so serious a thing that prompt and decisive public action is compelled to be taken upon it. Its questions arise continually in our courts, and have to be passed upon by juries of citizens, upon whose theories of the subject depend the issues of life and death. And besides these intrinsic difficulties in arriving at correct judgments regarding alleged cases of insanity, there are extrinsic difficulties more formidable still, for no subject is more overlaid with public prejudice than this. While such things as law, justice, civilization, and Christianity, have asserted their supremacy for thousands of years, it is only within recent times—so recent as to be still within the memory of men that the system of atrocious barbarity by which the insane had been always and everywhere treated has been brought to a termination. But, while humaner feeling and increasing enlightenment have gained the victory, it would be idle to deny that much of the ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, which gave rise to the old order of things still continues. There still survive the instinctive distrust, antipathy, and repugnance, toward the victims of mental disorder, as though their calamity were a disgrace and reproach to the nature of humanity. With such lingering errors in the popular mind, combined with a lack of the information which science has furnished, it is not surprising that we should often witness outbreaks of public passion so vehement as to affect the administration of justice. The case of James Freeman is still fresh in the memory of this generation. He had murdered a whole family under circumstances of atrocity that ought at once to have raised the suspicion that he was not a sane man; and, when brought to trial in Syracuse, his appearance attested him to be a half-demented brute. That the State was saved from the disgrace of executing him as a responsible criminal was due not to the intelligence or humanity of the people of Central New York, but to the noble intrepidity of an eminent lawyer, who, with no hope of reward, faced a storm of public indignation by voluntarily undertaking his defense. The evidence of public prejudice in relation to this sub-just is still further seen in the general impatience that is evinced when the plea of insanity is urged in capital trials. No doubt this plea has come to be a resource of lawyers, and is made the most of without regard to justice, in the defense of criminals; but the license of lawyers is a settled policy in the procedure of courts, and it is to be expected that they will strain and abuse every plea that can be made available. Moreover, as we have repeatedly said, insanity is a fact, and from its nature a cause of crimes the most inhuman; and while, in cases of suicide, mental derangement is alleged by coroners' juries as almost a stereotyped cause, it is not only proper but imperative to inquire if it may not also be a cause in cases of homicide. This plea is not to be ruled out or escaped as illegitimate; and the only rational course is to prepare to meet it and deal with it intelligently.
