CAUTION AGAINST LUNATICS.
WHEN Bean, ambitious idiot, was tried for shooting at Queen Vic- toria, it was stated, as it had been stated before in the case of Ox- ford, that the lad had long been labouring under uncontrollable eccentricities; and he was acquitted. When Pate struck at her _Majesty, the same kind of statements were made respecting him, but with still greater force of evidence and notoriety ; but, weary of acquitting turbulent monomaniacs, the Jury convicted him. Perhaps not without some exasperation at the very hopelessness of dealing with an irresponsible being placed in a position of such grave responsibility,—.f we may be allowed to imagine human weaknesses on the Bench,—resentinent at the gross absurdity of the case was wreaked on its unhappy subject, and Pate was treated like a man sane but malignant.
In all these oases, the one glaring fact was that the mania had displayed itself for a long time and had gradually creased until
it ended in outrage. We might i ht go back to other cases, uncon- nected with Royalty, like that of Macnaghten who assassinated Mr. Drummond ; but this law of disease is well known to students of medical jurisprudence. The logical suggestion derivable from these facts is that when a man shows signs of not being in an ac- countable state, he should be brought under examination, and, if necessary, placed in proper keeping. The rule is recognized in other cases : if we see a wall likely to tumble we prop it up ; if we discover a leak in a ship at sea, we stop it ; and even in oases of insanity, where property is the subject matter at stake, we take precautions. But injury to the person is worse than in- jury to property, and there is no logical reason why the inquest de lunatioo should apply only to questions of property.
These remarks are suggested by our observing strange scenes even in the very courts of law. In one, a prosecutor proceeds against the High Bailiff and others for unlawfully stamping deeds and yard-measures, and detains the County Court with nonsensical figments, excusable only on the supposition that the man is mad. The same gentleman has already stood his trial on a charge of accelerating death by interfering in the medical treatment of a patient, with strange ministerings of a wonderful lamp and untimely concussions of the dying man. Should any more direct charge of fatal attack hereafter happen in the eccentric orbit of the same person, of course we should have overwhelming evidence for acquittal; and the witnesses might be collected without limit from the public meetings of the Me- tropolis. On the same day with this latest exhibition, another gentleman, who has been the subject of innumerable paragraphs, whose irresponsible condition has already been pleaded in a police court after a playhouse disturbance, and who has been surprising the Yankees no less than the English, suddenly reappeared in the courts of law, talking aloud, familiarly recognizing "Sir Frederick" on the bench, and wandering again out of court with a crowd at his heels. Should any more serious disaster occur, it would be poor satisfaction, after acquitting the one gentleman on the score of his antics at public meeting and court of law, to con- vict the other, only for a change of treatment, where the main cir- cumstances, as in the case of Bean and Pate, are so similar, and ought to dictate similar precautions.
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