Old World Trials. his experience weighed upon his mind, and he endeavored to get the British govern ment to take up his case. No one would bring it before Parliament. He then applied to Mr. Perceval, but the Prime Minister de clined to interfere. Bellingham then provided himself with pistols, balls, and powder, way laid Mr. Perceval in the lobby of the House of Commons, and shot him, as we have al ready stated, fatally in the side. It is a curi ous circumstance, by the way, that Mr. Per ceval was warned by a friend not to go to the House of Commons on the day of the murder, as he had dreamed that he saw the Prime Minister shot by a man wearing a suit of clothes such as Bellingham was proved to have worn on the day. Like Caesar in the well-known story of Calpurnia's dream, Perceval disregarded his friend's advice, and went forth to meet his Ides of March. Called upon for his de fense, Bellingham commenced by thanking the Attorney-General for having brushed aside the plea of insanity which his counsel had set up on his behalf. He then gave an account of the oppressive treatment he had received in Russia, and appealed to the jury as men, as fathers, and as Christians, what would have been their sensations had they been so imprisoned, while his wife who was then pregnant, and his child were compelled td proceed to England from Russia without a friend or protector. He then, after the manner of such persons, read to the jury the mass of petitions which he had forwarded to all classes of public persons, and their replies to his appeals, fiercely denounced Lord Leveson Gower, who was sitting facing him in the court, and concluded his defence by expressing the hope that the serious les son which he had given would be a warning to all future ministers, and invited the jury to send him back in comfort and honor to his family. His counsel took up the tale, and three witnesses were produced, who declared Bel lingham to be insane; one of them, Mrs.
Anne Billet, deposed that the father of the prisoner died mad, and that ever since his return from Russia, he had been considered insane on the subject by all his friends. On one occasion he had taken her and his own wife to the Secretary of State's office to con vince them that he should get £ 100,000 from the government. When he arrived, he was told positively he could get nothing, and yet, when he got into the street, he ap pealed to his wife as to whether his assertion had not been confirmed, and stated that he would buy a property in the west of Eng land and a house in London with the money. In charging the jury, Sir James Mansfield laid down what is known as the " right and wrong in the abstract " theory of criminal responsibility. About a century before, in Arnold's case, Mr. Justice Tracy had de clared that only a lunatic who had no more intellect than an infant, a brute, or a wild beast was irresponsible. Hadfield's case, however, had disposed of this theory for ever, and now Sir James Mansfield told the jury that the question of an insane person's responsibility depended on whether he did or did not know the difference between right and wrong. After a quarter of an hour's absence the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Bellingham's trial, which had commenced at ten in the morning, ended at six in the evening in his being sentenced to death. He was executed seven days later. The whole episode was profoundly dis graceful to the government, to the court which tried Bellingham, and to the public who cramored for his death. Little more than thirty years aftenvards the legal test of responsibility in mental dis ease was again altered and made to depend on whether the prisoner knew the nature and quality of the particular act with which he was charged at the time of committing ' it; and here the law of England still nomi nally stands. But " the rules in MacNaugh-
