MORAL INSANITY AS A DEFENSE TO CRIMES. Bv Frank B. L1v1ngstone. IN later times a species of mental disorder that has been a good deal discussed is one variously styled moral or emotional, or impulsive or paroxysmal insanity. It is also known among medical writers as lesion of the will. The peculiarity of this insanity is said to be that, while the mental perception is unim paired, the mind is powerless to control the will; that, while its unhappy subject knows the right and desires to pursue it, some mysterious and uncontrollable impulse com pels him to commit the wrong. This moral mania, like intellectual, is of two kinds, par tial and general. Instances of the former are kleptomania, or propensity to steal, pyromania, or propensity to destroy by fire, and homicidal mania. " General moral ma nia," says Dean's " Medical Jurisprudence," "consists in a general exaltation, perversion or derangement of function, of all the affec tive or moral powers." Those who have written, or, more cor rectly speaking, some of those who have written upon this form of " mental alienation or moral derangement," unite in describing those who labor under it as " persons of sin gular, wayward, and eccentric character. Their antipathies are violent, and suddenly taken; their suspicions unjust and severe, and their propensities strong and eagerly indulged. They are generally proud, con ceited, ostentatious, easily excited and ob stinate in the maintaining of absurd opinions. The unhappy subject will generally be found to have experienced a great change in tem per, disposition, and moral qualities, either sudden and dating from some reverse of fortune or loss of dear friends or relatives, or gradual and imperceptible, consisting in an exaltation or increase of peculiarities which were always natural or habitual. The
moral maniac will rarely exhibit any signs of derangement in his conversation. He will often be regular, systematic and methodical in all his business transactions, and to all appearance regular in the use of his intel lect. One man sees him in business trans actions only, or converses with him when he is free from excitement, and he does not hesitate to pronounce him perfectly sane; another has an opportunity to witness some strange and unaccountable eccentricity of conduct, totally irreconcilable with the pos session and exercise of a sound mind. The | facts to which these two persons would tesI tify, if called upon to do so, are apparently contradictory, and yet they are perfectly consistent when the form of the malady is known. The conversation discloses intellec tual mania, and the conduct moral mania." Other authorities describe it as " a state in which the reason has lost its empire over the passions and the actions by which they are manifested to such a degree that the individual can neither repress the former nor abstain from the latter. It does not follow that he may not be in possession of his senses and even his usual intelligence; since, in order to resist the impulses of the passions, it is not sufficient that the reason should impart its counsels; we must have the necessary power to obey them. The maniac may judge correctly of his actions without being in a condition to repress his passions, and to abstain from the acts of violence to which they impel him." Whether this derangement of the moral faculties will exculpate a person who has committed a criminal act, is a question on which the most learned justices cannot agree. The following are some of the decisions of the American courts on the subject. One of the first cases, considering this
