CHAPTERS IN THE ENGLISH LAW OF LUNACY.
BY A. WOOD RENTON.
II.
THE CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INSANE.
THE English law as to the criminal
responsibility of the insane has had a
curious history, in which America has borne
a highly honorable part. For practical
purposes the earliest attempt to deal with
this branch of our law was made by Coke in
1625. " In criminal causes," said that great
institutional writer, " as felony, etc., the act
and wrong of a madman shall not be imputed
to him, for in those causes actus non facit
rcum nisi mens sit rea, and he is amcns, i.e.,
sine mente without his mind or discretion
and funesta solo furore piinitiir — a mad
man is only punished by his madness."
And again Coke says: "The execution of
an offender is for example nt pocna ad
pancos mains ad omnes perveniat, but so it
is not when a madman is executed, but
should be a miserable spectacle, both against
law and of extreme inhumanity and cruelty
— and can be no example to others." When
we endeavor to extract from Coke, however,
any definition of irresponsible insanity, little
light or leading is to be extracted from his
works. After assuring us that non compos
mentis is the best term to describe " a man
of no sound memory," he proceeds as
follows : " Non compos mentis is of four
kinds: (i) an idiot who, from his nativity
by a perpetual infirmity, is non compos
mentis; (2) he that by sickness, grief or
other accident wholly loseth his memory and
understanding; (3) a lunatic that hath
sometimes his understanding and sometimes
not — aliquando gaudct Incidís inien>allis
— and therefore he is called non compos
mentis so long as he hath not understanding;
(4) he that by his own vicious act for a
time depriveth himself of his memory
and understanding as he that is drunken. But that kind of non compos shall give no privilege to him or his heirs as for a drunkard who is voluntaries dœmon he hath no privilege thereby but what hurt or ill soever he doth his drunkenness doth aggra vate it. Опте crimen cenefas cl incensit et detcgit." The most cursory student of these pas sages, with their curious garniture of Latin, will observe that Lord Coke throws no light on the test by which the existence of that degree of non compos which the law recog nizes as an excuse is to be determined. Fifty years later than Coke's time we meet with the first attempt at anything of this kind in the works of Sir Matthew Hale, who became Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1671 and died in 1676. Hale divides insanity into (l) dementia naturalis, or a nativitate; and (2) dementia accidentalis, or adventitia; and then subdivides (2) into partial and total insanity. He then goes on to explain this famous subdivision. "There is a partial insanity and a total insanity. The former is either in respect to things — quoad hoc vel illnd insanire — (some persons that have a competent use of reason in respect of some subjects are yet under a particular dementia in respect of some particular dis courses, subjects or applications), or else it is partial in respect of degrees, and this is the condition of very many, especially melan choly persons, who, for the most part, dis cover their defect in excessive fears or griefs and yet are not wholly destitute of the use of their reason, and their partial insanity seems not to excuse them in the committing any offense for its matter capital. It is
