A REVIEW OF THE CASE 
OF 
MRS. ELIZABETH HEGGIE. 
HOMICIDE—INSANE DELUSION. 
(From the American Journal of Insanity, for July, 18G8.) 
On tlie fifteenth clay of June, 1864, Charlotte L. 
Heggie, a daughter of Janies M. Heggie and Elizabeth 
Heggie, of Ithaca, Tompkins county, in the State of 
New York, died at her father’s residence, at the age of 
twenty-one, after a short illness; and under circum- 
stances so like those attending the death of an elder 
sister, Mary, about eight months before, and otherwise 
so suspiciously, that the coroner deemed it necessary to 
hold an immediate incpiest to ascertain the cause of the 
death. A post mortem examination was made, and the 
verdict of the jury was death by poison; and the 
coroner, on the advice of the district attorney, at once 
apprehended Mrs. Elizabeth Heggie, the mother, on 
suspicion of having administered the poison. 
It is not our purpose to examine the evidence proving 
the fact of the poisoning, and fastening it upon the 
alleged culprit. These points are assumed to be con- 
ceded. They do not seem to have been very tenaciously 
disputed by the counsel for the defence, and may, indeed, 
be fairly considered as confessed by the culprit herself. 
The crime, however, was so horribly unnatural as at 
once to impress many minds with a conviction, either 
that it was not possible that a mother should have 
committed it, or that, if she had, she was unquestion- 
ably insane. 2 
The case so far as it calls for any notice from tliis 
Journal, depends upon the question of insanity as dis- 
closed by the voluminous evidence. We have carefully 
perused the whole, as well that on the preliminary as 
that on the main issue, as it was minutely taken down 
by an official reporter; and shall give such a condensed 
abstract of it as will cast an impartial light on the 
question that specially concerns us. 
The whole life of the defendant was retraced with 
much particularity on both issues. The preliminary 
issue was. tried in April, 18G5, in the county where the 
offence was committed, and occupied five days. The 
difficulty of obtaining an unbiased jury on that occa- 
sion, grew, in consequence of the increased publicity 
and agitation of the matter, into an impossibility of 
doing so on the trial of the main issue, compounded of 
both the guilt and the insanity. To try this, the whole 
panel of jurors summoned was first exhausted, and then 
the whole jury list of the county; and out of the whole 
three hundred or thereabouts, not twelve men could 
be found, who were not excluded either by peremptory 
challenges, or for confessed or presumed bias. It was 
therefore determined to try the case in Cortland county. 
Both trials were before Justice Mason, of the Supreme 
Court, now of the Court of Appeals. The government 
appeared by Cochrane, Attorney General, on the pre- 
liminary issue, and by Martindale, his successor, on the 
main issue, assisted by Mr. ATilson, District Attorney 
of Tompkins county, on both. The defence was man- 
aged by Mr. Tremaine as leading counsel. 
The preliminary trial decided simply the question 
of present sanity, after the hearing of several medical 
experts, by a verdict that the culprit was then sane; 
by which was meant that she was legally capable of a 
-defence on her trial: that, in other words, she did not, 3 
in the judgment of the jury, fall within that humane 
provision of the statutes, that “no insane person can he 
tried, sentenced to punishment, or punished, for any 
crime or offence, while he continues in that state.” 
The principal testimony given on the preliminary 
issue was substantially repeated afterwards (excepting 
that of Dr. Butler, of Hartford,) on the trial in chief; 
and it is therefore unnecessary further to refer to it, 
except possibly to explain or elucidate the meaning of 
the witnesses, or to note variations in their testimony. 
The trial of the main issue was held in Cortland 
county, in May, 18G6, about two years after the homi- 
cide, and occupied about ten days. The plea of insanity 
was interposed for the substantial defence. The uncon- 
troverted, proved, or admitted facts were these: 
Elizabeth Heggie, whose maiden name was Kendall, 
was born in December, 1818, at Wilkesbarre, Pennsyl- 
vania. She was a third or fourth child. Her maternal 
grandfather was reported to have died insane, and one 
of her brothers was insane twice at intervals. Her 
mother was in low spirits, and often found weeping, 
just before Elizabeth was born. One cause assigned 
was a pecuniary misfortune of the family that happened 
about that time, and threatened distress. In her ad- 
vanced years she had a profound faith in electricity, as 
a medical panacea, and in her success in applying it; 
which was adduced as an evidence of her tendency to 
insane delusions. 
When three or four years old, or when she was old 
enough to be about, Elizabeth was picked up one day 
in a senseless condition, on the ground, at the foot of a 
fight of outside-stairs, without a railing, leading to the 
second story of the dwelling, from the top or some tread 
of which stairs she was supposed to have fallen. Prior 
and subsequent to that event, during her childhood, 4 
slie had convulsions or fits. When found, her head was 
swollen from a blow, and she was at first suspected to 
be dead. After recovering from that, she grew up 
without much association with playmates, and without 
much fondness for childish social amusements. She is 
described as “ a poor, sick, puny child,” u too weakly to 
go to school for years,” “ always stupid,” “ often alone 
amusing herself.” She was sly, suspicious, and a list- 
ener. She stealthily pinched little children. She was 
no favorite with her sisters, and was rather shunned by 
them and by the family generally as a disagreeable 
child. 
At about twelve, she went to school for two or three 
quarters; and her teacher reports of her that she was 
not appreciative, but didl and taciturn; not playful; 
and at times showing a sad and sullen spirit. uSlie 
was not a particularly bad girl, was not quick to learn, 
and was not troublesome. She found it difficult to 
commit the multiplication table, but read and wrote.” 
At about eighteen, she was married; and became 
afterwards the mother of nine living children, (having 
two and probably four miscarriages,) the intervals of 
birth varying from thirteen to eighteen and twenty-four 
months. She was kind to her children, and vain of 
them, while they were young; but as they grew up, 
treated them with short speech and unkindness, show- 
ing some favoritism. She was a notable housekeeper, 
dispatchful and laborious, and showed good taste and 
thrift in her purchases for the household. She was of 
a quick temper. In her family, and in her intercourse 
wdth her sisters and their families, she was moody; 
sometimes lively and sometimes sulky; muttering when 
alone; frequently in tears; shutting herself in her bed- 
room for hours when something went wrong, or she was 
thwarted in her expectations or intentions ; complaining 5 
frequently, for eiglit or ten years before lier trial, of 
headaches (which the family physician says were some- 
times nervous and sometimes sick-lieadaches, but not 
more frequent with her than with many women) and of 
want of sleep; sometimes expressing herself as having 
no friends, and wishing she were dead. 
As her children grew up, particularly her daughters 
Mary and Charlotte, she had frequent petulant, abrupt, 
and hard words with them; chiding them harshly and 
threateningly, violently wrangling with them, and deny- 
ing them company; on one occasion locking them out, 
on another cutting off the gas to drive away their visit- 
ors, and on another putting her silver and linen under 
lock and key that it might not be used by them during 
her temporary absence. They were now young women 
of marriageable years. She frequently expressed a sus- 
picion that they were supplanting, or intending to 
supplant her, in the management of household affairs, 
and on one occasion, at least, wished they were dead. 
When she heard that Charlotte was about to return 
home from a visit to the west, she wished the cars 
might “ smash up ” on the way. To her family and rel- 
atives she showed peculiarities and traits that do not 
appear to have been observed by her less intimate ac- 
quaintances. They speak of a glaring eye, a downward 
look, and a silly, idiotic laugh which accompanied silly 
and unmeaning remarks; of her little or no conversa- 
tion ; of her untruthfulness, inconsistency, and self-con- 
tradictions; of her remarkable fondness for seeing 
funerals and horrible events, hurrying forward un- 
seemly to be the first to see a corpse, and curious about 
sad accidents. These traits were not observed much, 
and many of them not at all, by mere acquaintances 
and neighbors on terms of ordinary social intimacy, or 
by those she met in shopping or otherwise casually. 6 
Her conduct seems, during all lier life, to have been 
mortifying to her sisters when in her company in the 
presence of others, and she took much to heart little 
criticisms and corrections of her daughters respecting 
her modes of expression in her table talk. On one oc- 
casion, when there was a turkey for a dinner, she used 
the word “ stuffing,” and her daughter Charlotte said 
“ you mean dressing, mother,” she rose indignantly from 
the table and left the room. On another occasion, 
when she was complaining to one of her sisters of her 
children not treating her well, saying “ they wanted to 
run over her,” the sister replied that “ if she would 
treat them as a mother ought to, and not be always 
finding fault with them, they would treat her differ- 
ently,” she was so much offended that she would not 
speak to her again “ for months.” “ She disagreed with 
all her friends.” She was a professor of religion, a 
member of a religious society, and a pretty regular 
attendant on divine service. She was not apparently 
much enlightened on religious matters, and could not 
be engaged in much conversation respecting her spirit- 
ual state. She participated in the benevolent labors of 
a sewing society, taking some pride in entertaining it at 
her residence, as well as in entertaining visitors. 
As has been intimated, most of the singular traits of 
looks, manners, and character thus far detailed, were 
testified to by the family connections of the defendant, 
who were naturally concerned for her exculpation, if 
not from particular affection for her, from a desire to 
prevent a great family disgrace. 
There does not appear to have been any recurrence of 
the fits or convulsions that attended her infancy, after 
the age of puberty, or from before the time she attended 
school (about twelve) until on one occasion five or six 
years before the trial. She then attended a Sunday 7 
morning service at the Baptist Church, instead of her 
own, and was seized there with a tit or convulsion, ac- 
companied by a shriek that startled the congregation. 
She was forthwith carried by the sexton into the vesti- 
bule, seated on a chair, and a physician was sent for. 
He found her apparently going into a sleep. She said 
nothing, and he did not know whether there was any 
consciousness. There were some slight convulsions. 
Her breathing was hard at first, but soon became more 
natural. Her pulse was full and rather strong; but 
gradually subsided in its force and violence. He did 
not think it was decidedly a case either of epilepsy or 
of hysterics. She would not answer his questions. 
She seemed unable to support herself, and leaned 
against some persons by her as she sat in the chair. 
Her eyes were closed; the mouth not drawn open. 
The symptoms were such that he thought she would 
soon go to sleep. In that condition she was taken 
home, he going with her and the sexton in a carriage. 
She partially assisted herself into the house. He re- 
mained about half an hour or more, and when he left 
thought she was asleep. He did not visit her again. 
She soon recovered. The sexton says that while she 
was sitting in the chair in the vestibule her eyes were 
shut, and when she was put into the carriage they were 
open. As some stress was laid upon this occurrence to 
color the defence, it is necessary to add that she herself 
afterwards explained it sufficiently perhaps, if truth- 
fully, when she told the sexton that she and her husband 
had quarreled that morning, and that was the reason 
why she had gone to the Baptist Church instead of 
going \tith him, and “while thinking over what had 
happened she got so mad she could not hold herself; 
but,” she added, “I knew what I was about all the 
time.” 8 
Respecting her conduct just previous to and during 
the last illness of Charlotte, there is much testimony 
bearing upon the question of her guilt, and perhaps no 
less important as touching the question of her sanity. 
It is therefore given with more detail. 
The defendant had been with her husband on a visit 
to New York, where they had spent a fortnight. The 
morning after they returned, the mother, finding that 
the table linen had been used, inquired of a younger 
daughter, whether Charlotte had had company during 
her absence; and being informed that she had, remarked 
that “the next company would probably be her funeral.” 
Within a day or two after, Charlotte was taken sick, 
and the family physician was called in by a hurrying 
message from the mother, who opened the door for him 
the moment he touched the door-steps, and immediately 
on his entering closed the door upon him, and requested 
him in an anxious voice to tell Charlotte that “her father 
had sent for him;” assigning, when questioned, for a 
reason, that “she would not follow his prescription 
unless she thought her father sent him.” To his ques- 
tion what was the matter with Charlotte, she said, “she 
was very sick, that she was just as Mary was, and that 
she did not believe that she would ever get well.” To 
his surprise, on starting to ascend the stairs to her room, 
he saw Charlotte at the head of them, dressed for the 
day, who insisted on coming down to the sitting room. 
On examination he found her pulse rapid and small, her 
tongue of a grayish color with redness at the tip and 
edges. She said she had been at the club room, (where 
were meetings to do work for the soldiers,) the day be- 
fore, and had vomited freely, and felt better; but after 
supper time, was taken again, and suffered severely in 
the night by burning pains in her stomach and griping 
of the bowels. She had taken little dinner, and no 9 
supper. He prescribed for her, and, as he was leaving, 
asked, before the mother, if lie should call the next 
morning. Charlotte said she thought she would be well 
then, and expressed a reluctance to take the medicine 
lie left with her. The mother said, if she was not de- 
cidedly better in the morning, they would let him know. 
He was not sent for again. This was Friday. 
After the physician left, a female cousin came and 
stayed with Charlotte during her sickness. They 
walked out together after tea that day. At night, 
Charlotte took the medicines as prescribed (first, one 
powder consisting of calomel and rhubarb, and after- 
wards a Dovers powder,) expressing a reluctance to 
do so, and a wish that she might have a homoeopathic 
physician. During the night, she vomited and purged 
four or five times, and the next morning she was quite 
weak. The same day she ate a small bit of toast and 
drank some black tea in the evening, which was poured 
out at the tea table by her mother, and handed by her 
to Charlotte. She had taken black tea on one or two 
occasions before that at the table, and had complained 
that it gave her an ill-feeling. Her mother had said 
that she thought it would be better for her than drink- 
ing so much cold water. She vomited some of it. On 
Saturday or Sunday evening, her mother prepared some 
fresh black tea, and wished the cousin to urge Charlotte 
to drink it. Charlotte took some of it, but did not re- 
tain it. She rested better Saturday night than the night 
before, with less vomiting and purging. She had com- 
plained for some time of a distressed feeling in her 
stomach. She dressed herself, with assistance, Sunday 
morning; but seemed very weak, and her illness in- 
creased. Some panada was prepared for her by her 
cousin; but she took very little of it, and drank occa- 
sionally of the black tea, but did not retain it. The 10 
sickness and vomiting continued through Sunday and 
Sunday night, with less violence. The mother went to 
church Sunday morning. Monday morning, she went 
out and bought half an ounce of arsenic at a druggist’s, 
saying to him that “ the arsenic she got before was not 
very good, and she wanted some better than that.” 
She had bought some the Saturday before at another 
shop. The druggist, after learning from her that she 
used it on bread and butter to poison rats, told her to 
use it with Indian meal. She then voluntarily spoke 
to him of the illness of her daughter, saying that “ she 
was taken sick very much as Mary was, and she feared 
she would not recover.” During this Monday morning, 
the cousin prepared some gruel at the mother’s request, 
she supplying the materials,—Indian meal, salt, and 
water,—saying “ she did not know just how to do it, 
and preferred that she should make it.” It was made 
and left to cool. Charlotte tasted it, and said it tasted 
good, but would take but little for fear it would make 
her sick. In the afternoon, the cousin found the mother 
herself preparing some gruel, and asked her what she 
was doing. She replied, “ she Avas preparing some new, 
for the other Avas too salt, and Charlotte did not wish 
her to tell the cousin so.” She said she had throAvn the 
other aAvay. While she Avas preparing this, a younger 
daughter came in from school, and on saying she had 
been to see a gravestone Avhich Avas ordered for Mary, 
the mother said “ they Avould have to make another for 
Lotty before long.” This neAv gruel Avas put on the 
stand, and Charlotte took some of it that afternoon, at 
tAVO or three different times. She complained that day 
or the next of its irritating her throat and stomach. 
She also partook of some oyster broth prepared by her 
father. She seemed to rest quite easy Monday night 
Her hands and feet Avere cold from the ffrst of her sick 11 
ness. On Tuesday, in consequence of her complaints 
of her throat and stomach, her homoeopathic physician 
prescribed a preparation of marsh-mallows to relieve the 
irritation. She could not retain anything on her stom- 
ach. The cousin was absent during the forenoon, leav- 
ing Charlotte in the care of her mother; and on her 
return, at noon, did not find her any better. She took 
no medicine except the throat wash, which she spoke of 
as producing a pleasant sensation in the mouth. The 
gruel was not continued. She was very restless and 
delirious all Tuesday night, complained of an inward 
burning, and threw herself from side to side of the bed; 
and in the morning of Wednesday the coldness of the 
extremities was particularly observed. She was very 
much worse, very delirious, took no nourishment, and, 
between nine and ten o’clock, died. 
Just before her death, while the mother, one of her 
sons, and others of the family and attendants were 
about the bed and in the room, the son said to his 
mother, “ Mother, God Almighty knows you had a 
hand in this! ” to which she made no reply. When 
she died, the mother was weeping violently. The son, 
on passing out of the room remarked to her, “ Woman, 
you will have something to reflect upon ! ” to which no 
reply was given. 
Three or four hours after the death, the mother went 
out into the woodshed, a sort of out-kitchen, where a 
woman accustomed to do occasional house-work for the 
family, and who had been sent for to aid them that 
day, was at work; and placing her hand on the table, 
said, “ she had another affliction,—a hard one,” and 
asked the woman, “ Did I not show you arsenic on 
Monday?” The reply was “No.” She rejoined, “Yes, 
I did.” The reply was, “No, if you had I should have 
remembered it;” to which she rejoined, “ I did, but you 12 
were confused.” Slie continued, “ I was up street, and 
got sixpence worth of arsenic,—that it would not mix 
with Indian meal, and that she had put it on bread and 
butter.” The woman exclaimed, “ You don’t think Char- 
lotte got the bread and butter!” “No,” she said, “but 
I am glad Bell Kendall (the cousin) had the handling 
of the medicine.” The woman replied, “I hope you 
don’t think Bell gave her any thing.” “ Oh no ! ” she 
said, “ but she was glad Bell had the handling of her 
medicine.” The woman added, “ I hope you don’t think 
people will censure you,” and she replied, “ Oh no, but 
she was glad since it had come to this, and she and her 
husband thought that Mary and Charlotte took the 
arsenic to whiten their complexion.”. The talk was 
then interrupted by some one calling the mother. . It 
may be added here as a coincidence in regard to the 
two deaths, that just before Mary’s death the mother 
had bought arsenic. 
The calling away of the mother which broke off this 
conversation was to get her directions for a person 
waiting to receive them respecting a shroud which she 
had already ordered for Charlotte’s burial. The direc- 
tion she gave was that it should be “just like Mary’s.” 
On one occasion during Charlotte’s sickness, while con- 
fidently predicting the day and almost the hour of her 
death, she had remarked, “ How splendid Mary was laid 
out—she looked like a bride,” and almost in the same 
breath that “ she did not like burying so many of her 
good clothes.” 
There is not much disclosed in the evidence respect- 
ing the daughter Mary. It appears that she did not 
take with forbearance or respect her mother’s frequent 
chidings and coarse, sharp talk, but responded in a like 
strain and temper, and rather defied and evaded her 
attempts at discipline. It is shown of Charlotte that, 13 
in general, slie was respectful, patient, and filial, al- 
though on one occasion she had a violent altercation 
and personal struggle with her. “She was a bright, 
intelligent, very pretty girl, and of a good disposition;’* 
but she seems to have felt that her home was a very 
unhappy place; and when she was summoned by her 
father to return from a pleasant sojourn in the west 
“ she felt as if a dagger were thrust into her.” “ Both 
these daughters,” says a maternal aunt, “ were fond of 
society, were educated, accustomed to visit among 
educated people, and desired to have that class of peo- 
ple visit them.” 
During the mother’s confinement in the jail, she was 
frequently visited by medical men, and was also of 
course frequently in communication with the jailor and 
his wife. From their several testimony it appears that 
“ the ingratitude of her children was the great trouble 
on her mind.” The physician who attended her says 
that she always complained of her head the first thing; 
that he observed nothing peculiar about her eye, and 
never saw her smile or laugh. She never denied the 
murder positively; but she said that “ if she had done 
it, it was done without knowledge how she came to 
do it, or anything about it.” lie detected her in posi- 
tive falsehoods. She was constantly curious to know 
whether her visitors were for her or against her. She 
told the jailor’s wife that she hoped to be sent to the 
Asylum; thought she could be cured in about six weeks 
or two months; “ she was not so bad as she liad been;” 
also, that her counsel and her friends assured her “ it 
would all come out right.” She played April Fool’s 
jokes on the jailor; she criticized the testimony on the 
preliminary trial; called for the village papers and 
“Frank Leslie;” wanted a new fiower border for her 
bonnet, and some coloring stuff for her hair. She was- 14 
deceptive as to her physical condition, claiming, for 
instance, to be constipated, when there was demonstra- 
tive evidence to the contrary, and prevaricating about 
her medicines. 
On the question of sanity, there was a conflict in the 
opinions of the medical experts who were summoned as 
witnesses. 
Dr. Butler, Superintendent of the Hartford Asylum, 
who appeared only on the preliminary trial, was not 
convinced that the defendant was insane; but the evi- 
dence showed him that there was a state of mental 
unsoundness and debility which created in his mind a 
strong doubt of her sanity. He considered her as a 
proper subject for an asylum, where the doubt might 
be solved. He had no decided evidence of ancestral 
taint, but had of collateral insanity. If it was a case 
of insanity, it was neither mania nor melancholia, and 
was not sufficiently defined yet. 
Dr. Brown, physician of the Bloomingdale Asylum 
for the insane in New York, and for eighteen years 
connected with hospitals for the insane, drew from the 
evidence the opinion, which he expressed unreservedly 
and with the consciousness that perhaps some measure 
of professional reputation might be at stake, that the 
prisoner was insane at the time of the alleged homicide 
in June, 1864. She came from a family in which there 
was a good deal of insanity, suffered from convulsive 
disease in early life, had been subject to moody tits 
throughout life, and then, coming to the evidence con- 
nected with the homicide, he interpreted the views 
which she was said to have expressed as to the measure 
of authority which she said her •daughter was inclined 
to assume in the household, by usurping her place at 
the head of the female department of it, as indicating 
an irrational and insane view of the facts, and as consti- 15 
tilting, in connection with the course she took to remove 
the daughter from the opportunity of taking her place, 
an insane delusion; especially when he considered that 
the maternal instinct is one of the strongest influences 
of the human mind, and that the mother will do any- 
thing for her offspring and submit to any sacrifice for 
them. lie attached very little importance to any single 
symptom isolated from all others, but preferred to 
group them together to make a whole, from which to 
form an opinion. Had there beeij no sleeplessness in 
the case, it would not have changed his opinion. lie 
assumed the fact that she was indulgent, fond of her 
children, and vain of them; glad to have them enjoy 
themselves; as the basis of her ordinary mode of feel- 
ing and acting towards them. He regarded her as 
always having been a nervous person, but not insane; 
but had not formed the impression that she had ever 
been a healthy person. In some cases of melancholia 
or dementia, insanity may exist without delusion. He 
supposed, that at the time of the homicide, the real 
state of affection between the mother and daughter was 
different from what it was before. To a question of 
the Court: Is this a case of insanity without delusion ? 
he replied that he was unable to say; he thought there 
was a delusion consisting in her belief that the daugh- 
ter was likely to usurp her own proper measure of 
authority, and there was no adequate reason for it. He 
took tin; evidence as showing an entire absence of con- 
vulsions since infancy. To another question of the 
Court, lie said that great and prolonged melancholia 
constitutes a form ©f insanity whether any delusion 
can be discovered or not; so that a person may be pro- 
nounced insane without any delusion. This was not a 
case of that kind. lie regarded the supposed usurpa- 
tion of the daughter as the particular in which the 16 
delusion, in liis judgment, appeared. Her variable and 
moody disposition lie supposed to represent her natural 
temperament and ordinary course of feeling and con- 
duct. He did not regard her as insane on general 
subjects; monomania was a much more rare species of 
insanity than the world at large understands; but he 
thought it a case of partial insanity. On the evidence 
he had heard he was willing to regard it as a case of 
insane delusion. He supposed that she understood the 
nature of the act.—After hearing the rebutting evidence 
lie adhered to the same opinion he had before expressed. 
Dr. Cook, physician of the Asylum at Canandaigua, 
New York, (who had testified on the preliminary 
issue,) was of the opinion that the defendant was of 
unsound mind in June, 1864. An inherited predisposi- 
tion to insanity,—a nervous convulsive disorder in 
infancy, resulting in modified or perverted development 
of the mind, as shown by her feebleness of body and 
mind in eaily life,—her slowness to learn,—her inability 
to acquire more than the simplest forms of knowledge, 
—the peculiarities of her childhood,—the emotional 
disturbances extending over the whole period of her 
married life, but more marked of later years, exhibited 
by alternate depression and exhilaration, by her frequent 
fits of weeping and laughing, by her cordiality alternat- 
ing with reserve towards her friends,—her irritability 
towards her children,—the indications of mental un- 
soundness as shown by her impaired intelligence,—her 
mutterings when she was not conscious of being ob- 
served,—the exaggerated importance which she attached 
to ordinary and trifling events,—the distrust and sus- 
picion with which she in turn regarded her family,— 
the belief which she seems to have firmly entertained 
that her daughters as they grew to womanhood were 
trying to supplant her in the control of her household, 17 
—the belief so held and acted upon; these indications, 
conjoined with her frequent headaches, her sleeplessness, 
her irregular habits of taking food, the convulsive 
attack in church, the appearance of the prisoner in his 
interviews with her, the condition of the circulation 
(100 to 140 beats in a minute,)—these were the most 
prominent indications on which he rested his opinion. 
From her appearance he was led to think thaft, at some 
time of her life, she had had some convulsive disorder, 
whether of the nature of epilepsy affecting the nervous 
centres, or whether it had its origin elsewhere, affecting 
only the spinal column, he could not determine. The 
latter he called infantile convulsions. As to the ques- 
tion whether she was sane or insane in June, 18G4, his 
mind was involved in some doubt. He was unable to 
say that in his opinion, positively, and without qualifi- 
cation, using the term “insanity” in its ordinarily 
received acceptation, she was then insane: he used the 
words “unsoundness of mind” and “insanity,” ordinarily 
convertible terms, making in this case some distinction, 
—not using them as precisely convertible terms. As to 
any apparent delusion, he was not prepared to say that 
there was delusion; neither could he positively say that 
there was not: he entertained a doubt about it, and it 
was partly on that that he hesitated to pronounce posi- 
tively upon the insanity. The case was a marked 
departure from the class of cases to be classed ordinarily 
as insanity. The tacts immediately surrounding the 
crime were not so fully developed as to make a complete 
case, upon which he could rest a positive and unqualified 
opinion. From the incompleteness of the case he could 
not give a positive opinion.—After hearing the rebut- 
ting evidence, Hr. Cook being recalled, gave it as his 
opinion, founded upon all the facts given in evidence 
on the trial, and upon his personal examination of the 18 
prisoner, that she was insane in June, 1864; and in 
answer to a question of the Court: Whether he dis- 
covered any essential difference between the evidence 
upon this trial and that upon the preliminary one which 
he had heard, lie explained that the former evidence 
was given to him in a very hasty manner, and being 
immediately called to the stand, he could not give a 
decided opinion. Since then he had given a special 
attention and care to the case. 
Dr. Gray, Superintendent of the State Lunatic Asy- 
lum at Utica, New York, had from time to time had 
interviews with the accused during her imprisonment 
between January, 1865, and the time of the trial, on 
several occasions, and had heard all the evidence on the 
trial; and taking both together, he would say that she 
was sane in June, 1864. From his interviews with her, 
taken collectively, after examining her as to her past 
life; as to her health in childhood and girlhood, and as 
she came up to womanhood, through her married life; 
as to the crime with which she was charged; and as to 
her intelligence;—going over the minutiae of her whole 
life and habits so far as she would communicate them, 
—he formed the opinion that she was a woman of very 
little intelligence, not cultured, and of a very low grade 
of intellect; of high temper; her pulse varying under 
conditions of comparative calm and high emotional 
excitement from 88 to 120; of a very impressible nerv- 
ous system, and of a highly hysterical type; of little 
religious knowledge; and very familiar with her house- 
hold affairs, which seem to have been the entire sphere 
of her thought and action through life. As to the 
reasons on which he based his opinion of her sanity at 
the time of the homicide,, the fact of hereditary taint, 
which he conceived to be very strongly marked in the 
maternal branch of the family and shown to appear in 19 
collateral brandies, accounted for lier peculiar constitu- 
tion of mind and body, inheriting the predisposition to 
the disease. The convulsions in childhood, during the 
period of dentition (although he would not say teething 
was the cause,) probably arrested her development at 
that tender age of earliest development, as inferable 
also from the fact that she was a dull, strange, disagree-* 
able, unplayful, taciturn, unsociable child, whose society 
was shunned by her sisters. Touching her development 
to womanhood, he accepted her own declarations to 
him, that her functions were probably regular, and that 
she was in ordinary physical health. There was nothing 
to show that during that interval there was any depart- 
ure from her ordinary health. It was “as good as the 
common run of women; ” bearing children rapidly, 
nursing the most of her children, and menstruating 
during a portion of the time of nursing, suffering much 
from headache all her life, from backache during the 
nursing, and at one time from what she called a child- 
bed fever. lie enquired particularly as to her climacteric 
period for the months preceding November, 1863, wish- 
ing particularly to know whether she had been unwell 
before or after the death of Mary, but was not able to 
get any information. Her account of the family re- 
lations was about the same as has been testified to: 
she complained that her daughters had not been 
obedient, and that there had been troubles and disputes 
between them. From the period of early womanhood, 
in order to arrive at an opinion, he had to consider 
this ailment or defect which she had,—that she was 
entirely uneducated,—that she had no cultivation, 
except what she got by rubbing against society,—that 
she was suspicious and envious, with the vanity of a 
weak, feeble-minded woman. The question then pre- 
sented itself respecting her relations towards her sisters 20 
and others, and lie was satisfied that their general treat- 
ment of her accounted for her moody, irritable, and 
variable conduct towards them. She complained of 
them and did not seem to like them. On a mind of more 
strength, there might have been a different result,— 
another impression. She would detect that they, dur- 
ing all this time, must have felt that she was an inferior 
person. Her treatment of her daughters was what 
might very properly be said to be unnatural in a woman 
of intelligence who appreciated her duties. The evi- 
dence to his mind was that she got a dislike,—that she 
was cross, irritable, ugly, and repulsive. These girls 
were educated girls, above their mother in education 
and culture in every respect. They wished a progres- 
sive state of things in the household; and if she had 
been an intelligent woman she would have accepted it. 
She had a pride in being supreme. lie had discovered 
no evidence of a delusion arising out of a disease of 
her brain: the word perversion or distortion might 
apply, but that he attributed to defect in character and 
not to disease. That is not evidence of the actual 
disease of insanity. She is a person of modified moral 
responsibility. There are different degrees of responsi- 
bility measured from the intellectual and moral status 
of the individual. Taking the common definition of 
the terms sound and unsound of mind, she was sound 
in her degree compared with her capacity. She did not 
originally develop what she might have developed, and 
there is a defect in the development of the intellectual 
faculties. Both physical and mental defect exist in 
her. She had jealousy, suspicion, and distrust, which 
are common to sane and insane. The real wrongs she 
complained of might not have affected some minds,— 
intelligent minds.. Many sane persons might act from 
very slight causes. lie saw no element of disease in 21 
the case, of active, operating disease of the brain. 
There was no delusion: she had perverted views from 
misinterpretation of the conduct, intentions, and feelings 
of others. This weak woman misinterpreted the mo- 
tives and feelings of her daughters. Insanity is a 
physical disease; and these things are the symptoms of 
the disease, and whether a delusion is a diseased delu- 
sion is a question of fact qnd not of science. The* 
existence of insanity is only detected by taking the 
whole case into consideration with all the symptoms: 
these vary in intensity. The indulgence of high tem- 
per would not of itself produce insanity. There was 
slight evidence of a fall, but he hardly thought there 
was anything in the case to connect her condition with 
that tall. lie distinguished between a defect and a 
disease: a child might have a blow on the head which 
would produce a defect. In incomplete insanity a per- 
son may talk rationally on various topics: there are 
persons with whom you may talk without discovering 
insanity. He had never seen a case of monomania: he 
did not use the word; but in medico-legal works it was 
given as a distinct kind of insanity. It is defined to 
be where a person is insane upon one subject, and sane 
upon others. Being asked if he doubted whether there 
is any case of a person being insane upon one subject 
without touching all, he said it would be going into 
the region of metaphysics, and he was unwilling to 
follow the subject there. He had known of insane 
persons competent to write essays, do acts of business, 
and have correct views upon certain subjects, without 
exhibiting insanity, as Cruden writing his Concordance, 
Dr. Adler his Dictionary, and of several insane persons 
giving Fourth of July orations. To a question by the 
Court as to his meaning when he spoke of modified 
responsibility, he said that he meant moral responsi- 22 
bility, and not tlie legal rule of responsibility. Medical 
writers mainly concur as to the causes of insanity, and in 
the general outlines as to the indications and symptoms: 
one great point of difference is upon the question of 
homicidal impulse. 
Several medical men, non-experts, were sworn as 
witnesses, whose evidence fluctuated from unformed 
opinions, through various grades of doubt, up to posi- 
tiveness ; but as their views are sufficiently represented 
in the copious abstracts given of the opinions of the ex- 
perts, it is only deemed necessary to say that the greater 
part inclined towards insanity, and should therefore 
weigh, numerically, in behalf of the defendant. 
The report of the trials does not contain the argu- 
ments of counsel, and we can only judge of the respec- 
tive theories of the government and the defence, by the 
character of the testimony and the charges of Justice 
Mason, which are fully reported; and so much of them 
as pertains to the question of insanity and the medical 
opinions, are here extracted. 
On the preliminary issue, he said to the jury, “ The 
law always places great reliance on facts proven, and, 
as a general rule, the jury are to take these facts alone, 
in considering the questions before them. In some 
cases, however, the opinions of experts are permitted to 
be given to the jury,—not necessarily conclusive or con- 
trolling, but to aid you in finding a verdict. I regard 
them as very safe guides. We need aid and assistance 
in solving these intricate qestions, and are very much 
obliged for the assistance they render: but the jury are 
not to cast aside their own judgment, nor should they 
set up their own judgment against the clearly and j)os- 
itively expressed opinions of these experts. The reason 
why the laws have allowed us to call these experts is 
the obscurity which surrounds mental disease. Its 23 
cause and indicia lie beyond the line of ordinary know- 
ledge, so that laymen are not able to understand and 
comprehend them without such assistance. * 
If there are rational doubts upon the question of her 
present sanity [the defendant] should not be put upon 
her trial. That seems to be the rule, and you should 
in this instance take it as your guide in determining 
this case. But I ought to explain to you what that 
rule is. The same rule applies upon this trial [of pres- 
ent sanity] as upon the trial of a prisoner upon an 
indictment. If there are reasonable doubts of the pris- 
oner’s guilt he should be acquitted. * * The rule 
expressed in the books is of rational doubts. It does 
not mean speculative doubts, because there is no case 
tried but that speculative doubts may be got up over 
it. There are few cases, if any, where such doubts may 
not be entertained. How do you know but that a man 
who swears that he saw a crime committed, lies ? How 
do you know but that a long train of circumstances 
pointing to the guilt of a prisoner, may lie ? We do 
not know: we cannot know. We never can demon- 
strate it as a problem is demonstrated. All that we 
ever expect to attain in these cases is reasonable moral 
certainty. I do not know any better rule to guide you 
than to say that the rational doubts which arise in your 
minds to the benefit of a prisoner, are not such as arise 
after the reason and judgment of the jury are thoroughly 
convinced of the facts. The prisoner should be put 
upon her trial, if your reason and judgment are satisfied 
that she is now capable of reasonably conducting her 
defence,—that she has not such intelligence that she is 
capable of making a rational defence: not that she has 
the capacity or shrewdness to grasp all the points of 
the case as her counsel would; because the poor, weak 
criminal, who knows but right and wrong, can be put 24 
upon his defence, and every such person is capable of 
making a defence, unless there is some mental disturb- 
ance which prevents it. That brings us to the question 
which you are to determine in this case, and that is, Is 
this woman now insane? If so, she is incapable of 
making a proper defence. If she is not insane, she is 
capable, with the aid of her counsel, to make a proper 
defence.” 
The charge went to the jury without exception in any 
point, and they found the defendant sane. 
In charging the jury on the main issue, involving 
both the guilt and the sanity, Justice Mason on the 
question, “Was [the prisoner,] under the law, a respon- 
sible agent ?” said: 
“If insane, as the law interprets insanity, she was 
not: if sane, as the law interprets sanity, she was 
responsible for the act. My experience in trials of this 
kind has satisfied me of the obscurity and perplexity 
that are many times presented in solving the question 
of insanity. It certainly is perplexing, both to laymen 
and to the medical profession; and when we go into 
the books and look for the indicia upon which we are 
to determine a question of sanity or insanity, or ascer- 
tain whether a given act is consistent with sanity, we 
are led into this wonderful confusion, arising from the 
fact, that the same person, whether sane or insane, has 
the same emotions, controlled only by a different influ- 
ence : consequently, if you ask the medical witness 
whether such and such an emotion is consistent with 
insanity, he will say “Yes.;”—is such an expression 
consistent with sanity? “Yes.” The reason for this is 
that the same emotions will crop out, whether the per- 
son is sane or insane. The case is to be determined by 
you, upon the evidence, in this branch of the issue; and 
I will very briefly submit it to you, with such views as 25 
my duty requires. * * * Our law has fixed a standard 
and measure of intellect to which it brings all persons, 
and holds them responsible for the crimes they commit. 
Any person who has a capacity to understand, the na- 
ture and quality of the act, and to know that it is 
unlawful and morally wrong, under our law is respon- 
sible, whatever perturbation or weakness of intellect 
there may be in the case. The rule is well stated by 
Judge Beardsley, in the case of Freeman, as follows: 
“Where insanity is interposed as a defence to an indict- 
ment for an alleged crime, the inquiry is always brought 
down to the single question of capacity to distinguish 
between right and wrong when the act was done. * * 
The insanity must be such as to deprive the party 
charged with crime of the use of reason in regard to the 
act done. He may be deranged on other subjects, but, 
if capable of distinguishing between right and wrong in 
the particular act done by him, he is justly liable to be 
punished as a criminal.” In a recent case in the Court 
of Appeals, Judge Denio lays down the same rule. 
( Willis v. People, 32 N. Y., 715.) By this standard 
you are to try this issue between the people and the 
Pr isoner at the bar. All the evidence in this case,— 
as well the evidence to establish fact, as the evidence of 
the medical witnesses,—must be brought down to this 
one test. It follows, therefore, that if, when we con- 
sider the medical testimony it does not square with 
this standard, the opinions of the medical men are 
not to control you. I entertain the highest estima- 
tion of the medical profession. I am not one of 
those who think it advisable to send them from the 
Court House. They are useful men, and often aid a 
court and jury in rendering a correct verdict. There 
are, in the manifestations of insanity, many indicia that 
lie beyond the scope of the common mind; and when 26 
the medical evidence consists of a scientific opinion upon 
conceded facts, it is entitled to respect and consideration 
from the jury. * * * So far as the opinions of 
medical men upon questions of science and skill con- 
nected with their profession are concerned, they are safe 
guides for us. When their opinions involve the deter- 
mination of a question of fact, they are not guides any 
more than any other men, and their opinions are not con- 
trolling in the case. Upon the question whether the 
prisoner at the bar was acting under an insane delusion, 
in reference to her relatives and her children, Dr. Gray 
and Dr. Brown may be said to have differed, and Dr. 
Rhoades and some of the other physicians, I presume. 
I ought to say that if these opinions are pronounced 
upon deductions that they have drawn from the evi- 
dence, and not from any matter of skill or science, then 
their opinions do not control us. It is proper for me 
to say to you, that if the opinions of the witnesses 
which they have declared before you here of the in- 
sanity of the prisoner, cannot be squared by the stern 
rule of the law, if the prisoner had sufficient mind and 
intellect to know the quality of the act which she com- 
mitted, and to distinguish between right and wrong, it 
matters not how the grade of intellect is,—the law 
holds her responsible. * * * These medical gentle- 
men are led to the conclusion that there are certain 
modified responsibilities, attaching to persons more or 
less disturbed in their intellect. Dr. Gray said he 
regarded the prisoner at the bar as a person of modi- 
fied responsibility, and he meant morally, and this is 
not the rule of medical men alone, but the rule of all. 
But when you come down to the legal rule of responsi- 
bility, every man is to be held responsible for a given 
degree or measure of intellect or capacity. * * * I 
ought to say to you that while we should pay all proper 27 
respect to medical witnesses, we are not bound by them. 
Go to the first case in infancy. If these convulsions 
were clearly proved to be of a certain character, they 
would evidence brain disease. The difficulty is, what 
caused them. Children have fits and convulsions from 
various causes, and this is barely adverted to by the 
physicians. The fall is the next, and the injury upon 
the head. If it injured the brain, it might have solved 
this case. The question is: Did it? Were these 
epileptic convulsions, or were they something else? 
None of the physicians have stated that they were. 
What was the fit in the church? Was it hysteria or 
epilepsy ? If it was epilepsy, it indicated a disturbed 
state of the brain, at least; if it was hysteria, it was 
not indicative of insanity. * * * When you come 
down to the question of what is destined to be the real 
point in this case to establish insanity, and that is, the 
delusion, it is said to be upon the question of her 
relations to her daughters; and the defence urge the 
idea that she had a delusion that her daughters in- 
tended to dethrone her in her family, and take the reins 
into their own hands. The Attorney General denies 
this, and takes the ground that the case is so destitute 
of evidence upon that point, that you should not at- 
tribute her conduct and declarations to mental delusion, 
or to insanity upon that subject. Here is the point 
wherein the medical men come in collision. Dr. Gray 
sees no evidence of delusion in her, and says that there 
is no evidence in the whole case of any mental halluci- 
nation. Drs. Brown and Cook think they read here a 
delusion in the mind of the prisoner. You must solve 
the question in the light of all the evidence in the case, 
paying all due attention to these opinions. So far as 
they result from different conclusions upon the evidence, 
you are not to take them. There are two theories here. 28 
The counsel for the defence claims that the case is so 
destitute of any proof that such a state of things could 
have existed, that there is a hallucination; while the 
attorney-general claims that those feelings were brought 
out by a state of things that did actually exist. * * * 
There is in this case—if you find that here was nothing 
to constitute a just cause for such a state of feeling 
upon the part of the mother—reason to believe that 
she had a delusion that her children really meant to 
dethrone her in the government of the family; and the 
question then recurs, Was that delusion one that so 
overthrew the intellect of this individual as to render 
her irresponsible in law for her acts? Had she a delu- 
sion in reference to this very act of crime, which did 
not allow her to appreciate that she was doing a wrong 
act, but which led her on, against her will and reason, 
to its commission ? If she had, she was not responsible 
in the law: otherwise if she had not. * * * Al- 
though she might have thought that the daughters 
were wronging her, yet did she think it was right to 
kill them? Did her delusion go to the extent of justi- 
fying her in her act? Was her reason so far overthrown 
by the delusion, or the error, that she thought her rela- 
tions to her children were different from what they 
really were? * * * From the evidence in this case, 
are you satisfied that the prisoner at the bar had an in- 
sane delusion,—such an insane delusion as deprived her 
of the power of will, and of the ‘ability to understand 
the nature of the act that she was committing, and of 
the knowledge and appreciation that it was morally 
wrong? If so, your duty is to acquit her; if she had 
not, she is not exempt upon the plea of insanity. * * * 
Our law permits not the conviction of persons where 
there are reasonable doubts of their guilt. I should 
say to you precisely what I mean by that. There may, 29 
iii every case tried in this forum, he doubts raised as to 
whether a fact is proved or not. If two men come up 
and swear to a homicide, we take their evidence and 
convict. We have no knowledge whether they have 
committed perjury. Reasonable doubts are not doubts 
which may arise in a speculative mind, after the reason 
and judgment are thoroughly impressed with the guilt 
of the prisoner. * * * If the case is proven, as the 
government claim, against the prisoner, it is your duty 
to convict her, if you find her to be a responsible agent. 
* * You have the rights of the prisoner and the 
people in your hands. You should hold to the stern 
rule of the law, but give her the benefit of all reason- 
able doubts.” 
The defence asked the Court to charge the jury, that, 
u if, upon the whole evidence in the case, the jury 
should find that by reason of insanity or imbecility, or 
other mental unsoundness, the prisoner was unable to 
know the nature and quality of the act which she com- 
mitted, and that such act was morally wrong, it will 
be their duty to acquit her:” to which the Court said, 
“ That involves the question of insanity and of intel- 
ligent capacity. I feel constrained to say to you, (ad- 
dressing the jury,) that if there is no insanity, there is 
nothing in the proposition. This woman has lived 
through a life that has developed a degree of capacity 
and intellect, showing that she is not of that low stand- 
ard, unless there is mental disturbance. She would not 
be irresponsible under the law as an idiot is not respons- 
ible, unless she is insane; but I do not mean to rule 
upon that question, but to leave it to you.” 
This remark of the Court, was excepted to, and sev- 
eral other exceptions were taken, of only one of which 
did the Court take particular notice, and for that pur- 
pose called the jury back. “ I desire to say to you that 30 
Tin exception lias been taken to my charge in reference 
to a remark I made, in regard to the fit at church. I 
remarked that, if that was hysteria., or what is com- 
monly known as hysterics, it is not evidence of insanity. 
What I mean is, that hysteria is not insanity; but I do 
not say that that circumstance is no evidence in the 
case to be taken into the account by you, in considering 
the question of sanity or insanity. As I was under- 
stood to take that question entirely from your consider- 
ation, I call you back. I intend to say that hysteria 
is not insanity, ])er se.” Other exceptions were made; 
the usual last bubbles of the subsiding effervescence of 
counsel, and their customary parting salutes to Court 
and jury; which disappeared with the occasion, and 
were not again revived. A verdict of guilty was 
rendered, and a polling of the jury confirmed it. The 
usual sentence followed, with ample time allowed for 
its execution, to appeal to the executive clemency; 
which was bestowed in the way of commutation of 
punishment, substituting imprisonment for life instead 
of death upon the gallows. 
The charges of Justice Mason are perfectly clear, 
forcible, and quite unequivocal statements of the exist- 
ing criminal law regarding insanity as held in this 
State. It is obvious from the tenor of these charges 
that the chief point in the case was the alleged delusion, 
and, if there was a delusion, the extent of its influence 
in regard to the criminal act. To justify the jury in 
an acquittal, it was necessary that they should find not 
only a delusion, but also that it was powerful enough 
to incapacitate the culprit from distinguishing between 
right and wrong as to the homicide, and from knowing 
the nature of the act. They found neither, or at least 
they found no delusion of sufficient power: of necessity 
they must have found the latter, if they found the 31 
former, or have given a different verdict. In determin- 
ing this, if biased at all by the opinions of the medical 
experts, they must Lave disregarded the numerical bal- 
ance of opinions, and sided with the minority. This 
circumstance justifies a remark or two. 
In this particular case, aside from the bare question 
of the guilt of the prisoner, for some reason two several 
juries found her legally sane. On the preliminary issue 
there was substantially the same numerical preponder- 
ance of expert testimony inclining in her behalf, that 
there was on the main issue. 
Juries are apt to be affected by the presence and 
manner of witnesses to facts; by their readiness, their 
ingenuousness, their capacity of throwing light upon 
an investigation. They are struck convincingly with 
the air and intelligence of one witness, with his prompt- 
ness, clearness, frankness, and candor; they form an 
unfavorable judgment of another from his embarrass- 
ment, his hesitancy, his seeming partiality, his evident 
foregone conclusions, his being of a side. With regard 
to witnesses to opinions, experts, juries consider that 
there is as much difference between them, as there is 
between witnesses to facts, in respect to their capacity of 
seeing things aright and forming reasonable opinions 
upon them. They examine their qualifications, they 
criticize their appearance on the stand, they are affected 
by the intelligence and frankness of their answers, they 
guess as nearly as they can respecting the measure and 
quality of their expertness, they scan their bias both of 
sympathy and prejudice, and in regard to favorite theo- 
ries of their science, and give less or more importance 
to their opinions according to the impressions made by 
such considerations. Juries know, equally with experts, 
all the facts on which their opinions are founded; and 
they cannot but canvass within themselves the proba- 32 
bilities of those opinions being well or ill sustained by 
the facts. There must be a balance of opinions, as well 
as a balance of facts; and the weight of opinions, more- 
over, is not the same thing with a jury as the weight of 
facts. In respect to facts, the jurymen say “ numerically, 
indeed, there are more witnesses on one side than there 
are on the other, but, morally, we think one of the wit- 
nesses on this side worthier of our confidence than all 
the witnesses on that. The truth, we think, lies with 
him.” In respect to opinions, they say, “ the opinion of 
that expert on one side is more in accordance with the 
facts and better inferred from them, than all the opin- 
ions of all the experts on the other, and we will be 
guided by it.” It is after all a conviction of the minds 
of an honest jury that governs their verdict; and they 
have instincts or impressions or sentiments of their own 
which they cannot smother, and which will leaven their 
conclusions, just as inevitably as a man’s physiognomy 
unconsciously fixes our impression of his character. 
You cannot poll them to ascertain what particular bit 
of evidence, or what particular opinion of an expert, 
principally controls them. It is their conclusion upon 
the whole mass of evidence, both facts and opinions; 
some considerations operating upon one mind, and some 
upon another; and the comparison, compounding, and 
summing of the whole, including their inward, unana- 
lyzed, secret and instinctive convictions, is their verdict. 
In this very case, two different juries, in two different 
counties, on almost the same testimony, and on the 
same diversity of opinion of experts, came to precisely 
the same conclusion on the point of sanity. Such a 
double conclusion does not of itself make the opinions 
of the experts any the less valuable as opinions, 
although evidently, as they are opposite, some must be 
wrong as applications of science and experience to the 33 
self same facts. But it shows a state of feeling on the 
part of juries that is on the whole favorable to the 
administration of penal justice upon human, social, and 
legal principles. They will not go over the boundary 
that divides facts from speculations. They are plain, 
but shrewd me'n, representing the average degree of 
human feelings, sense, and j udgment; and where any 
twelve, after a long sifting and weighing of facts and 
opinions, come to a unanimous sincere conclusion, and 
particularly where any two twelves, on the same facts 
and sworn opinions, come, independently to a like con- 
clusion, it would be presumptuous to impeach its 
correctness without more light shining upon us than 
they had. In one case, they pronounced the accused 
sane enough for a defence; and in the other, sane 
enough for criminal culpability and punishment: and, 
in so doing, they virtually rejected the numerical pre- 
ponderance of expert opinions, in favor of the solitary 
contradictory opinion, because that satisfied their reason, 
their consciences, and the law, and the rest did not. 
It is not unusual to question the intelligence and 
integrity of juries. As to their intelligence, there pro- 
bably never was a period when better educated and 
informed juries were impanelled than now; and as to 
their integrity, it is quite equal to the average integrity 
of the whole people, which is not perhaps very signifi- 
cant praise, when we reflect how corrupt and dishonest 
all classes, from statesmen downwards, are generally 
reputed to be. It is not unlikely that in great commer- 
cial marts and in communities where wealth abounds, 
and men’s morals are apt to sit loosely, jurymen may 
be swayed by the same appeals that so successfully 
swerve men of more pretension and position from their 
obligations of religion, morality, and good citizenship. 
It may be too, that in cases of great interest and excite- 34 
ment, the general laxity of morals is so far participated 
in by jurymen as to make them more approachable than 
they once were by dishonest parties appealing to their 
covetousness or their partisan prejudices, or some other 
weakness to which they are as liable as other men. 
Juries may sometimes be so packed or sorted, badgered 
or cajoled, by the arts and management of parties and 
counsel as to render their verdicts suspicious and wholly 
unworthy of the name of justice and righteous dealing. 
But with all these casual or inherent defects, the jury 
system is probably a more satisfactory one to the people 
of those countries accustomed to it (and they are the 
countries where on the whole justice has been adminis- 
tered with more intelligence, wisdom, and satisfaction 
than in any other,) than any that can be devised to take 
its place. In general, juries are a fair index of the 
common sense and feeling of a people. That they 
should be required to be unanimous is the strongest 
point of exception; but it may well be doubted 
whether, after all, it is not the point which makes their 
conclusions the more satisfactory. Sheer obstinacy and 
doggedness may sometimes prevent or force a verdict 
in the face of all testimony and reason; but on the 
other hand, and quite as often, the conscientious earnest- 
ness of one man on a jury, may cause the ultimate 
triumph of justice and right by the steadiness of his 
adherence, and the strength of his shrewd convictions. 
Although there are occasional questions beyond the 
ordinary intelligence of juries, yet on the whole the 
subjects submitted to them are such as come home to 
men’s business and bosoms, and are fairly within their 
grasp; and in criminal cases their error is apt to lie in 
clemency rather than vindictiveness. 
Our question, however, is not whether the juries and 
the Court were right, but which opinion of the experts 35 
was right? As the Court put it to the jury, on the 
main issue, it was wholly a question of delusion or no 
delusion in the legal sense, and that sense is well and 
authoritatively defined by Justice Mason. Facts, not 
speculation, must decide it. 
As we read the testimony, there was never such a 
departure from her usual course of conduct on the part 
of the defendant, as, according to the unanimous defini- 
tion of insanity given by the medical experts, gives any 
color to the notion of her being insane. There was no 
interruption of her usual health, no perceptible disease 
affecting the brain to cause any accession of insanity, 
nothing abnormal as compared with her whole life. 
She was either insane to the same extent from her in- 
fancy, or there is no period when she could properly be 
called so, comparing her with herself. Her conduct in 
her family and among her family connections, had 
always one aspect; amongst neighbors and ordinary 
acquaintance, it had another aspect, but quite as uni- 
form. Her peculiar disposition and qualities to which 
her family were accustomed, although annoying, morti- 
fying, capricious, disagreeable, and irritating almost to 
an intolerable degree as her children grew up to ma- 
turity and character, were not regarded as insanity; 
and those which were observed by mere acquaintances 
were not of a stamp to excite them to any suspicion of 
insanity, but simply of idiocrasy. There was one short 
period that might indicate a tendency to melancholia, 
but a tendency may never ripen to a disease, not even 
a hereditary tendency; except always the hereditary 
tendency to decay and death, which is ever infallible. 
On the whole, there does not appear to have been any 
departure, prolonged or otherwise, from herself, caused 
by disease. What was peculiar in her conduct was the 
tenor of her whole life. She may possibly have been 36 
crazy, as slie certainly was peculiar, all along; but there 
was no obvious departure from lierself, that sure index 
of insanity. 
A departure from one’s self,-does not, however, mean 
every change that may occur in the conduct or mode of 
life. If it did, the wicked forsaking his ways and the 
unrighteous man his thoughts, or the righteous man 
lapsing into temptation and vice, and going widely and 
permanently astray, would fall within the category. It 
means that a man should at some time, and for some 
time, perhaps always afterwards, run counter to his 
natural lifedong bent and feelings; fork off sharply and 
more or less suddenly from the path he has always trav- 
eled, and strike an inexplicable tangent to the circle of 
his usual movements; pursue some errant and cometary 
track instead of his accustomed orbit; and all without 
obvious rational purpose or design. If we see a natur- 
ally grave man all at once assuming an extreme gayety 
and frivolity of manner; a noted miser all at once 
become an equally noted spendthrift; a genial, witty, 
and hilarious man all at once turn into a demure, sour- 
visaged, misanthropic one; we may well suspect all 
•these men, judging them by the standard of their own 
individual life and character, to be insane. They have 
emphatically departed from themselves; and we fairly 
infer that disease, manifest or obscure, is at the bottom 
of it. A man who pursues a pretty constant manner 
and course from childhood to old age is usually sane. 
Although he may be a weak man, or a perverse one, or 
an eccentric one; although he may never have been 
strongly and particularly sane; yet, relatively to him- 
self, he is as sane as he ever was. It may not be the 
highest degree of fully-developed stalwart sanity; it 
may be even less than the medium degree of it, tapering 
in various shades towards the stolidity of idiocy; but 37 
lie is not therefore insane. He may sadly lack self-con- 
trol, be very dull in his moral sense, very weak in resist- 
ing evil, and very devilish in all his propensities; but 
he is not therefore insane. 
Applying such principles to the case in hand, we dis- 
cover no insanity to begin with, and therefore nothing 
to found a palliating delusion upon. But allowing that 
there may have been so much unsoundness, physical 
weakness, defect, or whatever it might be, as would 
constitute a sufficient basis for an insane delusion, was 
there really any such delusion ? 
What is really true can be no delusion. Illogical de- 
ductions, obliquity of mind, obstinate perversion, odd 
fancies, may distort or invert the truth, and wrap it in 
a false and deceptive garb, just as a fanciful or excited 
eye may shape a cloud into a camel or a whale. Jeal- 
ousy may produce delusions, suspicion may, passionate 
love often does; (for that matter, according to the poets, 
we are all crazy once in our lives, “ semel insani/vimus 
omnes but they are not necessarily insane delusions, 
however hurtful, or however pleasant. Othello’s frenzy, 
which is generally attributed to jealousy, although Cole- 
ridge very ingeniously doubts it, and which provoked a 
homicide and indirectly a suicide, was not an insane 
delusion: it was a real, logical, well-founded belief, 
upon tacts which might have misled the sanest mind, 
except Iago’s who contrived them. The particular 
facts that impressed both his reason and his imagination 
were individually true, but were so put together and 
distorted by artful villainy, “ entrapping,” as Lamb 
says, “ a noble nature into toils against which no dis- 
cernment was available,” and so suddenly sprung, as to 
allow a quick, passionate, and ardent sensibility no 
opportunity to scrutinize and detect the real weakness 
of the fatal meshes which snared him. He was imposed 38 
on, and in that sense deluded; overpowered by a con- 
viction of connubial treachery, which wrought him to a 
frenzy of passion; but there was no delusion of insanity. 
In this case which we are considering, the delusion, 
if any, confessedly sprung out of a jealousy or a sus- 
picion of the mother that her daughters were aiming to 
displace her in the management of her household; that 
they w~ere obviously acquiring a superiority over her. 
Notwithstanding her low and feeble intellect, and per- 
haps the more sensitively on that very account, she was 
still conscious of a growing disparity unfavorable to 
herself. It was galling to her pride, and irritating to 
her temper, and stimulated her peevish and revengeful 
spirit. Although it is difficult for well regulated and 
ordinarily right-feeling minds to conceive that such 
sentiments should ever in real life rise to so desperate 
a pitch as the deliberate homicide of two daughters; 
yet history and criminal records are too thick with like 
instances of the tremendous and awful force of evil and 
indulged passions to allow us to doubt the possibility. 
All the Jezebels, the Messalinas, the Gonerils, and the 
Lady Macbeths are not extinct. Strong as the instinct 
of maternity naturally is, we know that in many coun- 
tries, if not quite obliterated, it is constantly and 
remorselessly violated; and even in this country, so 
frequently as to diminish our wonder if it should reach 
to the untimely removal of adult offspring. It is wick- 
edness, more than insanity, that prompts to fceticide and 
infanticide; and the same diabolic spirit that suggests 
these requires very little maturing to efface natural 
affection and to dispatch children of a larger growth. 
The son of Siracli who could say, “ Forego not a wise 
and good woman, for her grace is above gold,” also said, 
“ All wickedness is but little compared to the wicked- 
ness of a woman.” It has no equal for intensity, 39 
especially when the meaner passions are aroused; and 
therefore Shakspeare puts it into the mouth of Albany 
to say to Goneril, 
“ Proper deformity seems not in the fiend 
So horrid as in woman; ” 
what we should tolerate in a devil as a natural charac- 
teristic, is more horridly devilish in a woman and a 
mother. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned;” 
or like an envious and malignant one, as described by 
Ovid, (in Addison’s version,) 
“ Who never smiles hut when the wretched weep; 
Nor lulls her malice with a moment’s sleep; 
Restless in spite; while watchful to destroy, 
She pines and sickens at another’s joy.” 
All this is within the compass of human depravity; 
and wretched insanity should not he compelled to father 
such monstrousness prepense, begot of the devil. 
In letters of Paul to his Roman brethren and to his 
young friend Timothy, still extant, and good strong- 
reading, he describes a class of cases familiar in his day, 
under a nomenclature more significant and charac- 
teristic, and far more sonorous, than the modern 
“barbarous vocables,” kleptomania, pyromania, oino- 
mania, pseudo no man ia, akloiomania, oikmomania, fan- 
atico-mania, politico-mania, and the like, which define 
and cover acts and habits that we are permitting to 
seek the shelter of insanity for protection. In one or 
other of the subdivisions of Paul’s comprehensive class, 
and perhaps in two or more of them, a judge, or a di- 
vine, or a moralist of a hundred years ago would likely 
have ranked this case. It would fit in well among the 
Astorgoi,—those without natural affection,—or the 
Plithoneroi,—those full of envy or suspicion,—or the 
Asunetoi,—those without understanding,—or the Anel- 40 
eemonai,—those incapable of mercy; all subdivisions 
or species of the great genus that Paul does not hesitate 
to stamp as Reprobate Minds,; which is a mild way, 
perhaps, of calling them insane in Bible Greek. His 
appellatives have a scriptural force and meaning in 
them which is more level to the comprehension of juries 
than the palliatives of modern invention; for juries 
not only have a strong touch of natural religion, but a 
tincture of St. Paul’s sort too, and are apt to think 
there is some crime left outside of insanity, though all 
wickedness be folly, which is next of kin to it. The 
great Christian moralist, who was brought up more- 
over at the feet of that distinguished lawyer Gamaliel, 
does not incline to consider the cases which lie enumer- 
ates, with much leniency, whatever color they may be 
varnished with, but denounces them with sharpness, as 
no better than heathen vices of the most horrible 
stamp. They are not in themselves indictable at com- 
mon law, and can only lie handled by the penal code 
when they come to a head in robberies, homicides, or 
other violence; which in these latitudinarian and sym- 
pathetic days, we attribute, with the kindest and most 
reverent intentions, to a visitation of God, instead of 
the instigation of the devil; who, before oikeiomania 
and the like were invented or discovered, was unchari- 
tably presumed to be the putative, if not the real, 
father of them all. We have dropped the devil and 
his seducing and moving instigations out of our indict- 
ments, and admit such proof as ingenuity can devise of 
the visitation of God for both the provocative and the 
palliative of the most shocking crimes and enormities. 
The humanity which prompts this is no doubt very 
kind and pleasing to those for whom it is indulged, and 
to those who indulge it; but it is very baneful to pub- 
lic justice and penal laws: it is a humanity which 41 
sacrifices social protection and social order to individual 
indulgence; to “ loose life” and “ unruly passions,” more 
than to “diseases pale.” We strip justice of her vital 
attribute, severity; and indulge mercy in her fatal 
weakness, impunity. It is thus, that, in the nervous 
language of South, “we persuade a man that he may 
cheat and lie, steal, murder and rebel, by way of in- 
firmity, without any danger of damnation”—“ a direct 
manuduction to all kind of sin.” 
A tendency to melancholia was said to have mani- 
fested itself at one time in the culprit; and melancholia 
is such a genuine phase of insanity, as commands pity 
and indulgence. There is not commonly much that is 
impulsive or violent in its manifestations; but rather, 
except in extreme cases, the reverse. It prompts 
oftener to suicide than to homicide. But it is odd that 
under its more common name of hypochondria, (pure 
and simple hypo,) it should always have been a common 
theme for petty sarcasms and jests, more than for 
grave and tender commiseration; as we laugh at hys- 
terics, but put on a sober face with hysteria. But 
hypochondria would be a poor defence against a crimi- 
nal accusation. Perhaps it is because so many have it, 
that it would nullify the whole criminal code and all 
criminal punishment. Lord Byron called it an “ im- 
peachment of a liver complaint.” It is now, under a 
more intense name, sought to be made an impeachment of 
the mind and will; and is held 1 >y some to incapacitate 
one from committing any indictable, or at least any 
punishable, wickedness. Hypochondria tends to melan- 
cholia, and is in fact an incipient or nascent stage of it, 
but probably in nine cases out of ten does not reach 
to the height of insanity. At all events, a tendency to 
melancholia is not of more import than a hereditary 
tendency to insanity generally. It may run along a 42 
whole life without becoming a disease affecting the 
brain, or excusing anything more culpable than a breach 
of good manners, an irritable temper, or a general dis- 
agreeableness of conduct. That sort of melancholia 
the culprit may have had, as thousands have it, with- 
out affecting her responsibility legally, and perhaps not 
very much morally. 
Humanity is daily invoked to confound legal and 
moral considerations in criminal cases, and to under- 
mine the penal code by admitting the opinions of 
speculatists to sway the judgment of juries. Particu- 
larly in highly penal cases, there is a persistent effort 
to encroach upon and modify the established rules of 
law applicable to them as narrow and constricted, and 
unworthy of a humane and generous age. This spirit 
of humanity would make courts of criminal law forums 
of conscience and casuistry, governed by some divine 
insight into human motives and the comparative power 
of every man over his will and passions, to be tested 
by the application of some speculative science or theory. 
Whenever any such science shall be so perfected as to 
unravel the mysteries of the workings of men’s minds 
and impulses, in health and disease, by certain infallible 
deductions, it will be time to modify legal rides to 
accord with it. In the meantime we must reflect that 
these rules are of human invention and experience, 
devised for common use and application, and for the 
vast majority of men. They are founded on a broad, 
general principle that there is a great deal of bad 
conduct, growing out of bad passions and habits, that 
requires restraint and punishment. They go upon the 
general sense that sanity is the usual and typical state 
of man, and that insanity is an unusual, exceptional, 
and unhealthy state, suitable to be watched and 
guarded, but not to be punished. Therefore the penal 43 
law excludes insanity: every insane person is exempt 
from its operation. Tliat is a sure means of escape 
when there is no other. Of course every culprit will 
seek such an open dooj*, and ingenuity will be taxed to 
its power, as we see daily, to secure his flight through 
it. Modern improvements have somewhat to do with 
this. It was formerly less dreadful to suffer the punish- 
ment inflicted upon crime than the horrid humanity of 
a mad house, or the chains and strait jackets of private 
confinement; and a conviction for guilt was more toler- 
able than an acquittal for insanity; the prison or the 
gallows was a preferable alternative to the notorious 
mal-treatment of madness. But when the asylums 
made confinement somewhat more agreeable, with less 
disgrace, than the prisons, then the plea of insanity, 
which was a respectable toning down of the ferocious 
old name of madness, became popular in a double 
aspect; it both saved and provided for the criminal, 
and pleased his friends, who at a stroke secured his 
escape from infamy and punishment, and themselves 
and society from his dangerous association. Hence, 
every odd look, every downcast and weeping eye, (and 
“what,” says Ecclesiasticus, “is created more wicked 
than an eye? therefore it weepeth upon every occa- 
sion,”) every silly laugh, every eccentricity of conduct, 
every hypochondriac turn, every physical weakness, 
every heat of passion, every natural frenzy of excite- 
ment, every impulse to evil act, every defect of 
self-control, is twisted and tortured, by sympathising 
friendship or by empirical science, into some significant 
index of insanity. This will never do. It is contrary 
to reason, to justice, to social protection, to all human 
experience, and to all divine law, however conformable 
it may be to some fanciful and super-humane specula- 
tions that have the air of science without the truth of 44 
it. There must be a stanch safeguard somewhere; and 
the law has set it up as nearly right for all practical 
purposes and for a general rule of discrimination 
between crime and innocence, .as human wisdom is 
likely to hit. If a man knows what he is about when 
he is doing a thing, as to the right and the wrong of it, 
and its consequences, he is legally responsible for what 
he does. If he does not know, he is not legally, respon- 
sible; he is insane as to that act. That act is what 
the tribunal is to judge. It was his act; it was 
wrong; and he knew it at the moment; therefore he 
is guilty of it, and the law has affixed a punishment 
for such guilt. If there be error in the finding, or 
cause for remitting or moderating the penalty, the same 
law has provided against its own errors and its own 
severity. It has provided a pardoning power which 
may either cancel or modify the punishment. This is 
the best that human law can safely and wisely do. It is 
a candid acknowledgment of its own imperfection and 
lack of omniscience, and the best provision it can make 
for its occasional ill consequences. If his conscience ac- 
quits a man of guilt, and the sovereign human clemency 
is not satisfied of his innocence, Omniscience will weigh 
his conduct in a more delicate scale than He has intrusted 
to clumsy human wisdom, and will hold him acquitted 
at “ the great day of examination of the whole world.” 
This may be a poor present consolation for undeserved 
punishment; but many a good man has had to be con- 
tent with it; and all must, so long as human affairs 
are directly conducted by human beings. 
For neither men, nor tribunals composed of men, are 
infallible. No human law, and no human application 
of divine law, is, or ever will be, perfect. The prevail- 
ing tendency of this age is, on some revivified old theory 
which retains just spark enough among the ashes of a 45 
former explosion of it to be raised into a fresh scintil- 
lation, to attack, openly or treacherously, the tried safe- 
guards of society, law, philosophy, and religion, and 
open both the world of action, and the world of mind, 
as a free common for all sorts of vagaries to “ browse 
and batten in.” We are losing veneration for the an- 
cient landmarks; indeed we do not seem to know 
where they are, or were, and are setting up new ones, 
as if none had ever existed, or all were buried in ruins. 
We are too busy with current affairs of wealth-getting 
or partisanship to pay attention to great principles, 
unless they be new, or new varnished; and the old are 
rusting out of mind. A thousand years’ test of them 
avails nothing before a hurricane of vague theories and 
oppositions of science, that the next moment subsides, 
leaving a waste of tremendous ruin to be contemplated 
with amazement, and to be reduced to order by the 
toils and experience of another thousand years. 
There is a strong proneness to forget, in the conflict 
of new philosophies and the effort to apply metaphysics 
in the regulation of human affairs, that accountability 
under human laws and accountability under divine laws 
are different things and gauged by different standards. 
What Lord Brougham, who added the acuteness of a 
metaphysician to the wisdom of a legislator, and had 
the mastery to keep his faculties clear each way, once 
said in the House of Lords, is so pertinent to this point, 
and otherwise so applicable to this particular case 
according to our apprehension of it, that we cannot 
hesitate to cpiote his high authority. “ With respect to 
the point of a person being an accountable being, that 
is an accountable being to the law of the land, a great 
confusion had pervaded the minds of some persons 
whom he was indisposed to call reasoners, who consid- 
ered accountability in its moral sense as-mixing itself 46 
up with the only accountableness with which they [the 
House of Lords] as human legislators had to do, or of 
which they could take cognizance. He could conceive 
of the case of a human being of a weakly constituted 
mind, who might by long brooding over real or fancied 
wrongs, work up so perverted a feeling of hatred against 
an individual that danger might occur. He might not 
be deluded as to the actual existence of injuries he had 
received, but he might grievously and grossly exagger- 
ate them, and they might so operate upon a weakly 
framed mind and intellect as to produce crime. He 
could conceive that the Maker of that man, in His in- 
finite mercy, having regard to the object of his creation, 
might deem him not an object for punishment. But 
that man was accountable to human tribunals in a 
totally different sense. Man punished crime for the 
purpose of practically deterring others from offending 
by committing a repetition of the like act. It was in 
that sense only that lie had anything to do with the 
doctrine of accountable and not accountable. He could 
conceive a person whom the Deity might not deem 
accountable, but who might be perfectly accountable to 
human laws.” 
The part of metaphysical science which approaches 
closest to the confines of physical science is psychology. 
It is the 
“ nearest coast of darkness 
“ Bordering on light 
and so far as experience affords a reasonable demonstra- 
tion of the reciprocal action of the body and the mind, 
and shows an intimate and blended interaction marked 
by such indicants and contra-indicants as point out sat- 
isfactorily to the cautious judgment of a scrutinizing 
medical expert what treatment is due to cases of that 47 
compound diameter, so far it may be within the purlieu 
of jiliysical science, and as sucli may be the subject of 
legal consideration. So much of the philosophy of the 
mind as recognizes distinctions in its faculties which are 
o 
every where and commonly allowed, and enter into and 
mingle with the staple of human knowledge and expe- 
rience, is so ingrafted or imbedded in physical science as 
to be in current use and allowance for a part of it. 
Thus we recognize, without a cavil, the distinctions of 
will, memory, association, and imagination, which we 
know by our own consciousness and by experience not 
only vary in different minds, but are positively affected 
or disturbed or obliterated by certain ailments or le- 
sions of the body. If a medical observer tells us that it 
is the constant unquestioned experience of his science 
that a particular disease deranges or prostrates the func- 
tions of the mind, or some of them, we believe that as 
readily as we believe that death prostrates them all. It 
is a phenomenon that involves no more metaphysics 
than the elemental principle that there is a body and a 
mind somehow mysteriously connected. If lie tells us 
that his science shows that a disease of the liver de- 
presses the mind; or a nervous disorder disturbs or con- 
fuses it as an usual accompaniment or result; or a lesion 
of the brain produces, according to the form and extent 
of it, more or less imbecility of one, or the other, or all 
of the mental faculties, and in every variety of grada- 
tion up to a complete loss of them; all this we believe 
on his testimony as an experienced scientific man. We 
see all these results in our own experience and observa- 
tion, and his scientific solution of the cause of them we 
admit, because he and a long list of prior observers 
have found that such results have constantly followed 
from such causes, and have never, or not often, or not 48 
so invariably, followed from other physical conditions. 
All this is legitimate. But when we go farther we get 
into a region of clonds and darkness. We get, to be 
sure, into a field where many of the acutest human 
intellects have gravely disported, and displayed the 
most remarkable subtility of thought and reasoning; 
into the region of pure mind considered abstractedly 
from physical objects. Thither, as one of the experts 
in this case replied to the artful inquisitiveness of coun- 
sel, designed doubtless to entrap him among the pitfalls 
into which some of the wariest experts have stumbled, 
thither the law “cannot follow.” It is subtile in dis- 
tinctions of its own, but it cannot emulate the subtile- 
ness of metaphysical disputation. There is a point 
whei e the two must part company, and set up a palpa- 
ble division fence which neither shall overleap; the law, 
with its proven facts, on one side; speculation, with its 
mists and confusion, on the other. It is just where fact 
terminates, and speculation begins. Medical science 
edges somewhat on the border, but it is deduced from 
observed facts and physical phenomena, and is a part 
of the common law. So is mathematical, so is astronom- 
ical, so is nautical, so is all physical science. Experts 
in such are good witnesses in their respective depart- 
ments as to scientific deductions from conceded facts. 
Caique sud in arte credendum est. But what court ever 
called a witness to enlighten it with a metaphysical 
opinion? There are no allowed experts in non-physical 
science. Impanel a jury of the philosophers in that 
class, and let there be on it any twelve of them from 
Plato down to Sir William Hamilton, and they would 
not agree before doomsday on such questions within 
their field as might be propounded by a sharp lawyer 
on a nice point of insanity. Such, in the language of 49 
another expert witness, are questions that “ would puz- 
zle the Solons of any age.” The law does, and medical 
experts should, steer wide of that 
“ boggy Syrtis, neither sea 
Nor good dry land,” 
lest 
“ Treading the crude consistence, half on foot 
Half flying,” 
they be “quencht” in it. We would not disparage 
metaphysicians, although it puzzled Cowley, with all 
his power of obscure conceits, to know “ whether meta- 
physic be anything or no.” It is one of the finest and 
noblest exercises of the human mind to study itself; 
but it is one of the mysteries that God has reserved 
from the full knowledge of man; from more than the 
dimmest rays of it; perhaps for the purpose of sharpen- 
ing his faculties to some ultimate useful end by whet- 
ting them upon each other to that keen edge which 
sometimes splits hairs so finely that the most micro- 
scopic intellect cannot distinguish which ninth part of 
one it cavils on. Here, we say, the law common, 
statute, or even the revealed law divine, does not fol- 
low. The divine law was first promulged from the 
thick darkness where God was, with awful thunderous 
shadows resting upon Sinai to conceal his brightness, 
as if to intimate that beyond God’s absolute revelation 
nothing was to be penetrated by human insight. Into 
the thin, vapory skirts of that dense darkness we may 
somewhat penetrate, but all that we discover is thin 
and vapory too; and it is safer to be blinded by such a 
designed providential obscurity, than by an excess ot 
that “unapproached” light that would more painfully 
and effectually quench our mortal gaze. 
If there was really in this case, as the defendant 50 
insisted there was, and as all the evidence to that point 
shows, a state of ill-feeling between her and her children, 
particularly her daughters; if they were really, as was 
very likely without any evil intent on their part, ac- 
quiring a domestic or social superiority over her, by 
their better education, manners and ambition to shine; 
and if she really, and as was quite natural for one of her 
narrow views, malignant mind, and spiteful temper, 
magnified these circumstances into something aggrava- 
ting and unendurable; all this might be,—and that 
without any particular strain on human credulity,— 
without any insane delusion. It was the truth that 
troubled her. There might have been misconstruction 
of 7 Motives, exaggeration of little facts, misjudgment of 
feelings, and wrong estimate of conduct; but there was 
no delusion more than‘would excuse most deliberate 
crimes. A stronger minded, better trained, and more 
affectionate mother would have seen the case in a less 
distorted light, and would not have construed it into a 
petit treason punishable with death. Strong delusion 
may make people believe a lie / so St. Paul intimates, 
and so we see it every day; but a belief in the truth is 
no delusion. The experts who judged that here was a 
delusion of insanity, also conceded the fact of the house- 
hold troubles that excited the mother and annoyed the 
daughters, as proven;—that such things really existed, 
at least to such an extent as to disturb a weak, nervous, 
and suspicious woman. If they believed th a fact, how 
could they maintain the opinion t The jury were more 
shrewd and consistent, and finding the fact without the 
delusion, convicted the culprit of a murder, by a most 
righteous and just verdict according to law; leaving it 
to the Executive clemency, (not burdened by their oath 
to make a true deliverance,) to provide a test for its 
accuracy by commuting the punishment. They meant 51 
that death or imprisonment should deprive an inhuman 
mother of the power of poisoning any more daughters, 
and that her fate should he an example to others that 
there is accountability to man as well as accountability 
to God. Two years of prison life have not developed 
insanity enough to impeach their judgment, or stagger 
our conclusions. 
[Erratum.—For Wilson, on the second page, read Wilcox.]