y against him, and were prevented by no other reason
than the apprehension of being convicted of _scandalum magnatum_, should
the jury find his lordship _compos mentis_: a circumstance which, in all
probability, would have happened, inasmuch as the earl's madness did not
appear in his conversation, but in his conduct. A physician of eminence,
whose practice was confined to persons labouring under this infirmity,
declared that the particulars of the earl's deportment and personal
behaviour seemed to indicate lunacy. Indeed all his neighbours and
acquaintances had long considered him as a madman; and a certain noble
lord declared in the house of peers, when the bill of separation was on
the carpet, that he looked upon him in the light of a maniac, and that
if some effectual step was not taken to divest him of the power of doing
mischief, he did not doubt but that one day they should have occasion to
try him for murder. The lawyers, who managed the prosecution in behalf
of the crown, endeavoured to invalidate the proofs of his lunacy, by
observing that his lordship was never so much deprived of his reason but
that he could distinguish between good and evil; that the murder he
had committed was the effect of revenge for a conceived injury of
some standing; that the malice was deliberate, and the plan artfully
conducted; that immediately after the deed was perpetrated, the earl's
conversation and reasoning were cool and consistent, until he drank
himself into a state of intoxication; that in the opinion of the
greatest lawyers, no criminal can avail himself of the plea of lunacy,
provided the crime was committed during a lucid interval; but his
lordship, far from exhibiting any marks of insanity, had in the course
of this trial displayed uncommon understanding and sagacity in examining
the witnesses, and making many shrewd and pertinent observations on
the evidence which was given. These sentiments were conformable to the
opinion of the peers, who unanimously declared him guilty.--After all,
in examining the vicious actions of a man who has betrayed manifest and
manifold symptoms of insanity, it is not easy to distinguish those which
are committed during the lucid interval. The suggestions of madness are
often momentary and transient: the determinations of a lunatic, though
generally rash and instantaneous, are sometimes the result of artful
contrivance; but there is always an absurdity which is the criterion of
the disease, e