A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton.

  • Francis Wharton
Date:
1855
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A monograph on mental unsoundness / By Francis Wharton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    hazard among the innocent or unoffending, without even the excuse of specific malice or provocation, is at least as dangerous as the assassin who picks out his victim in advance. Against the last there may be some checks,—against the first none. Caution may ward off the one, or innocence escape it, but to the other the most innocent and benevolent would be as likely to fall victim as the most malevolent.- The mind in the last case may be inflamed with revenge,—that Wild Justice, as Bacon calls it,—which though no defence, is yet capable of being reached by reason and averted by care. But in the former, the motive is mere gross sensual indulgence, and the blow cannot be re- strained by strength, or avoided by inoffensiveness. § 67. As a mere matter of legal policy, the same position holds good. There never could be a conviction for homicide if drunkenness avoided responsibility^ ggr) As it is, most of the premeditated homicides are com- mitted under the stimulus of liquor. The guilty purpose is at first se- dately conceived, but there are few men whose temperaments arc so firmly knit as to enable them to enter a scene of blood, without first fortifying themselves for the task to be performed. /The head dreads the heart's cowardice, and seeks to insure against it by drink.) It will be found in fact that there is scarcely a case of violent homicide, in which it docs not appear that the defendant strengthened his nerves for the execution of his guilty plan by drink; just in the same way that he strengthened his hand by the fatal weapon. If, therefore, drunken] imparts irresponsibility, there are not only but few convictions which have heretofore taken place which are good, but there will be no convic- tions at all for the future. If the assassin will not take liquor to strengthen his nerves, he will to avoid conviction. There would bo no species of deliberate homicide, under such a dispensation, that would not avoid punishment. It would be the indeliberate only that would be made responsible. § 08 The tenor of common and civil law authority to this effect is clear. Even the German text writers, who generally attenuate to so wide and thin a texture the doctrine of moral responsibility, do not undertake to treat drunkenness as a defence. Sir E. Coke scarcely goes beyond the tenor of civil as well as of common law writers, when he says, As for a drunkard who is vohmtariu* dcemon, he hath, as has been said, no privilege thereby, but what hurt or ill soever ho doth, his drunkenness doth aggravate it. Omne crimen ebrietcu ft incendit et detegit.'\h) And although now drunkenness can- not be said to aggravate a crime in a judicial sense, yet it is well settled that it forms no defence to the fact of guilt. Thus Judge Story, in a case already cited, after noticing that insanity, as a general rule, pro- duces irresponsibility, went on to say, An exception is, when the crime is committed by a party while in a fit of intoxication, the /law allowing not a man to avail himself of the excuse of his own gross vice and misconduct, to shelter himself from the legal consequences of such, crime.'') Lord Hale says, The third sort of madness is that which is dementia affeetata, namely, drunkenness. This vice doth deprive a man of his reason, and puts many men into a perfect but temporary (.99) See pott, I 92. (A) Co. Litt. 247, a.
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