Life and trial of Dr. Abner Baker, Jr : (a monomaniac), who was executed October 3, 1845, for the alleged murder of his brother-in-law, Daniel Bates : including letters and petitions in favor of a pardon, and narrative of the circumstances attending his execution, etc. etc. / by C.W. Crozier ; trial and evidence by A.R. M'Kee.
- Crozier, C. W.
- Date:
- 1846
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Life and trial of Dr. Abner Baker, Jr : (a monomaniac), who was executed October 3, 1845, for the alleged murder of his brother-in-law, Daniel Bates : including letters and petitions in favor of a pardon, and narrative of the circumstances attending his execution, etc. etc. / by C.W. Crozier ; trial and evidence by A.R. M'Kee. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![suppose, in short, thai: she had never seen him in her life, but that her resentment had been founded on the morbid delusion that Mr. Er- rington, who had never seen her, had been the author of all her wrongs and sorrows; and that, under that diseased impression, she had shot him. ]f that had been the case, gentlemen, she would have been acquitted upon the opening, and no Judge would have sat to try- such a cause: the act itself would >ly characteris- tic of madness, because, being founded upon nothing existing, it could not have proceeded from malice, which the law requires to be charged and proved, in every case of murder, as the foundation of the conviction. Baron Hume, in his commentaries on the criminal laws of Scot- land—vol. 1, p 36—after vindicating; with great power and on con- clusive precedents and reason. trine we are now maintaining, concludes in the following words—and, though the person may have that vestige of reason which may enable him to answer in gen- \eral that murder is a crime, yet if he cannot distinguish a friend from an enemy, or a benefit bom an injury, but conceives every thing about him to be the reverse of what it really is, and mistakes the ideas of his fancy in that respect, for realities--those temains of in- tellect are of no sort of service to him. in the government of his ac- tions, in enabling him to form a judgment as to what is right or wrong on any particular occasion. In all such cases acts done within the sphere and under the influ- ence of insane delusion are not to be assumed to be voluntary, in the rational and responsible sense. There is certainly a volition, and a demonstration of it: but it may be, and generally is, an animal will, impelled by the storms of passion without the guidance of right reason's compass, or the helm of moral sense. So far as the delu- sion extends, he is the mere automaton of it. And this was forcibly illustrated by a criminal trial in France described by (ieorget—in which, under a i incongruous instructions, such as the Com- monwealth's counsel now vindicate, the jury found specially that the accused acted voluntarily and with premeditation, but that he was in- sane at the time of thus a ! And, on that finding, he was dis- charged. And what does this prove? Why, that the Judge, who, notwithstanding his silly instructions, was compelled to discharge him, was of the opinion that the accused had acted voluntarily and premeditatedly just as the tiger does when he devours the innocent and unoffending babe—from mere brute passion or appetite, and without reason or sound moral sentiment. The tiger knows what he does, is actuated by moiive, and his act is voluntary, and, if you please, premeditated—but still the knowledge, the volition, the mo- tive, and the forethought are those only of an irrational, and, there- fore, irresponsible beast of the foiest. So, precisely, the lunatic, when acting under the dominion of his insanity, knows what h« does, is influenced by some moiive, may act as freely as any mero animal ever can act, a\id may also have predetermined to act—but •till, as to all these matters—being deprived of the preserving light](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21112058_0100.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
