INSANITY AND CRIME.

BY ICHABOD BARTLETT.

In every case, the charge of a crime of great enormity. at once enlists the virtuous feelings of the community against the accused. Even the forms of law aid in countenancing such prejudices. No harsher epithets are to be found in our language, than this indictment sanctions and although we may say, that the accused is to be presumed innocent until he is proved guilty, yet no individual ever stood at the criminal bar, when an influence the reverse of this was not produced upon our minds, by that situation alone. Yes every eye in this vast assembly has been fixed upon this lad, to see "the murderer." Every mind has already imagined, in his childlike, inoffensive appearance, the indelible marks of blood-stained guilt. He stands here to contend with the government. However exalted, however powerful an individual may be, such a contest places him at fearful odds.

In no trial was there ever placed at the bar a more forsaken, friendless, helpless child of misfortune; nor placed there under circumstances calculated to excite prejudices more fierce and unrelenting.

Even if in other places and on other occasions, he might have had friends, such is human nature, his present situation is not that in which kind offices are usually proffered. But destitute as he may be of relatives, who have either capacity or means to assist him—limited as may have been his opportunities, in his humble condition of life, of attaching to him acquaintances and friends-two friends he had secured by a course of unexceptionable, exemplary conduct, not surpassed in any condition in life-a friendship

INSANITY AND CRIME.

307

partaking of parental kindness and affection; one of whom now sleeps in the grave, sent there by the hand of him who was to her as a dutiful son while the afflicted, bereaved husband stands here his prosecutor stands here looking upon the accused, as if his hand had shed a parent's blood, and illustrating in his feelings the truth of the great philosophic poet,

"How sharper than an adder's tooth it is

To have a thankless child,"

In most cases of homicide, some doubt may exist as to the identity of the offender some uncertainty whether the wounds were the cause of death. Here no such doubts exist- no such uncertainty remains. The perpetrator stands unconcealed before you - the bloody garments in which the horrid act was accomplished have been exhibited

no apology, no excuse, no existing quarrel, no provocation is pretended. It was not to be rid of an enemy it was not a contest with an equal. The victim was an unarmed, unoffending female-a sincere friend, an affectionate wife, a fond and devoted mother. The mangled corpse of the deceased- the afflictions of the bereaved husband the tears of motherless children, have been made to call aloud for vengeance. The tragic story has been repeated at every fireside, and every repetition has added new horIt has brought an exasperated, an enraged populace even around the doors of the temple of justice, demanding the execution of the accused, and impatient even of the delay of the forms of a trial.

rors.

If the nature of the charge, the character and manner of the offence, present difficulties to an impartial examination of the question of guilt or innocence, a difficulty not less formidable is to be encountered in the nature of the defence. It is INSANITY. Insanity! And what have we learned of insanity, but the incoherent ravings of the madman, the clanking of the chains of the maniac? Who will for a moment listen to the excuse of insanity for an act of such atrocity, from one whose whole life has been a reg

ular and quiet and intelligent discharge of the duties of his humble station? Who has known of his being irrational? Who has heard of a single act of derangement of his? Here we feel how little we know of the human mind-the force of the truth that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made."

I am well aware of the power and eloquence with which the conviction of the prisoner will be urged on the part of the Government. You may be told, that, if he escapes the sentence of the law for murder, the commission of the crime may be encouraged, and the blood of future victims will be required at your hands—that perhaps your own children, your own wives, may be sacrificed to your lenity. Gentlemen, let no such appeals stir you to injustice- to cruelty -to conviction, without proof and against proof. If you have relatives, friends, whom you would protect from the violence of the assassin, you too are friends, husbands, fathers to those, upon whom, in the Providence of God, the calamity which now afflicts this young man may fall. While every grade of mind, from the humblest reasoning faculty to the loftiest power of human intellect, has been subject to the paralyzing influence of this malady; while its unseen and noiseless approach is unknown till marked by the ruins it has left, who can feel assurance, that within the hour he may not be its victim? And while the thousand new forms and modes in which its effects are exhibited are now daily baffling "the wisdom of the wisest," who is there who may not fear, that to such a calamitous visitation of heaven, erring mortals may add the infamy of a public execution upon the gallows.

I here leave the prisoner and his fate with you. May you render a verdict upon which you may hereafter reflect with satisfaction a verdict which shall not disturb, with misgivings and regrets, the remainder of life, which shall not enhance that dread of death, or the awful solemnity of that scene where we must all soon appear before our final Judge.