to idiot and lunatic. The process of law is the same. This undescribed state of unsoundness is contra-distinguished from idiotcy and lunacy; but we are left in the dark concerning the peculiar circumstances by which it is contra-distinguished, and under such defect the advantages of introducing a new and undefined term are not apparent. For what purpose "those who had the administration of justice in this department thought themselves at liberty" so to act, is

not explained: but your Lordship having adopted such practice, and highly commended the authority from whence it has been derived, can, doubtless, afford the necessary elucidation.

For those venerable authorities of the law, who have preceded your Lordship in this department of the administration of justice, I feel impressed with the utmost deference and respect; and these grateful sentiments will be rendered more intense whenever their reasons are promulgated. Medical practitioners, who have devoted their lives to the consideration and treatment of insanity, are disposed to doubt concerning the existence of any intrinsic or positive unsoundness of mind, as contra-distinguished from idiotcy and lunacy. Those who have accumulated the largest sum of experience in disorders of the intellect, have viewed the various forms under which they are manifested, as equally conducing to render an individual incapable of conducting himself and managing his affairs, whether the mental affection be termed madness, melancholy, insanity, mental derangement, non compos mentis, idiotcy, or lunacy; and, if it were necessary, a more ample catalogue might be introduced. Physicians may, perhaps, be ad

vantageously occupied in establishing nice shades of difference in the symptoms of mental disorder; and, if we do not already possess sufficient, may create new terms expressive of these modifications: and such extension of the nosological volume may have its practical utility: but the lawyer can have no interest in such speculations, he only looks to the medical evidence to demonstrate the existence of that morbid condition of intellect that renders the individual incompetent to conduct himself in society, and to manage his affairs.

Speaking generally, the state of idiotcy is well understood, although cases of an intricate nature may occasionally occur: but there is considerable probability, that the interpretation that has adhered to the term lunacy, more especially in the estimate of the lawyer, has been the source of considerable error, and has also tended to introduce the middle and undefined epithet of unsoundness. The old physicians, for whom modern practitioners entertain less reverence than lawyers feel for their predecessors, concurred, that lunatics were not only persons of disordered mind, but that their intellectual aberrations corresponded with certain changes of the moon: and this lunar hypothesis which had

beguiled the medical profession, will furnish a sufficient apology for its adoption by the lawyer. It is a necessary consequence, if the moon, at certain periods, shed a baneful influence on the human intellect, that the intermediate periods would be exempt from its contamination; or, speaking more technically, at certain phases of that luminary, a person would be visited by an insane paroxysm, and at others, experience a lucid interval. The belief in these alternations of insanity and reason, is perspicuously stated in your Lordship's judgment of 1815, on the Portsmouth petition. "The question whether he was a lunatic, being a question admitting, in the solution of it, of a decision that imputed to him, at one time, an extremely sound mind, but at other times, an occurrence of insanity, with reference to which it was necessary to guard his person and his property by a commission issuing."

Notwithstanding it