instruction take "no root, and wither away,"—that he is deficient in the capacity to attain the information requisite to pilot himself

through the world and manage his concerns, such a person would be deemed an idiot, and it might be safely concluded that his intellect was unsound, by wanting those capacities that constitute the sound mind. According to your Lordship's exposition he could not be pronounced unsound, because this word implies "some such state, as is to be contra-distinguished from idiotcy." In order that a definite signification may be affixed to the expression "some such state," it will not, I trust, be deemed indecorous to ask, what particular condition of morbid intellect is to be understood by this "some such state?" The solution of this difficulty would be most acceptable to the practitioners of medicine, and in my own humble opinion of great relief to the jury, who are called upon to "proceed to infer" this state of unsoundness without any other premises than the words "some such state." Although we are distinctly told by your Lordship, that the extreme degree of imbecility or incapacity will not constitute this "some such state" that may be denominated unsoundness; yet I feel highly satisfied with the force and precision by which it is expressed in the words "whatever degree," which if a scale were constructed on which imbecility might be estimated, would imply the ultimate gradation; and

whenever any subject can be regulated by definite quantity, expressed in numbers, it conveys the most certain information. Your Lordship may however judge of the surprize and disappointment I felt when I arrived at the following sentence in the same judgment, "All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do; that an inability to manage a man's affairs will not do, unless that inability and that incapacity to manage his affairs AMOUNT to evidence that he is of unsound mind, and he must be found to be so."

This, my Lord, is an ample confession that there is a degree of mental weakness that does amount to unsoundness, and in this opinion all philosophers and medical practitioners will unhesitatingly concur: but at the same time this admission wholly upsets the former doctrine, that no degree of imbecility "WHATEVER" can constitute this required unsoundness. In your Lordship's judgment on the Portsmouth petition, delivered the 11th December, 1822, it is stated, "It may be very difficult to draw the line between such weakness, which is the proper object of relief in this court, and such as AMOUNTS to insanity," and in the next sentence, "This is the doctrine of Lord Hardwicke, and I

follow him in saying it is very difficult to draw the line between such weakness which is the proper object of relief in this court, and such as AMOUNTS to insanity." This is a second corroboration of an opinion that destroys the former doctrine. Finally in the "minutes of conference between your Lordship and certain physicians, held on the 7th January, 1823, in the Portsmouth case," there is an endeavour to explain the nature of unsoundness, and of imbecility or weakness;—but it is insufficient to direct the physician to any clue whereby his doubts can be solved, and unfortunately relapses into the original contradictory statement. "The commission which is usually termed a commission of lunacy, and which because it has that name, I observe many persons are extremely misled with respect to the nature of it, and which produced on a former occasion, with respect to this nobleman, a great mass of affidavits, in which they stated he was not an object of a commission of Lunacy.—I say that these