Act that his lordship may sweep into his pocket the whole funds of all the companies, and no means whatever of redress would exist. In a moral sense it might be glaring and infamous robbery, but it would be according to law, and expressly sanctioned by the Act. Considering that Lord Cairns is authorized under the Act to fix his own honorarium, and to pay himself out of the assets of the companies as much as he pleases, those words "not less than 20007. for his personal trouble" strike us as very odd. If other persons had to fix his remuneration, they would have been intelligible enough; but why was it necessary to impose a limit to his own moderation? Were the promoters afraid that his lordship would estimate himself and his services too cheaply, and found it, therefore, necessary that some compulsion should be put on his coyness and modesty, and that he should be forced, however much against his will, to accept at least 2000l.

Some malicious people have suggested that 20007. was the least sum that could sharpen his lordship's faculties, and enable him to penetrate the mysteries of the complicated web he has engaged to untie.

What makes a man see all things clear?
Give him two thousand pounds a year.
And see them clearer than before?

Why add to that two thousand more.

But we prefer our own solution of the phenomenon. It does honour to his lordship, to the Committee of the House of Commons, to the Parliament, and adds to our judicial glories. Here is a great judge so disinterested that he will give up weeks and months of his well-earned repose for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, and nothing could prevail on him to accept a remuneration but an Act of Parliament compelling him, whether he would or not, to take at least 2000l. for his personal trouble! Let it be recorded! Let it be graven on brass !

His lordship was not always so well disposed to arbitrations, when County Court judges, with their modest pretensions and moderate salaries, acted as arbitrators. During his Chancellorship he caused a circular to be sent by his secretary to the County Court judges, stating that he had been informed that some of the judges acted occasionally as arbitrators for fees, and that in his opinion it was contrary to the spirit of the 15 & 16 Vict. c. 54, s. 16, that they should do so. That Act provides that a judge shall not "practise at the Bar, or as a special pleader or equity draftsman," but is silent as to his being an arbitrator.

Now, the County Court judges, although with far less salaries, are just as much functionaries of the State, and with as

good a title to their offices as the Chancellor himself, and have as lively a sense of their dignity and responsibility as any Chancellor ever had. It seemed to many of them somewhat unseemly, that a Chancellor should presume to govern them by circular letters, as if he were their commanding officer; and indeed it is difficult to understand why those judges would not be equally justified in a united remonstrance at this moment to Lord Cairns, against his lordship taking upon himself, although a Peer and a judge in the Privy Council, to do that which he seemed to consider beneath the dignity of a County Court judge.

But the circular was not merely unseemly, but seems to us to have been a most unjudicial act, for by the 9 & 10 Vict. c. 95, s. 18, the Lord Chancellor may remove a judge "for inability or misbehaviour." This, however, he can only do on cause shown in open court, in which he would be called on to exercise his judicial functions in solemn audience. Supposing the only complaint that could be urged against the judge were to be that he had acted as arbitrator for fee or reward, what sort of justice could be expected from a Chancellor who had already committed himself to so decided an expression of opinion?

Some of the judges we know treated the circular with contempt; and their contempt is not likely to be diminished when an existing Chancellor has disposed them to the doctrine, that there is no spirit in any Act but such as is embodied in its words; and when the same lord that issued the circular, without anything like the pretext which a County Court judge might allege, and in the face of reasons of infinite pungency peculiar to himself, does the very thing which in his circular he deprecated. By the spirit of the Act, Lord Cairns meant, we suppose, the intention of the Legislature; but we will not think so hardly of the Legislature as to suppose that it would treat as derogatory to the dignity of a County Court judge, and humiliating to his position, that which it would sanction in a Peer of Parliament and a judge of the Privy Council.

What benefit the unfortunate persons interested in the Albert Insurance Company will get by the Act we are at a loss to conceive. In due time we shall see the results. We have not yet heard of any dividend, or of the prospect of one. We may be able better to estimate the chance of one, if some Member of Parliament will move for a return of all the costs, charges, and expenses that have been incurred and paid, or are payable, out of the funds of the Albert, or any of the absorbed companies, since the date of the order for winding up the Albert, to the arbitrator, the solicitors, or liquidators. A compte rendu will have to

be presented one day, and we hope it will not whet the already too eager appetites of legal speculators.

We

But what most pains us in the whole affair is, to see in the Act itself that absence of all sensitiveness to the high prerogatives of justice which has hitherto been our boast, and is in truth the cement which holds us together as a nation. If our tribunals are insufficient for their objects, in heaven's name let us mend them, increase them, modify them, in any way and at any expense, rather than loosen the bonds of society through a miserable economy. trust that we have heard the last of these special tribunals. It may be that in many respects our judicial machinery has been by a thriftless parsimony reduced to a state in which it no longer answers the exigencies of the country. But such wretched makeshifts as the Albert Arbitration Act, 1871, will, we doubt not, soon lead ignorant people to suppose that law and equity are impracticable absurdities, and that justice is better measured by the Chancellor's foot, than by reason, learning, or intelligence.

IV.-RESPONSIBILITY AND DISEASE.

By J. H. BALFOUR BROWNE, Barrister-at-Law, author of "The Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity."

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Every stupid man, every cowardly man, and every foolish man, is but a less palpable madman."-Carlyle.

THE question as to what ought to be the test of insanity in courts of law is of sufficient importance to require a definite answer, and owing to the prominence which has been given to it in connection with certain recent cases, is of sufficient interest to insure its consideration by a great many persons who do not belong either to the medical or legal profession. There seems to be little doubt that, owing to the more thorough training which is bestowed upon members of the medical profession, and owing also to the better scientific methods which have been so largely made use of in our days, a great many persons who were formerly regarded as sane have come to be looked upon as mad. So much so, that there are those who hold that the increase of insanity which has been so persistently asserted in recent times, is in reality only an apparent increase, and that the greater number of known lunatics is to be accounted for rather by an emphasis on the words "number" and "known," than on the words "number"

and "lunatics." This fact, then, may to some extent account for the greater frequency with which the plea of insanity is pleaded in relation to judicial inquiries, it being certain that many persons are now recognised as insane who would formerly have been regarded as in a state of perfect mental health. Some people have thought that that fact alone was a sufficient ground for a condemnation of the existing test of insanity, which is, to all intents and purposes, almost the same which existed before those advances which have raised medical psychology from a body of empirical opinions into a science. They hold, with some show of reason, that law must conform itself to scientific truths. The will of man against the will of nature is like an empty scale, on a hairbalance, against a loaded one. Absolute facts have a grim way of stultifying arbitrary laws. And only time is required. to enable true science to assimilate all laws to its rules. There is plausibility in these arguments, but they require to be anatomized before we can say whether they are true or false.

Upon these and other grounds, then, which we shall examine hereafter, medical men have insisted upon a change in the law in respect to insanity, and at the present time a committee, consisting of medical men and lawyers, is being formed, with a view to the amendment of the law in so far as the tests of insanity are concerned. The time is not inopportune. The public has a right to have the case for and against amendment laid before it, and the public is, I am convinced, capable of arriving at as satisfactory a conclusion with reference to this matter as any medical man or lawyer, or as any committee consisting of members of these two learned professions. Medical men, then, assert that insanity is a disease, and a disease of body; and lawyers, so far as I know, are not inclined to deny this assertion. If you assured a lawyer that the intention to enter into a contract was due to certain molecular changes in the grey matter of the brain, it would not affect his theory that the essence of a contract is consent. He has nothing to do with thought as thought, or with the physical basis of thought; he concerns himself only with thought when it becomes act. His province is not mind: that he leaves to the psychologist. His province is not body: that he leaves to the physician. But his province is conduct. Now, just as the etiology of consent does not matter to him in relation to the law of contracts, so to some extent the fact that insanity is a disease is of as little importance to him in relation to medical jurisprudence. This shall be considered at greater length in a subsequent part of this paper. the present time, I am anxious to place the position of medical men in relation to this question clearly before my readers.

At

Medical men seem to be under the impression that the object of the law, in all cases in which the question of sanity and insanity is in the cognizance of a court of justice, is to discover whether insanity really exists or not, and that impression is erroneous. The object of the law in all such cases is, first, to discover whether insanity can be proved to exist; and secondly, to discover whether that insanity is of such a nature as will exempt the individual from the consequences of his criminal act.

The second of these questions is to be answered with reference to that rule of law, or legal test, the satisfactoriness of which we propose to consider; but as a preliminary to that it may be well to consider the error into which large numbers of persons have fallen with regard to the object of all legal processes, and to point out one or two of the consequences of this error. First, then, medical men think that the object of a judicial inquiry, in which sanity is in question, is to discover whether insanity exists or not, the real object being to discover whether insanity can be proved to exist.

Injustice is a necessity of justice. True, omniscience and omnipotence might, if it wished, do absolute justice; but ordinary human tribunals must be content to do some things unjustly that many may be done justly. Friction is what retards a wheel, and yet without it there could be no motion, no expedition. So injustice is, what mars our best efforts to do right, and yet without it no justice could be done. I am not looking at it in the large sense. True, the one exists from the other, in the other, and through the other. True, the one is the essential other of the other; but even looked at in a peddling governmental way, the existence of the one implies the existence of the other. All government is founded on a maxim which has this thought in it: that to get liberty we must give up liberty. So it is true, to get justice we must suffer injustice. "It is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." It may seem very horrible at first sight, to say that the object of all our legal tribunals is the discovery not of truth, but of proved truth, which must in some way differ from one another, or the distinction would be unnecessary, but the inevitability will reconcile people to the notion in time. Experience of impossibilities is a great means, nay, the only means, of discovering how to make use of opportunities. That this is inevitable is certain. Thus, suppose a man, who is innocent, to be accused of a crime, and that owing to his likeness to the real perpetrator, he is positively sworn to by several individuals who saw the crime committed. This man may, although perfectly innocent, be unable to prove an alibi, unable to establish the fact of his innocence by any witnesses. Now, I ask, how under such