cation." It is better not to expose one's self ure. From this ground of sheer brutality by

to the reproach of this too keen controver itself no inference of madness ought ever to sialist in a place where there is not space be drawn. Some of the most barbarous to defend one's position. So we pronounce murders on record have been perpetrated by neither on the one side nor the other. M. admittedly sane men, — men on whose per Breschet remarks that the line of demarca fect soundness of mind no doubt has ever tion between depravity and madness is very been cast. Nor is it to be forgotten that an difficult to draw. This is sufficient for us. ordinary execution in this country of ours in bygone times was certainly not inferior in It is also the gist of the matter. For, ad mitting, for the moment, the existence of a savagery to these London outrages. Dis pathological phenomenon of a perversion of embowelling and plucking out the heart the affections without a derangement of the while the victim still breathed, and quarter intellect, there is a further question, not to ing after death, were regular practices, sanc be settled off-hand by mere generalities : tioned by public opinion, ordained by men whom we still count enlightened. It cannot Ought such a form of mental disorder to in volve irresponsibility for crime in the same be pretended that these, continued for cen way as intellectual disorder? Even Profes turies, were evidences of insanity on the sor Maudsley shrinks from answering this part of the people who permitted their inflic universally in the affirmative, and considers tion. They were evidences of the coarse and the admission of a modified responsibility, brutal side of human nature, — sane and according to the special circumstances of the sound human nature, — which it is the func tion of criminal law to repress. Uncivilized case, to be " the truest justice." It was the very atrocity of the Whitechapel savages, too, of our own time still revel daily murders that gave rise to the theory of their in atrocious cruelties, even to hear of which being the work of a madman. It is not a makes one shudder. Yet we do not stamp novel line of reasoning, this. Georget, when these races as universally mad and irrespon dealing with the notorious case of Antoine sible. No more is mere barbarity when dis Leger, who was tried in 1824 for the violation played in our own time and country to be and murder of a girl of twelve, remarks : " The regarded as necessarily a symptom of mental more strange and unheard of a crime is, the derangement, or of anything but great de less need one seek for its cause among the pravity. The mutilation of the bodies of ordinary motives of human actions." Only these wretched women in East London, taken let the deed be surpassingly barbarous, and by itself, is no indication whatever of insanity the ordinary mind will at once leap to the on the part of the perpetrator or perpetrators conclusion that it was a maniac who wrought of the deeds. It is said that the hypothesis of insanity it. Its very wantonness and shocking bru tality are considered inexplicable on any as an explanation of these startling crimes other hypothesis save that of an unhinged is borne out by the apparent absence of any and disordered mind. Now, the inference is thing like an adequate motive. The circumstances certainly point to none. quite fallacious. There are many extraneous considerations to be kept in view, — as, for The existence of the customary motives to example, that the mutilation may be a mere murder seem to be negatived by all that is ruse in order to mislead the investigators, or known. The object cannot have been rob even, should the culprit look so far ahead, to bery or gain; the poverty of the murdered give color to a plea of insanity when things woman in each case negatives that. Assas reach that pass. But putting such aside for sination can scarcely have resulted from an the present, it is rash to conclude that there impulse of sudden anger; the very number and similarity of the crimes negative such a is any limit to the depravity of human nat