A conclusion is here drawn that the establishment of _unsoundness_ necessarily involves, that the extreme degree of imbecility and incapacity of mind does not constitute this unsoundness: that is,--they may exist in the extreme degree, (or citing the words employed,) in any degree WHATEVER, which implies the ne plus ultra, without any resulting UNSOUNDNESS. This is a dictum, which proceeding from your Lordship, the highest authority, is intitled to the utmost deference:--but it is not an inference from any acknowledged premises, nor established by the intervention of any corroborating argument. The very existence of this intrinsic unsoundness, is "down to the present moment" unproved, and all that can be inferred in this state of the question, is the accredited maxim that "Nil agit exemplum litem quod lite resolvit." By the common consent of philosophers and physicians, mental imbecility in the extreme degree is termed idiotcy; and this state may exist "ex nativitate," or supervene at various periods of human life. When a child proceeds from infancy to adolescence, and from that state advances to maturity, with a capacity of acquiring progressively the knowledge which will enable him to conduct himself in society and to manage his affairs,--so that he is viewed as a responsible agent and considered "inter homines homo," such a being is regarded of _sound_ capacity or intellect:--but if in his career from infancy to manhood it is clearly ascertained that education is hopeless,--that the seeds of 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