Responsibility more awful than is devolved upon all parties to the judicial investigation of this question can scarcely be imagined. A deliberate and thorough investigation of every--even the minutest--circumstance adduced, guided steadily by correct legal principles, is demanded imperiously by justice. Difficult--almost hopeless--as may be the attempt to grope into the turbid mind of a madman, to ascertain its true condition at a given moment of time, the attempt _must_ be made, a decision _must_ be pronounced--distinguishing between real and simulated imbecility or madness--between irresponsible insanity and responsible eccentricity. These are questions, we repeat, of infinite importance, of great difficulty; and the interests of the entire community, and of individual members of it, demand a steady adherence to the principles of a humane and enlightened jurisprudence. Recent dreadful instances have served to remove several sources of dangerous error, in dealing with these cases of criminal jurisprudence. No one dare now infer madness from the mere _absence of motive_, and from the _very enormity of the act committed_; nor accord immunity to the fancied victim of "_uncontrollable impulse_." That is, at all events, a point gained in favour of society. In England, at all events, we sternly repudiate this last sickly and spurious theory, which would place the innocent and virtuous entirely at the mercy of the most base and ruffianly impulses of our fallen nature. It would relax all the bonds of self-restraint, and afford a premium on the indulgence of ungovernable passions.