it was a wrong act--in fact, that what he was doing was wrong?--[Mr Baron Alderson then read over the whole of the evidence for the defence, commenting upon it as he proceeded.]--That the prisoner is an object of commiseration is quite clear; and that he should also have been taken better care of is equally true: but the question you have here to decide is, Are you satisfied that, at the time, he was suffering from a disease of the mind which rendered him incapable of judging whether the act he committed towards the Queen was a right or a wrong act for him to do? If you are not satisfied of this fact, you must say that he is guilty; but if you think he was not aware what he was about, or not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, you will then say that he is not guilty, on the ground of _insanity_." If the case of M'Naughten had been thoroughly tried out--if the medical witnesses, above all, had been checked, and restrained within their proper province, as they were by Baron Alderson--and if the summing up by the Chief-Justice had been in accordance with that of Baron Alderson in Pate's case--we do not venture to say what would have been the result: but whatever it might have been, it would have satisfied the country. Whether, at the moment when M'Naughten took out his long-prepared pistol, and, after a fortnight's watching, fancied he had found Sir Robert Peel, and deliberately shot his victim in the back--whether M'Naughten was, at that awful moment, insanely ignorant of what he was doing--utterly unaware that he was doing wrong--is a question which there exist no longer any human means of determining; but it is open to us to examine the principles applicable to such an investigation in a court of criminal justice. Upwards of seven years have elapsed since the trial of M'Naughten, and upwards of ten years since that of Oxford; and both of them are at the present moment inmates of Bethlehem Hospital. Since commencing this article, we have been permitted, through the courtesy of the acute and able physician to whom the superintendence of that important institution has been for some years intrusted, to see and converse with the two persons with whose fate we have herein so anxiously concerned ourselves. Neither knew of our going; and we were accompanied by the gentleman in question.