If a person was aware that it was a wrong act he was about to commit, he was answerable for the consequences. _A man might say that he picked a pocket from some incontrollable impulse; and in that case the law would have an incontrollable impulse to punish him for it!_" Another acute and eminent judge, Baron Rolfe, on a recent occasion, in trying a boy aged twelve years, for deliberately and cunningly poisoning his aged grandfather, thus gravely dispelled this favourite delusion of the medical jurists.--"The witnesses called for the defence had described the prisoner as acting from 'uncontrollable impulse.' In my opinion, such evidence ought to be scanned by juries with very great jealousy and suspicion, _because it may tend to the perfect justification of every crime that may be committed_. What is the meaning of not being able to resist moral influence? Every crime is committed under an influence of such a description, and the object of the law is to compel persons to control these influences. If it be made an excuse for a person who has committed a crime, that he has been goaded to it by some impulse, which medical men may choose to say he could _not_ control, I must observe, that such a doctrine is fraught with very great danger to society." This stern and sound good sense prevailed; and the youthful murderer was convicted. We have been thus full and distinct in explaining the wholesome doctrine of our English law, because of its immense importance; and we desire it to be understood, far and wide, especially by the medical profession, that these fashionable but dangerous modern paradoxes, borrowed from Continental physicians, concerning _the co-existence of moral insanity_ with intellectual sanity, will not be tolerated in English courts of justice. Let us now proceed to deal with the two remarkable cases of Oxford and M'Naughten--the former of whom was placed at the bar of the Old Bailey four days after the execution of Courvoisier. It is unspeakably painful, and humiliating, and disgusting, to reflect that our Queen, who has always shown a disposition to intrust herself unreservedly among her subjects, should have been subjected to no fewer than five public outrages--the last of which inflicted actual injury on the royal person,--that of a lady, a young queen, ascending the throne of this mighty empire at the age of eighteen!--outrages in every instance perpetrated by despicable beings of the male sex, properly characterised by Mr Townsend as "crazed knaves, or imbecile monomaniacs." First came, on the 10th June 1840, Edward Oxford, aged nineteen; then, on the 30th May 1842, John Francis, aged twenty; then, on the 3d July 1842, John William Bean, a deformed stripling aged seventeen; then, on the 19th May 1849, William Hamilton; finally--God grant that the degraded series may never be increased!--on the 27th June 1850, Robert Pate--alas! a gentleman of birth and fortune, and who had recently borne her Majesty's commission!