It is needless to multiply examples of this character. A skillful advocate, before a jury, can set at liberty the most dangerous lunatic in the State. Why is this? Why should not a jury composed of twelve impartial citizens, sworn to render a verdict in accordance with the evidence adduced before them, with medical experts to give opinions and testify as to matters of fact, with a learned judge to expound the law--why, I would ask, should not a court so constituted, present the very best and most perfect type of a tribunal to investigate those complex questions which arise concerning insanity? Learned jurists have said, and still assert, that any person, of common sense and common experience, is as competent to judge between a sound mind and a mind diseased as the physician or alienist. Sir, this doctrine is repugnant to reason and common sense. As well might they claim that the same persons could as unerringly discriminate between health and disease in some other part of the nervous system--in the retina, the spinal cord, or the medulla-oblongata. The doctrine is utterly false, false in theory and false in fact. If any person, indifferently selected, is as competent as the medical man to judge of what symptoms indicate a diseased brain or nervous system, the same individual, under like circumstances, should be able to determine the symptoms of cholera, scarlatina, measles, or the symptoms of certain poisons. If the assumption of legal gentlemen be true, I would propose that in certain cases of doubtful diagnosis, a jury be empaneled to determine the real character of the disease. I deny the fact that jurymen selected from the laity are competent judges of the symptoms that indicate mental diseases. They are disqualified because: First--They lack the special study and experience by which alone they could comprehend and rightly interpret what they must see and hear. Second--_Juries do not render verdicts in accordance with the evidence._ It is, I believe, one of the esteemed privileges of juries to render verdicts utterly at variance with the testimony. Third--In trials of this character, juries are exposed to the eloquent wiles of counsel, who dwell with telling effect upon the probable persecution of the defendant; the loss of name and reputation an asylum would entail upon him; conspiracy of family or others from criminal motives, and the hardship of isolation and confinement; finally, the introduction of a mass of testimony by interrogations somewhat as follows: Question--Do you know the defendant? Q.--How long have you known him? Q.--Did you always consider him a sane man? Q.--Have you often seen and talked with him of late? Q.--Do you perceive any difference in his mental condition now and when you first knew him?