Q.--Do you consider him insane at the present time? The answers to such questions, generally in favor of the defendant, will outweigh the opinion of the mightiest expert in the land, in the opinion of the jury. Yet the witness is not even asked if he has ever seen a case of insanity, if he were ever in an asylum, or whether he has any practical or theoretical knowledge of insanity or insane men. His recent relations with the accused may have been confined to mere daily salutations, or so cursory as to furnish no useful information as to mental health. The position of the accused also, is one that naturally excites in the minds of the jury the deepest sympathy. They can not, and will not, understand why a poor fellow who sleeps little, talks strangely, and facetiously styles himself General Jackson, should be sent away to an asylum, deprived of all that makes life dear to them. They do not believe the man insane; their sympathies forbid so hard a verdict. Insanity is not a contract, a will or a deed. It is not a question of law; it is a question of fact. A fact often difficult to reach; a fact so closely related with physiological and metaphysical facts, so interwoven with the subtile threads of human intelligence, so artful in alluding apprehension, so dangerous in its results, that its judicial investigation can never be safely entrusted to those deficient in knowledge and experience. The custom of conducting these inquiries before juries, and in public places, should be discontinued. The exhibition of these God-stricken people and their mental deformities as a public spectacle, is a relic of barbarian inhumanity. Charity would fain cover them with the mantel of privacy. The practice of allowing loquacious attorneys to harangue the court, to brow-beat the medical witness and vex him with impertinence, to sneer at and gibe an expert whilst he elucidates some difficult point to a stupid jury, that has been raised by a yet more stupid attorney, is too despicable for respectful comment. What would you think of the proposition, Mr. President, to employ attorneys at law in a court composed of mathematicians? The question for investigation being one pertaining to their science. The very questionable utility of attorneys at law, under any circumstances, would not be found available in such a court. Neither ought they to find place in a court convened for the solution of a problem quite as technical and far more abstruse. A question of physical disease involving nerve centers. I will here venture the opinion that the day is not far distant, when investigations involving insanity only, will be more expeditiously and justly determined without the assistance of either lawyers or juries. Lawyers tell us sir, that the merchant, the artisan, the laborer and the men who till the soil are as competent and intelligent judges of mental phenomena as the physician.