in my own opinion, could understand the nature of property, which is represented by numbers of pounds, shillings, and pence. Indeed the capacity to acquire this knowledge seems to constitute the preeminence of man in the creation, as an intellectual being. The same imbecility of mind is often produced in adults, and in those of advanced age, by paralytic or epileptic attacks, and from various affections of the brain, and requires the same accurate investigation, to determine on the competency of such persons, to be entrusted with the management of themselves and affairs. From the foregoing remarks, it appears indispensably necessary that some criterion should be fixed as the test of sufficient capacity. In the case even of an ideot ex nativitate, it must be ascertained that he is really an ideot; and the same process of investigation, which enables us to determine this fact, will apply to the intermediate gradations of human capacity. All ideots are not of the same degree of intellectual depravity; some possess more memory than others, and display a talent for imitation;—they will whistle tunes correctly, and repeat passages from books, which they have been taught by ear; but they are incapable of comprehending what they repeat. There is a degree of intellect, although mean, when compared with superior minds, which will enable a human being to take charge of himself, and transact his affairs; and there is also an inferior degree, which incapacitates him from the performance of those offices: and patient examinations at repeated interviews will enable the observer to ascertain his competency, and to afford a satisfactory evidence of the state of his mind: for the mind of every man may be gauged, both as to its acquirements and capacity. By imbecility, therefore, which may be either natural, or induced by a variety of causes, it will be seen, that I mean a state or degree of mental incapacity equivalent to ideotcy, a degree, which renders him incompetent to the management of himself and affairs:—and which degree, by observation and enquiry, may always be ascertained. This degree, satisfactorily measured, does, in my own opinion, amount to unsoundness of the individual’s mind: as it includes all the mental evidences which constitute unsoundness.