This distinction was lost sight of in the time of Staundforde, who wrote in 1570. The law of forfeitures in other respects remained the same until 1870, when forfeitures for felony were abolished by 33 and 34 Victoria, c. 23. Whilst such disabilities existed, it was perhaps a kindness of juries to misrepresent the manner of death, and to find that all suicides were of unsound mind; but now that these disabilities, both of forfeitures, and usages of contempt to the corpse, have been taken away, there does not seem to be any necessity to refrain from finding a verdict “according to the evidence,” which a Coroner’s jury is sworn to do; at least, more accurately, a Coroner’s jury is sworn to give a verdict “according to the evidence, and the best of their knowledge and belief,” thus giving a greater freedom in investigation than is given to jurymen in a criminal court. STEVENSON, in Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” remarks, “It is to be hoped that these recent enactments of the Burial Laws will do away with many absurd verdicts of ‘Temporary Insanity;’” and Chitty, J., 1834, adds, “If juries were more often to find verdicts subjecting parties to some ignominy, in cases where there is no pretence of insanity, the apprehension of such a result would tend to prevent the frequency of the act.” (Med. Jurisprudence, cap. ix. sec. v.) There are still some authorities who think that evidence of insanity could be found in all cases, if only sufficiently investigated. See “Journal of Mental Science,” April 1861. I feel bound to say this is to me only an amiable fallacy. Several cases have come under my personal notice where deliberate suicide has been committed by persons of the clearest intellect, who have never shown any one symptom of mind failure, who were not even eccentric, and yet who chose to sacrifice their life in this world and risk their eternal future, just to avoid a passing annoyance. Such a choice may show, if you like, a weakness of mind, but is not what our Text Books teach us to understand by the expression Lunacy. Gibbon, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” c. 14, remarks, “Whenever an offence inspires less horror than the punishment awarded to it, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the _common_ feelings of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham remarks that jurors do not hesitate to violate their oaths, and so meet the interference of law, by finding suicides to be “non compos.” The frequency with which Coroners’ juries return a verdict of “Suicide whilst in a state of temporary insanity,” is less a proof of the connection between suicide and lunacy, than a sign of the futility of the existing laws relating to the crime of felo-de-se. The commission of suicide does, no doubt, raise the question of insanity, but in such cases the issue should be tried, not decided offhand. The reports of the following criminal trials may be consulted for further information on the subject of the association of suicide with crime.