of intoxication, holds in law, and is perfectly binding, unless it can be shown that the person who signed it was inebriated by the collusion or contrivance of those to whom the bond was given. A judge or magistrate found drunk _upon the bench_, is liable to removal from his office; and decisions pronounced by him in that state are held to be null and void. Such persons cannot, while acting _ex officio_, claim the benefit of the repeal in the ancient law—their offence being in itself an outrage on justice, and, therefore, a misdemeanour. Even in blasphemy, uttered in a state of ebriety, the defence goes for nothing, as is manifest from the following case, given in Maclaurin’s Arguments and Decisions, p. 731. “Nov. 22, 1697. Patrick Kinninmouth, of that Ilk, was brought to trial for blasphemy and adultery. The last charge was passed from. The indictment alleged, He had affirmed Christ was a bastard, and that he had said, ‘If any woman had God on one side, and Christ on the other, he would stow [cut] the lugs [ears] out of her head in spite of them both.’ He pleaded chiefly that he was drunk or mad when he uttered these expressions, if he did utter them. The court found the libel relevant to infer the pains libelled, _i. e._ death; and found the defence, That the pannel was furious or distracted in his wits relevant; but repelled the allegeance of fury or distraction arising _from drunkenness_.” It thus appears that the laws both of Scotland and England agree in considering drunkenness no palliation of crime, but rather the reverse; and it is well that it is so, seeing that ebriety could be easily counterfeited, and made a cloak for the commission of atrocious offences. By the laws, drunkenness is looked upon as criminal, and this being the case, they could not consistently allow one crime to mitigate the penalties due to another. There is only one case where drunkenness can ever be alleged in mitigation of punishment—that is, where it has induced “a state of mind perfectly akin to insanity.” It is, in fact, one of the common causes of that disease. The partition line between intoxication and insanity, may hence become a subject of discussion. “William M’Donough was indicted and tried for the murder of his wife, before the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts, in November, 1817. It appeared in testimony, that several years previous he had received a severe injury of the head; that although relieved of this, yet its effects were such as occasionally to render him insane. At these periods he complained greatly of his head. The use of spirituous liquors immediately induced a return of the paroxysms, and in one of them, thus induced, he murdered his wife. He was with great propriety found guilty. The _voluntary use_ of a stimulus which, he was fully aware, would disorder his mind, fully placed him under the power of the law.”[37]