The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 85, 11 April 1868, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1868.

About the commission of the crime for which the man O'Farrell has been sentenced to death there can happily be uo doubt on moral or technical grounds. Few crimes have been so free from embarrassing considerations arising out of deficient demonstration. There were no difficulties of proof from first to last. The time and place selected for the deed evidenced a complete indifference on the part of the perpetrator to its detection. In broad daylight, at a public festivity, the Prince was, shot down, without the slightest warning, and in the presence of thousands of spectators. The prisoner himself acknowledged the deed ; and not only acknowledged it, but seemingly gloated over its commission. So far, then, the evidence in point of fact is complete, and there is no room for any misgiving that justice has not overtaken the sheider of blood, the murderer iv will, if not in deed.

But, unfortunately, just as we get rid of one difficulty, another interposes. The question set up in O'Farrell's defence, was not whether he was the man who shot the Prince, but whether he was accountable for the act — whether, in fact, he was in a sound state of mind. The trial thus passed from the hands of the advocate iuto those of the psychologist, or, more properly, it acquires aloug with its technical interest an additional philosophic attraction. And at the very moment of transition, unfortunately, it receives a vtry sensible check to its otherwise very satisfactory progress. There cannot be a moment's hesitation that the defence of non-accountability set up by the prisoner's counsel was the proper one in every sense of the word, the one most likely to save the prisoners life, and best adapted to lead the jury to a verdict that, comprehending every contingency, should satisfy tbe public mind, by proving that the attempted assassination was the act of a monomaniac, and not the result of organized conspiracy.

The details of the defence set up by tbe prisoner's counsel have not yet reached us, and all we know is, that the attempt to prove his insanity was very slight, and had entirely broken down, being, moreover, treated as altogether untenable by the Judge in his charge. Yet the Melbourne papers, previous to the trial, teemed with evidence that decidedly went to show that the man O'Farrell might fairly be held up to society as a homicidal maniac. Circumstances were narrated by unimpeachable witnesses, all in favor of such a theory. He had been represented as strange and eccentric in manner, physie&lly hypersensitive and touchy, and physically debilitated by frequent . excesses. He evidently was possessed of morbid notions of what he deemed to .be patriots nth, and certain manifestations of, more tt less, mental distraction and disturbfeSCft had undoubtedly made their appear-

ance at no very distant period. The wonder, therefore, seems to be that with bo much at his disposal, the defence from a psychological point 'of view should not have been urged on more persistently by his counsel. It seems likely that much might have been done that was not done to establish a plea of iusanity. Why was not the cue thus given followed up ? Why was there not a larger collection of phenomena made, with a view to find a specific issue ? It is only natural to suppose that the past records of his life were investigated, but was it ascertained whether the histoiy of his family encouraged the presumption that he was insane ? Was there auything to suggest hereditary taint ? Was the manifestation ever traceable to other members of his kin ? Had he a brother or other near relative, who, like himself, regarded life with that complex feeling of indifference and despair that leads a man to rid himself of it, as he stated to be his intention ? All these questions naturally arise, and it is impossible uot to feel some curiosity to learn why, if they were set up on behalf of the prisoner, they were held so lightly by judge and jury. There was doubtless much to oppose to the plea of insanity, Still there would be something gaiued to popular conviction, should it be proved that every argument in tbe prisoner's favor had been urged and exhausted. It will be readily understood that we can have no desire to be discontented with the adjudication on the case; but we. cannot resist the impression that, having regard to the evidence as to the prisoner's previous insanity, which was so abundant at the time of the attempt on the Prince's life, and looking upou it as a matter of forensic psychology, the trial of O'Farrell will, in the annals of justice, provoke not very satisfactory comment. O'Farrell may not be insane within the interpretation of the law, but there seems ground for suspicion that the mode of deciding his sanity or insanity was a rather inadequate one. Of course we do not expect of judges or counsel that profound appreciation of the merits of a case which, thoroughly to master and appreciate, demands a range of learniug co-ordinate with the sciences of physiology and metaphysics. To settle the problem of O'Farrell's sanity might be as impossible as to solve that of Hamlet's, and the issue might have been unaltered had either Judge Checke or Mr Aspinall been a psychologist. But we are justified in the feeling that the judgment, for the reasons we have already specified, would bave been more satisfactory, had the verdict been the result of a scientific definition on the parfc of the judge on the nature of mania in general (a subject which is not even alluded to in his final address to the prisoner), and a scientific conviction on the part of the! jury of the mental condition of O'Farrell in particular.