It is also a remarkable fact, that some of the most ingenious and pertinaciously maintained impostures on record have been carried on by women.-Elizabeth Canning, for example, or the Somersetshire girl, Bowditch-but we doubt whether Serjeant Wilde would have given himself up for lost at the first appearance of a pretty woman in the box.

A child's evidence is of course unanswerable, and one of the most famous crim-con cases of modern times was brought to light by a child.

We have only room for one quotation more; but we cannot well make up our minds to omit a curious hoax played off upon the principal newspapers, towards which Mr. Sharpe entertains no friendly feelings:

"I recollect once being at a dinner party of young men, none of them contemptible in point of ability, and some of them far otherwise. By way of evening amusement, we selected each our daily paper, and affecting the tone of familiar acquaintance, addressed letters to the editors in such terms as we considered most likely to irritate, that we might have the pleasure of judging by their answers to correspondents' how far we succeeded in penetrating their anonymous hides. At our next meeting we brought their various replies; they were entertaining, inasmuch as if their wit was somewhat scanty, they at least furnished each of us with a sobriquet for the evening, that afforded no little pleasantry among ourselves. All dealt very much in alliteration, and most affected the laconic. I cannot recollect the whole of them, but they were very similar, and the Times was especially nettled, though I cannot now recall the cause of offence. Old Nick is a ninny! we know him better than he thinks we do; would send his balderdash to papers that have more room for it.' 'Bounce is a booby,' was the retort of another; if I remember right, it was the Chronicle. 'A fool who writes a clerk-like hand may be assured that we were not hoaxed sufficiently to reach the second page of his letter;' was John Bull's somewhat Irish disclaimer of being duped. A fourth answered in obvious wrath, Fairplay looks as foolish as when he was dragged out of the horsepond! he forgets that we were by; we could tell him all about it if necessary!' It gave us some gratification to see, that, even in their mysterious hiding places, these self-important worthies did not feel quite comfortable when attacked with daggers, as pointed if not as poisonous as their own; for there was not one letter that remained unnoticed, nor one answer

we wish he

386 Adventures of an Attorney in Search of Practice.

that did not show the eager wish to throw back the mortification that had been inflicted."

He proceeds to enumerate some instances in which an unjust and injurious tyranny has been exercised by the press, and calls loudly for an alteration of the law on that account; but he forgets to mention another alteration still more needed -he forgets the ruinous expense to which newspaper proprietors are exposed in the shape of costs, even where they are confessedly conferring a great benefit on the public by the exposure of villainy, quackery or fraud. Mr. O'Connel has managed to delay the reform of this crying grievance during three or four years by bringing in, or pretending to bring in, a Bill on the subject, but it is to be hoped that another session will not be allowed to pass away without a remedy.

In conclusion, we cordially recommend this book as a clever, amusing and instructive one, both to professional and general readers, but we should be glad to find all illnatured allusions to the bar omitted in future editions, because we are convinced that any bickering or ill-will between the two branches of the profession must infallibly deduct from the respectability and influence of each. The public, on such occasions of difference, have an awkward habit of believing both parties.

H.

ART. VII.-SCOTCH PROCEEDINGS IN LUNACY.-CASE OF YOOLOW.

Report of the Proceedings under a Brieve of Idiotcy, Peter Duncan against David Yoolow, tried at Coupar-Angus, 28-30 Jan. 1837. With an Appendix of Documents and an Introduction. By Ludovic Colquhoun, Esq., Advocate. Edinburgh. 1837.

THIS Report seems not only well adapted to serve as a precedent for future proceedings of the kind, the object the editor had more particularly in view,—but also to throw light on the Scotch law regarding persons of unsound mind, and put medical men and others on their guard against an undue

readiness to form presumptions of mental incapacity. The speeches of the counsel also contain numerous passages well worthy to be cited as specimens of forensic reasoning and eloquence. We can hardly err, therefore, in devoting a few pages to the case.

The law of Scotland, as explained by Mr. Colquhoun in a well-written introduction, divides persons labouring under mental disabilities into two classes: 1. Those who are in such a state as to make it necessary to take both person and property under the protection of the law; 2. Those where the party possesses sense enough for his personal guidance, but is unfit to be trusted with the management of his property.

The process for determining whether an individual belongs to the first class is termed Cognition and Inquest a writ or brieve is issued, and a jury or inquest, summoned by the sheriff, decides, much in the same manner as in England.

The legal remedy prescribed for the second class is that of Interdiction," a legal restraint laid upon those who either through their profuseness, or the extreme facility of their tempers, are too easily induced to make hurtful conveyances, by which they are disabled from signing any deed to their prejudice, without the consent of curators, who are called Interdictors." This species of restraint may be imposed by the sentence of a superior court on the application of the heir or next of kin, or without such application where the court discover signs of mental weakness in the party to a suit; or the individual may impose an interdiction, equivalent to a judicial sentence, on himself, by executing a bond whereby he engages to do no act affecting his property without the consent of certain curators whom he selects. This is by no means an unwise or unnecessary provision, for patients subject to periodical accessions of the malady are generally quite conscious of its approach; and persons versed in medical jurisprudence will have no difficulty in recalling the case of a gentleman of fortune who came regularly to put himself under the care of a keeper a day or two before his power of selfcontrol was lost. If the agnate or nearest of kin refuses to

interfere, or there be no agnate, the better opinion is, that the Court has no power to interfere-a defect which Mr. Colquhoun proposes to supply by enabling the Lord Advocate to set the fitting process in action.

The case before us is one of cognition and inquest; the question being, whether David Yoolow was or was not in a state of imbecility rendering him unfit for the ordinary concerns of life. The trial took place at Coupar-Angus in January, 1837, before Mr. Sheriff L'Amy and a jury of fifteen; Mr. Patrick Robertson and Mr. Alexander M'Neill appearing as counsel for the pursuer, and Mr. Duncan M'Neill and Mr. Charles Neaves for the defender. Never was case better contested, and seldom has our attention been called to one in which such ample scope was afforded to forensic tact and metaphysical subtlety, the admitted facts being of a kind on which no positive conclusion could be based.

After a little preliminary altercation as to the order in which counsel should be heard-which the sheriff terminated by deciding that the old Scotch system should be followed in preference to that recently imported from England for civil causes in the Court of Session-the case for the claimant was opened by Mr. A. M'Neill:

"You will have an opportunity of seeing this person, and forming your own estimate of his capacity. He will either be produced to you, or you must visit him at his residence. My statement is, that he is a complete imbecile--not absolutely bereft of reason—but totally unable to manage his own affairs. He is now fifty-two years of age, and has all his life been treated as a child. In early youth he met with an accident, which brought on paralysis and fever—the effect of which on his constitution, bodily and mental, was to arrest all advancement; and he has remained in a state which cannot strictly be called second childhood, as he has never been enabled to emerge from first childhood. He has been constantly attended as a child.”

Being compelled to admit that Yoolow was well versed in the Bible, the advocate endeavours to obviate the inference by stating that considerable scriptural knowledge was often found in combination with idiotcy. For example, Bossuet once offered to give an idiot an apple, if he would tell him where God was. The answer of the idiot was; "I will give

you two, if you will tell me where he is not." Again, the following lines are attributed to an idiot :

"Could we with ink the ocean fill

Were the whole earth of parchment made,—

Were every single stick a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky."

It is very possible that the writer of these lines, as well as Bossuet's acquaintance, were deemed incapable of managing their affairs we have heard one of the greatest poets of the age termed an inspired idiot, and we ourselves have some clever acquaintance, who, if they knew their own interest, would apply for an interdict without delay; but we do not believe that the repartee or the verses could have emanated from a mind affected at the time to imbecility.

The case being thus opened, a visit to the alleged idiot was proposed, and resisted on the ground that he was quite capable of attending the inquest according to the established practice. The sheriff ruled that, after hearing the defender's opening statement, the jury should proceed to a personal examination of Yoolow at his residence. Accordingly, Mr. Neaves, the junior counsel for the defenders, made a brief statement with the view of putting the jury on their guard :

"It is my duty to warn you, that in now seeing and conversing with David Yoolow, it will be necessary for you to summon up all that conscientious caution and impartiality which your oaths have bound you to observe in a question so seriously affecting the interests of a fellow-being. Yoolow must be presented to you under great and singular disadvantages; and allowances of no ordinary kind must be made, before a true estimate of his condition can be formed. You will be struck on beholding him with defects and peculiarities, which it is impossible for any one to contemplate without uneasiness and pain. A cripple and a paralytic from his boyhood, you will find his limbs decrepit and deformed, his arms and hands misshapen and contorted so as to be useless for the needful purposes of life, and his eyes, countenance, and whole frame agitated by fearful and convulsive motions, that seem incompatible with regular volition or intelligence. His articulation, also, has been much affected by his disease, and