ordship's ministry to award, these metaphysical
disquisitions will in no manner contribute; nor will they assist the
medical practitioner in the attainment of his object, which is to
ascertain the competence of an individual's MIND, to conduct himself in
society, and to manage his affairs. By the abstract term MIND, is to be
understood the aggregate of the intellectual phenomena, which are
manifested or displayed to the observer by conversation and conduct; and
these are the only tests by which we can judge of an individual's mind.
The boasted deciphering of the human capacities or moral propensities,
by the appearances of the physiognomy, or by craniological surveys--the
mysterious pastimes of anatomical prophets, will never be accredited in
a court of justice while your Lordship guides the helm.

By conversation, is of course included the conveyance of thought by
writing, which, on many occasions, is a more accurate criterion of the
state of mind than oral expression.

Your Lordship seems to consider that we have derived some advantages by
the issue of a commission to ascertain this _unsoundness_ of mind, and
without such due consideration, it is presumed you would not have
adopted it; but the citation of your own accurate phraseology, as it
appears in your judgment of 1815, on the Portsmouth petition, will best
illustrate the subject. "It seems to have been a very long time before
those who had the administration of justice in this department thought
themselves at liberty to issue a commission, when the person was
represented as not being idiot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, but
as being of UNSOUND MIND, importing, by these words, the notion, that
the party was in _some such state_, as was to be contra-distinguished
from idiotcy, and as was to be contra-distinguished from lunacy, and yet
_such_ as made him a proper object of a commission in the nature of a
commission to inquire of idiotcy, or a commission to inquire of lunacy."
These words clearly imply a morbid state of intellect, which is neither
idiotcy nor lunacy, termed _unsound mind_, and yet the legal remedy for
the protection of the person and property of the possessor of this
_unsound mind_ does not differ from that which is applied to idiot and
lunatic. The process of law is the same. This undescribed state of
unsoundness is contra-distinguished from idiotcy and lunacy; but we are
left in the dark concerning the peculiar circumstances by which it is