lly a stranger to your Lordship, nearly
thirty years of my life have been devoted to the investigation and
treatment of insanity: of which more than twenty have been
professionally passed in the largest receptacle for lunatics;--and the
press has diffused, in several publications, my opinions and experience
concerning the human mind, both in its sound state and morbid condition.

The medical profession, of which I am an humble member, entertains very
different notions concerning the nature of UNSOUNDNESS of mind, and
IMBECILITY of intellect;--and this difference of opinion has been
displayed on many solemn occasions, where medical testimony has been
deposed.

If a physician were to attempt to search into the existing records and
procedures on insanity, to collect its legal interpretation, such
investigation would probably be a waste of his time, the source of
abundant, and perhaps of incurable error; but to these inconveniences he
will not be subjected in attentively considering your Lordship's
judgments, of which I have availed myself on the present occasion, and
which, having been taken down at the time they were delivered, may be
presumed not materially incorrect. The documents to which I refer are
the judgments of the 22d April, 1815, and the 17th December, 1822, on
the Portsmouth petitions, together with the minutes of conference
between your Lordship and certain physicians, on the 7th January, 1823.
In the judgment on the petition of 1815, it is stated by your
Lordship,[A] "I have searched, and caused a most careful search to be
made into all the records and procedures on lunacy which are extant. I
believe, and I think I may venture to say, that originally commissions
of this sort were of two kinds; a commission aiming at, and enquiring
whether, the individual had been an idiot ex nativitate, or whether, on
the other hand, he was a lunatic. The question whether he was a
lunatic, being a question, admitting in the solution of it, of a
decision that imputed to him at one time an extremely sound mind, but at
other times, an occurrence of insanity, with reference to which, it was
necessary to guard his person and his property by a commission issuing.
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 UNSO