a scale
were constructed on which imbecility might be estimated, would imply the
ultimate gradation; and whenever any subject can be regulated by
definite quantity, expressed in numbers, it conveys the most certain
information. Your Lordship may however judge of the surprize and
disappointment I felt when I arrived at the following sentence in the
same judgment, "All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do;
that an inability to manage a man's affairs will not do, unless that
inability and that incapacity to manage his affairs AMOUNT to evidence
that he is of unsound mind, and he must be found to be so."

This, my Lord, is an ample confession that there is a degree of mental
weakness that _does_ amount to unsoundness, and in this opinion all
philosophers and medical practitioners will unhesitatingly concur: but
at the same time this admission wholly upsets the former doctrine, that
no degree of imbecility "WHATEVER" can constitute this required
unsoundness. In your Lordship's judgment on the Portsmouth petition,
delivered the 11th December, 1822, it is stated, "It may be very
difficult to draw the line between such weakness, which is the proper
object of relief in this court, and such as AMOUNTS to insanity," and in
the next sentence, "This is the doctrine of Lord Hardwicke, and I
follow him in saying it is very difficult to draw the line between such
weakness which is the proper object of relief in this court, and such
as AMOUNTS to insanity." This is a second corroboration of an opinion
that destroys the former doctrine. Finally in the "minutes of conference
between your Lordship and certain physicians, held on the 7th January,
1823, in the Portsmouth case," there is an endeavour to explain the
nature of _unsoundness_, and of imbecility or weakness;--but it is
insufficient to direct the physician to any clue whereby his doubts can
be solved, and unfortunately relapses into the original contradictory
statement. "The commission which is usually termed a commission of
lunacy, and which because it has that name, I observe many persons are
extremely misled with respect to the nature of it, and which produced on
a former occasion, with respect to this nobleman, a great mass of
affidavits, in which they stated he was not an object of a commission of
Lunacy.--I say that these words are not much understood.--The law
acknowledges the state of idiotcy, and the state of lunacy, which
properly understood, is a very differ