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146 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

motive, or if he assigns a motive, it is connected with his de-
Tusion."”

Numerous instances are given in which parents have mur-
dered their children, notwithstanding they were strongly at-
tached to them. Nurses have destroyed children placed in
their charge, and between whom 4 warm attachment had
grown up. Taylor relates the case of a man named Green-
smith, who murdered four of his children and the motive
assigned was that he was apprehensive they would be turned
into the street. He was a man of industrious habits and an
affectionate father. The impulse came upon him at the
time of the perpetration of the crime. He ahook hands with
his children before strangling them and bid them an affec-
tionate farewell. Men living upon the most amicable term
with their families have been known suddenly to be seized with
the delusion that their children were conspiring to destroy
them, and while under the delusion, have made wills, giving
the property to strangers. The fact that a monomaniac acts
without an adequate motive is well recognized.

How stands it with the prisoner? Does any one doubt that
he committed the crime charged against him, for the pur-
pose of appropriating to himself the money and the property
that Gordon had about himf

Another test is found in the fact ‘‘that a monomaniac thinks
his acts are consistent with reason and the general conduct
of mankind, and as a natural consequence of this, he makes
no attempt to conceal the crime or make his eseape, but openly
confesses it.’?

He cannot be convinced that he has done wrong, and in this
respect his eonduet differs from mere eccentricity, which is
often confounded with insanity, for an eccentric man will
be readily persuaded into the impropriety of his conduct.

The prisoner in this case not only attempted to conceal the
erime but fled to Dover, where he no doubt supposed he was
secure from detection. There certainly ia no evidence that
he entertained the idea that he did right in killing Gordor

A further test is ‘‘the loss of affection for parents, wife,
children and friends’? Ray, Taylor and other writers com-

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