hour is this?” he asked Moqorro. “That cannot be sunrise

The same reply holds good for the second objection to asylums for criminal madmen, when it is said that a madman cannot, for the sole reason that he has killed or stolen, be shut up indefinitely, perhaps for ever, in an asylum.

Mancini, who was keeper of the seals, and at the same time a great criminal pleader, aptly expressed the ideas of the classical school when replying to an interpellation of Deputy Righi on the foundation of criminal lunatic asylums:--``I could never understand how the same court, which is obliged by law to acquit upon a verdict of the jury that the accused is insane, and therefore not responsible, could also decree the compulsory seclusion in an asylum, for any period, of the same accused person. . . . Is it because he has committed a crime? But that is not true, for the man who did not know what he was doing, and who for that reason has been declared innocent before the law, and irresponsible, cannot have committed a crime. There is consequently no legal reason why he should lose the exercise and enjoyment of that liberty which is not denied to any other unfortunate beings who are diseased like himself.''

It would be impossible to put more clearly the pure classical theory on crime and punishment; but perhaps it would be equally impossible to show less solicitude for social defence against criminal attacks. For it is certain that the mad murderer ``has committed no crime'' from the ethical and legal point of view of the classical school; but it is still more certain that there is a dead man, and a family left behind who may be ruined by the deed, and it is very probable that this homicide, ``innocent before the law,'' will renew his outrage on other victims--and at any rate they are innocent.

And as for the indefinite period of seclusion in an asylum, it is well to remember, from the point of view of individual rights, that the formula with which a mad criminal is committed to an asylum ``during her Majesty's pleasure'' had its origin in England, in the classic land of the habeas corpus--the sheet anchor of the ordinary citizen. Again, it is easy to see that the indefinite seclusion of mad criminals is rendered necessary by the same reasons which create the fundamental rule for criminals of every kind. It may therefore come to a question of allowing or disallowing the general principles of the positive school. But it cannot be denied that they are unassailable, both in theory and in practice. Crime is a phenomenon as natural as madness--the existence of society compels the organised community to defend itself against every anti-social action of the individual--the only difficulty is to adapt the form and duration of this self- defence to the form and intensity (the motives, conditions, and consequences) of the action. Indefinite seclusion, therefore, in a special establishment is inevitable on account of the special condition of these individuals.

The practical considerations of social defence are so strong that the great majority of classical criminal experts now accept criminal lunatic asylums, in spite of their manifest contradiction of the formal theories of moral responsibility, on the strength of which these asylums were, and still are, opposed by the intransigents of the classical school. This is why the new Italian penal code, in spite of its progressive aim, had not the courage in 1889 to adopt them frankly; and in the definitive text, as in the ministerial draft, it took refuge in an eclectic arrangement which has already met with a crowd of obstacles, due to the vagueness of the principles inspiring the code.

These criminal lunatic asylums ought to be of two kinds, differing in their discipline, one for the insane authors of serious and dangerous crimes, such as homicide, incendiarism, rape, and the like; and the other for slighter crimes, such as petty theft, violent language, outrages on public decency, and the like. For the latter, seclusion should be shorter than for the others. Thus in England convicts are sent to the State Asylum at Broadmoor, whilst minor offenders are sent to a county asylum.

Persons thus confined should be (1) prisoners acquitted on the ground of insanity, or sentenced for a fixed period, at the preliminary inquiry; (2) convicts who become insane during the expiation of their sentence; (3) insane persons who commit crimes in the ordinary asylums; (4) persons under observation for weak intellect in special wards, who have been put on their trial, and given grounds for suspecting madness.

At Broadmoor, on December 31, 1867, there were 389 male patients and 126 female; and in 1883 there were 381 males and 132 females, thus classified:--