The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-30 00:00:00

gradation of his fallen fortunes. Dr. Tuke had
declared that, if Mr. Windham continued to con-
duct himself as he had hitherto done, he would
either be in a lunatic asylum or would kil himself
in four or five years. Mr. Windham thers fore must
be saved, and saved too from ruin of health and
character, from disease, from wretche bless of life,
from disgrace, from scorn, from repulsion from the
doors of bis own wife living in luxury on her £BOO
or £1,500 a year. From evils worse than death
itself he could be saved only through the interven-
tion of those relatives who had come forward, in

spite of evil report and gross abuse, for the purpose
of discharging a disagreeable duty, by the interpo-
sition of the law of the land, and by the verdict of

a jury of his countrymen.
The Master briefly summed up. At length, he
said, this important, difficult, and unprecedented
case had come into their hands. It would be their

duty to deal with it calmly and dispassionately,
as became men acting under a solemn sense of re-
sponsibility, engaged in an inquiry involving issues
of tremendous importance to the gentleman imme-
diately concerned, as well as to every reflecting
and right thinking man in England. He was not
surprised at the sensitiveness which the public had
displayed, but if those persons had become irritable
and impatient who voluntarily day after day had
read the newspaper reports ofdetails which must have
shocked the feelings of every one of the least preten-
sions to right principles and purity of character,what
must have been the case with the jury and himself,
who had been compelled by their sense of duty to
sit there and listen often with loathing and disgust?

No one was entitled or justified at present in pro-
nouncing an opinion upon these proceedings, or as
to their final determination, who had not been there
from first to last, seeing and hearing every witness,

and weighing the evidence under the pressure of an
oath. The inquiry had been conducted with exem-
plary regularity and with a rigorous adherenceto the
law of the land. Attempts to raise irrelevant issues
had been repressed, and the attention of the jury had

been kept steadily fixed upon the fact that the only

question before them was whether Mr, Windham
was a lunatic, and as such not sufficient for the go-

vernment of himself or his property. By the second

section of the Lunacy Regulation Act it was pro-
vided that the word " lunatic" should be construed
to mean any person found upon inquisition to be an
idiot, a lunatic, or of unsound mind, and incapable
of managing himself and his affairs. When the
case was opened on the 16th December last, Mr.

Chambers laid before them a mass of facts of a very

grave nature, and if, at the end of the evidence in
support of the petition, an application had been
made to him for an interview with Mr. Windham,
he should have taken it into his most serious consi-

deration. But Sir Hugh Cairns, instead of alleging
that no case had been made out for the petitioners,
and intimating his intention not to call witnesses
for the defence, delivered a speech of uncommon
brilliancy, closing with a peroration severely classi-
cal and elegant, and then proceeded to adduce a great
mass of evidence on the part of Mr. Windham. The

inquiry had now extended over 33 days, and, while
50 witnesses had been called in support of the pe-
tition, no fewer than 90 had been examined against
it. He was glad that the counsel on both sides, whose
speeches had occupied more than a week, had so ex-
hausted the subject that it would be unnecessaryfor
him to go through the evidence. It only remained
for him to address a few general observations to the
jury. They were not trying the validity of the
acts of Mr. Windham in point of law. They were
not trying the validity of the marriage settlement,
of the disentailing deeds, of the timber contract, or
of the bills for jewelry. In short, they were not try-
ing the validity of any one of the instruments which
had been produced in the course of the inquiry, and
all they had to do with those documents and trans-
actions was, simply to deal with them as media of
proof in deciding the issue before them. Nor were
they trying the motives or conduct of the petitioners.
The conduct of General Windham had been sub-
jected to severe censure ; it had received from Mr.
Chambers a splendid vindication, as far as eloquence
could go ; but, following in the footsteps of the late
Lord Cottenham, he had excluded all evidence
upon that subject, which was one entirely foreign to
the present inquiry. What the jury had to decide
was, whether Mr. Windham was of such sound mind
as to be able to govern himself and his affairs. In
the time of Lord Hardwicke it was necessary to
find a men absolutely insane, but in 1802 Lord
Eldon declared that the Court of Chancery thought
itself authorised to issue a commission provided
it were made out that the party was unable
to act with any proper and provident management,
was liable to be robbed by any one, or was labour-
ing under that imbecility of mind which, though
not strictly insanity, equally required the protection
of the law. Lord Lyndhurst, in 1827, adopted the
ruling of Lord Eldon, which might be taken, there-
fore, as an authoritative declaration of the law of
England. Another doctrine laid down by Lord
Eldon, and sanctioned by his successors, was that if
a jury found merely the incapacity of an alleged
lunatic to manage his affairs, and did not infer from
it unsoundness of mind, upon that finding a com-
mission could not go on, though the party might
be living where he was exposed to ruin every in-
stant. From all this it resulted that, in order to
justify a verdict against Mr. Windham, the jury
must be satisfied that he was incapable of govern-
ing himself and his affairs by reason of un-
soundness of mind. Mere weakness of charac-
ter, mere liability to impulse or susceptibility of
influence, good or bad, mere imprudence, extrava-
gance, recklessness, eccentricity, or immorality—no,
not all these put together would suffice, unless
they believed themselves justified, on a view of the
whole evidence, in referring them to a morbid con-
dition of intellect. The question was essentially a
practical one, and must be decided upon the evi-
dence. It was their duty to weigh carefully the
character, the position in life, and the probable mo-
tives of the witnesses. He would not presume to
indicate the effect which the evidence had produced
upon his own mind. The responsibility of deciding
the case rested with the jury alone; but he might
be permitted to say that, instead of fixing their at-
tention upon particular points, they ought to look
at the evidence as a whole, and be guided by its
general tenor. He remarked upon the great conflict
of medical evidence, which, ho said, was not unu-
sual in lunacy cases, and advised the jury to judge
for themselves, and not to allow their minds to be
confused by the contradictory statements of skilled
witnesses. They were not trying, he repeated, the
conduct of Gen. Windham, but the transaction
which took plane at Fellbrigg-hall on the Bth of
August was entitled to their consideration, so far
as it might show that, in his opinion, his
nephew was then of sound mind. Let them not
apply too high a standard to Mr. Windham. It was
not their business to consider whether he was a
consummate man of business or the reverse ; the
question which they had to decide was, whether he
was of such sound mind as to be able to take care of
himself and his property. The letters which had
been produced were well worthy of their most
serious attention. He regarded them, for his own
part, as exceedingly creditable to Mr. Windham,
and if the jury were satisfied that they were actually
written by the alleged lunatic, without help from
others, it would be their duty to give them all the
weight they deserved. Large portions of tho evi-
dence of the Lewellins had been corroborated by
other witnesses, and it was for the jury to say
on which side perjury had been committed, whe-
ther on the side of Mrs Lewcliin or on that of her
sister and brother. Imprudent marriages were
not unfrequent. It was a common saying, "Marry
in haste, and repent at leisure," and the mar-
riage contracted by Mr. Windham might be taken
as a transaction of that type. But they were not
trying the question of its validity, and therefore it
was not necessary for him to go into the unutter-
ably disgusting evidence which had been laid before
them.thre hadThey were not there to read moral lessons
to Mr. 'Windham 'or anybody else, and, though
unquestionably been frightful vice and
wickedness, the cardinal question for their conside-
ration was, whether the marriage and all the cir-
cumstances connected with it threw any light upon
the mental condition of the alleged lunatic. So,
also, with respect to the timber contract. The con-
struction of that instrument was a matter to be
decided in the ordinary courts of law. What the