SIRS: — I have read with interest Sir W. T. Gairdner's letter in your issue of July 26th, p. 242, but I cannot agree with him that any idea of vengeance is present in the punishment meted out to the criminal by the State. Vengeance is entirely a personal emotion but the State knows no such passions, being impersonal, and in a strictly impartial manner enforces by suitable punishments the laws it has enacted. If the punishments do not have the desired deterrent effect they may be useless, but I submit that they cannot be regarded as State vengeance on the criminal. It is true that the poet speaks of “the wild justice of revenge”, because the act of the vengeful man and that of the State may equally deter from crime, but the motives of the act in the two cases are altogether different. With regard to verdicts, “Guilty, but insane”, they would be contradictory under the present law. If a criminal is insane in the legal sense he cannot be guilty in the eyes of the law. That the legal definition of insanity in McNaughton's case is by no means in accordance with our present knowledge of mental disease may be readily admitted, but none the less I am one of those who do not think that the public safety will gain by modern views of mental pathology being permitted further to diminish criminal responsibility.

I am, Sirs, yours faithfully,

Hackney-road, N. E., July 26th, 1902.

M. GREENWOOD