as they were, could only be treated as high treason;
the discrepancy between the actual deed and the tremendous
penalties involved was obviously grotesque; and it
was, besides, clear that a jury, knowing that a verdict
of guilty implied a sentence of death, would tend to
the alternative course, and find the prisoner not guilty
but insane—a conclusion which, on the face
of it, would have appeared to be the more reasonable.
In 1842, therefore, an Act was passed making any attempt
to hurt the Queen a misdemeanor, punishable by transportation
for seven years, or imprisonment, with or without
hard labour, for a term not exceeding three years—the
misdemeanant, at the discretion of the Court, “to
be publicly or privately whipped, as often, and in
such manner and form, as the Court shall direct, not
exceeding thrice.” The four subsequent
attempts were all dealt with under this new law; William
Bean, in 1842, was sentenced to eighteen months’
imprisonment; William Hamilton, in 1849, was transported
for seven years; and, in 1850, the same sentence was
passed upon Lieutenant Robert Pate, who struck the
Queen on the head with his cane in Piccadilly.
Pate, alone among these delinquents, was of mature
years; he had held a commission in the Army, dressed
himself as a dandy, and was, the Prince declared, “manifestly
deranged.” In 1872 Arthur O’Connor,
a youth of seventeen, fired an unloaded pistol at
the Queen outside Buckingham Palace; he was immediately
seized by John Brown, and sentenced to one year’s
imprisonment and twenty strokes of the birch rod.
It was for his bravery upon this occasion that Brown
was presented with one of his gold medals. In
all these cases the jury had refused to allow the plea
of insanity; but Roderick Maclean’s attempt
in 1882 had a different issue. On this occasion
the pistol was found to have been loaded, and the public
indignation, emphasised as it was by Victoria’s
growing popularity, was particularly great. Either
for this or for some other reason the procedure of
the last forty years was abandoned, and Maclean was
tried for high treason. The result was what might
have been expected: the jury brought in a verdict
of “not guilty, but insane”; and the prisoner
was sent to an asylum during Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Their verdict, however, produced a remarkable consequence.
Victoria, who doubtless carried in her mind some memory
of Albert’s disapproval of a similar verdict
in the case of Oxford, was very much annoyed.
What did the jury mean, she asked, by saying that
Maclean was not guilty? It was perfectly clear
that he was guilty—she had seen him fire
off the pistol herself. It was in vain that Her
Majesty’s constitutional advisers reminded her
of the principle of English law which lays down that
no man can be found guilty of a crime unless he be
proved to have had a criminal intention. Victoria
was quite unconvinced. “If that is the law,”
she said, “the law must be altered:”
and altered it was. In 1883 an Act was passed
changing the form of the verdict in cases of insanity,
and the confusing anomaly remains upon the Statute
Book to this day.