objectionable expression may have a genuine efficacy; but that does not
justify the form itself, which by no interpretation can be construed
into sense or intelligibility.

[MEANING OF MORAL INABILITY.]

Moral Inability means that ordinary motives are insufficient, but not
all motives. The confirmed drunkard or thief has got into the stage of
moral inability; the common motives that keep mankind sober and honest
have failed. Yet there are motives that would succeed, if we could
command them. Men may be sometimes cured of intemperance when the
constitution is so susceptible that pain follows at once on indulgence.
And so long as pleasure and pain, in fact and in prospect, operate upon
the will, so long as the individual is in a state wherein motives
operate, there may be moral weakness, but there is nothing more. In such
cases, punishment may be properly employed as a corrective, and is
likely to answer its end. This is the state termed accountability, or,
with more correctness, PUNISHABILITY, for being accountable is merely an
incident bound up with liability to punishment. Moral weakness is a
matter of a degree, and in its lowest grades shades into insanity, the
state wherein motives have lost their usual power--when pleasure and
pain cease to be apprehended by the mind in their proper character. At
_this_ point, punishment is unavailing; the moral inability has passed
into something like physical inability; the loss of self-control is as
complete as if the muscles were paralysed.

In the plea of insanity, entered on behalf of any one charged with
crime, the business of the jury is to ascertain whether the accused is
under the operation of the usual motives--whether pain in prospect has a
deterring effect on the conduct. If a man is as ready to jump out of the