During the few months that have passed of the present year eleven persons have received sentence of death, for the crime of murder, in England and Scotland. Others have been charged with the same offence, but have escaped through a deficiency of evidence, while others, again, have been arraigned for attempts at the destruction of human life. Five of the prisoners accused of murder were defended on the plea of insanity, which was in each instance met by a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death. Three of the men thus sentenced have undergone execution, one of them being unmistakably a lunatic, whom no medical man would have hesitated to certify as such before the commission of the act for which he died, and another of them exhibiting a state of mind strongly resembling, if it did not actually consist in, a form of madness. The latter, Burton, was condemned and hanged, while Mr. Touchett, who was tried in 1844 for a similar offence, prompted by a similar motive, was acquitted on the ground of insanity, a circumstance that illustrates the glorious uncertainty of the law and the present state of public feeling.