This covers all the great general principles of evidence, the points of difference being wholly as to minor matters.  And it is also affirmed in Benet:—­

“That it has been laid down as an indisputable principle, that whenever a legislative act erects a new jurisdiction, without prescribing any particular rules of evidence to it, the common law will supply its own rules, from which it will not allow such newly-erected court to depart.  The rules of evidence, then, that obtain in the criminal courts of the country must be the guides for the courts-martial; the end sought for being the truth, these rules laid down for the attainment of that end must be intrinsically the same in both cases.  These rules constitute the law of evidence, and involve the quality, admissibility, and effect of evidence and its application to the purposes of truth.” (Benet, pp. 226, 327.)

Therefore, all the facts that tend against the accused, and all those that mate for her, are to be weighed and are to operate upon her conviction or acquittal precisely as they would in a court of law.  If they present a case such as would there convict her she may be found guilty here; and if, on the other hand, the rules of law upon these facts would raise any presumption or create any doubt, or force any conclusions that would acquit her in a court of law, then she must be discharged, upon the same principles by the commission.  This is a point which, in our judgment, we cannot too strongly impress upon the minds of her judges.  The extraordinary character of the crime—­the assassination that removed from us the President of the United States—­makes it most desirable that the findings of this tribunal shall be so well founded in reason as to satisfy and secure public confidence, and approval; for many of the most material objects of the prosecution, and some of the most important ends of justice, will be defeated and frustrated if convictions and acquittals, and more especially the former, shall be adjudged upon the grounds that are notoriously insufficient.

Such a course of action would have a tendency to draw sympathy and support to the parties thus adjudged guilty, and would rob the result of this investigation of the wholesome support of professional and public opinion.  The jurisdiction of the commission, for example, is a matter that has already provoked considerable criticism and much warm disapproval; but in the case of persons clearly found to be guilty, the public mind would easily overlook any doubts that might exist as to the regularity of the court in the just sentence that would overtake acknowledged criminals.  Thus, if Booth himself and a party of men clearly proved, by ocular evidence or confession, to have aided him, were here tried and condemned, and, as a consequence, executed, not much stress, we think, would be laid by many upon the irregularity of the mode by which they should reach that just death which all good citizens