“Is not justice, the beloved goddess of our idolatry, sometimes so blinded by clouds of argument, and confused by clamor that she fails indeed to see the dip of the beam?  If the accused be guilty and escape conviction, he still lives; and while it is provided that no one can be twice put in jeopardy of his life for the same offence, vicious tendencies impel to renewal of crime, and Nemesis, the retriever of justice, may yet hunt him down.  If the accused be innocent as the archangels, but suffer conviction and execution, what expiation can justice offer for judicially slaughtering him?  Are the chances even?

“All along the dim vista of the annals of criminal jurisprudence, stand grim memorials that mark the substitution of innocent victims for guilty criminals; and they are solemn sign-posts of warning, melancholy as the whitening bones of perished caravans in desert sands.  History relates, and tradition embalms, a sad incident of the era of the Council of Ten, when an innocent boy was seized, tried and executed for the murder of a nobleman, whose real assassin confessed the crime many years subsequent.  In commemoration of the public horror manifested, when the truth was published, Venice decreed that henceforth a crier should proclaim in the Tribunal just before a death sentence was pronounced, ’Ricordatevi del povero Marcolini! remember the poor Marcolini;’ beware of merely circumstantial evidence.

“To another instance I invite your attention.  A devoted Scotch father finding that his own child had contracted an unfortunate attachment to a man of notoriously bad character, interdicted all communication, and locked his daughter into a tenement room; the adjoining apartment (with only a thin partition wall between) being occupied by a neighbor, who overheard the angry altercation that ensued.  He recognized the voices of father and daughter, and the words ‘barbarity,’ ’cruelty, ‘death,’ were repeatedly heard.  The father at last left the room, locking his child in as a prisoner.  After a time, strange noises were heard by the tenant of the adjoining chamber; suspicion was aroused, a bailiff was summoned, the door forced open, and there lay the dying girl weltering in blood, with the fatal knife lying near.  She was asked if her father had caused her sad condition, and she made an affirmative gesture and expired.  At that moment the father returned, and stood stupefied with horror, which was interpreted as a consciousness of guilt; and this was corroborated by the fact that his shirt sleeve was sprinkled with blood.  In vain he asserted his innocence, and showed that the blood stains were the result of a bandage having become untied where he had bled himself a few days before.  The words and groans overheard, the blood, the affirmation of the dying woman, every damning circumstance constrained the jury to convict him of the murder.  He was hung in chains, and his body left swinging from the gibbet.  The new tenant, who subsequently rented