positive evidence. We did not find any serious resistance on this
head, till we came to make good our charges of secret crimes,--crimes of
a class and description in the proof of which all judges of all
countries have found it necessary to relax almost all their rules of
competency: such crimes as peculation, pecuniary frauds, extortion, and
bribery. Eight out of nine of the questions put to the Judges by the
Lords, in the first stage of the prosecution, related to circumstances
offered in proof of these secret crimes.

Much industry and art have been used, among the illiterate and
unexperienced, to throw imputations on this prosecution, and its
conduct, because so great a proportion of the evidence offered on this
trial (especially on the latter charges) has been circumstantial.
Against the prejudices of the ignorant your Committee opposes the
judgment of the learned. It is known to them, that, when this proof is
in its greatest perfection, that is, when it is most abundant in
circumstances, it is much superior to positive proof; and for this we
have the authority of the learned judge who presided at the trial of
Captain Donellan. "On the part of the prosecution, a great deal of
evidence has been laid before you. It is _all_ circumstantial evidence,
and in its nature it must be so: for, in cases of this sort, no man is
weak enough to commit the act in the presence of other persons, or to
suffer them to see what he does at the time; and therefore it can only
be made out by circumstances, either before the committing of the act,
at the time when it was committed, or subsequent to it. And a
presumption, which necessarily arises from circumstances, is very often
more convincing and more satisfactory than any other kind of evidence:
because it is not within the reach and compass of human abilities to
invent a train of circumstances which shall be so connected together as
to amount to a proof of guilt, without affording opportunities of
contradicting a great part, if not all, of these circumstances. But if
the circumstances are such as, when laid together, bring conviction to
your minds, it is then fully equal, if not, as I told you before, _more_
convincing than positive evidence." In the trial of Donellan no such
selection was used as we have lately experienced; no limitation to the
production of every matter, before, at, and after the fact charged. The
trial was (as we conceive) rightly conducted by the learned judge;
be