ce of the law. It will be said the advocate must often
defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the
court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection
will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function
of the advocate in our system of administering justice.

I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American
or English birth that our system of administering justice is
safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment
of guilt and secures private right better than any other
that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief
distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists
in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and
second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon
proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely
to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose
duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on
each side which ought to be considered before the court or
jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty
should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration
which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon
guilt has been fully weighed. The unassisted tribunal will
be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public
sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the
case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have
been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous
character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission
of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely
circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of
the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of
the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases
of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set
forth in the indictment. The question in the American or
English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is
whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence
legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform
his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations
to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right
to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility
of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to
accompany the statement of his argument with any assertion
as to his individual beli