explained,
and the truth of much that had been said in regard to such evidence
by Mr. Chaffanbrass admitted;--but, nevertheless, it would be
impossible,--so said his lordship,--to administer justice if guilt
could never be held to have been proved by circumstantial evidence
alone. In this case it might not improbably seem to them that the
gentleman who had so long stood before them as a prisoner at the
bar had been the victim of a most singularly untoward chain of
circumstances, from which he would have to be liberated, should he
be at last liberated, by another chain of circumstances as singular;
but it was his duty to inform them now, after they had heard what he
might call the double evidence, that he could not have given it to
them as his opinion that the charge had been brought home against the
prisoner, even had those circumstances of the Bohemian key and of the
foreign bludgeon never been brought to light. He did not mean to say
that the evidence had not justified the trial. He thought that the
trial had been fully justified. Nevertheless, had nothing arisen to
point to the possibility of guilt in another man, he should not the
less have found himself bound in duty to explain to them that the
thread of the evidence against Mr. Finn had been incomplete,--or,
he would rather say, the weight of it had been, to his judgment,
insufficient. He was the more intent on saying so much, as he was
desirous of making it understood that, even had the bludgeon still
remained buried beneath the leaves, had the manufacturer of that
key never been discovered, the great evil would not, he thought,
have fallen upon them of punishing the innocent instead of the
guilty,--that most awful evil of taking innocent blood in their just
attempt to punish murder by death. As far as he knew, to the best of
his belief, that calamity had never fallen upon the country in his
time. The administration of the law was so careful of life that the
opposite evil was fortunately more common. He said so much because he
would not wish that this case should be quoted hereafter as showing
the possible danger of circumstantial evidence. It had been a case in
which the evidence given as to character alone had been sufficient
to make him feel that the circumstances which seemed to affect the
prisoner injuriously could not be taken as establishing his guilt.
But now other and imposing circumstances had been brought to light,
and he was sure that the jury would h