t generous friend, the brother of
his own father, the guardian of his childhood and the benefactor who has
planned and striven for his well-being; charged, in short, gentlemen,
with a crime which every circumstance connected with him and every trait
of his known character renders utterly inconceivable. Now upon what
grounds has this gentleman of irreproachable character been charged with
this mean and sordid crime? Baldly stated, the grounds of the accusation
are these: A certain learned and eminent man of science has made a
statement, which the police have not merely accepted but have, in
practice, extended beyond its original meaning. That statement is as
follows: 'A complete, or nearly complete, accordance between two prints
of a single finger ... affords evidence requiring no corroboration, that
the persons from whom they were made are the same.'

"That statement, gentlemen, is in the highest degree misleading, and
ought not to have been made without due warning and qualification. So
far is it from being true, in practice, that its exact contrary is the
fact; the evidence of a finger-print, in the absence of corroboration,
is absolutely worthless. Of all forms of forgery, the forgery of a
finger-print is the easiest and most secure, as you have seen in this
court to-day. Consider the character of the high-class forger--his
skill, his ingenuity, his resource. Think of the forged banknotes, of
which not only the engraving, the design and the signature, but even the
very paper with its private watermarks, is imitated with a perfection
that is at once the admiration and the despair of those who have to
distinguish the true from the false; think of the forged cheque, in
which actual perforations are filled up, of which portions are cut out
bodily and replaced by indistinguishable patches; think of these, and
then of a finger-print, of which any photo-engraver's apprentice can
make you a forgery that the greatest experts cannot distinguish from the
original, which any capable amateur can imitate beyond detection after a
month's practice; and then ask yourselves if this is the kind of
evidence on which, without any support or corroboration, a gentleman of
honour and position should be dragged before a criminal court and
charged with having committed a crime of the basest and most sordid
type. "But I must not detain you with unnecessary appeals. I will
remind you briefly of the salient facts. The case for the prosecution
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