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198 TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER.
kind, suddenly and unawares? Are you so sure,--and sure, too, upon
reasonable and satisfactory grounds,-that he did not come to the end
of life in some unusual or strange way, which you cannot see, because
of the thick darkness which often shrouds the ways of men, that you
can truly determine that his death was the result of unlawful agency
and criminal violence?
Be not influenced, in such a momentous decision, by the emotions
of your own hearts, or by sympathy for the distress or suffering of
others. If he who is gone had been our friend,-if he was most respected
in the wide circle of his acquaintance,-if his absence has touched many
hearts with sorrow, and been mourned over by aficted friends,-all
these considerations can furnish no palliation of a rash judgment, that
is to peril the life, and everything that to him is dearer than life, of
one whom the law, alike in its benignity and its justice, even yet pre-
sumes to be innocent.
The language of Lord Hale, "that he would never advise a convic-
tion upon circumstantial proofs, unless at least. the body has been found,"
has, in its substance and spirit, secured the approbation of all successive
judges; and is, with slight but reasonable modifications, incorporated
as a maxim into the criminal code of the common law. The same prin-
ciple requires,-such is the language of authoritative expositors of the
law,-that, upon a charge of homicide, even when the body has been
found, and although indications of a violent death be manifest, it shall
still be fully and satisfactorily proved, that the death was neither occa-
sioned by natural causes, nor by the act of the deceased himself.
Apply this. principle here, and demand this proof of the Government.
I do not say to you, that the prisoner at the bar, or that his counsel.
can explain all these appearances: they are not required or called upon
to do so. It is far otherwise with the Government. They are bound
to furnish proof of the homicide, or they must fail for the want of it.
When you see that all the known and discovered marks of injury and
mutilation could not only more easily be, but in all probability must
have been, inflicted after death; when an excited man, who had wan-
dered from his home in some sudden aberration of mind, might have
fallen by the way-side in an apoplexy, by an affection of the heart, or
from any of the ten thousand and hidden causes by which men are
bereaved of life,-can you affirm with absolute confidence, that such
mutilations and injuries, first observed seven days after the disap-
pearance of the party, were the certain cause of his death, and that
they were necessarily produced by the criminal agency of another
person in the destruction of life? Are you irresistibly impelled to such
a result? And can you grope through the thick darkness which envelops
everything pertaining to him from the first moment he was withdrawn
from the public view, to the conclusion, that George Parkman died no
natural death, but fell by the violent hand of his fellow-man?
I submit this matter to your calm inquiry; and if the end of that
inquiry be, that there is only a probability,-no matter how strong,
so only that it falls in the slightest degree short of clear and absolute
proof, so only that you cannot say, beyond all reasonable doubt, that
Dr. Parkman was slain,-it must terminate this investigation; it must
put an end to this trial, and secure at once to the prisoner the right
to a verdict of acquittal.
But, Gentlemen of the Jury, I must now leave this topic, and pass
to the consideration of other and different subjects. Should all the
objections which I have made be overcome, and should you arrive at.
the conclusion, that it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that Dr. Park-
man was killed by some human agent, it becomes essential to ascertain
what was the crime which was committed by the person who was
guilty of the homicide.
In considering this question, I must, for the present, assume that
the homicide was committed by the prisoner at the bar; and I must
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