Madeleine [Smith] tried at the bar of common sense and common humanity : being a plea for the coroner's inquest in Scotland / by Historicus [i.e. David Dunbar Scott?.].
- Historicus.
- Date:
- 1858
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Madeleine [Smith] tried at the bar of common sense and common humanity : being a plea for the coroner's inquest in Scotland / by Historicus [i.e. David Dunbar Scott?.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
19/50 (page 19)
![ment must be determined, not by caprice or prepossession, but by the preponderance of general probability. Where a professional man gives ail opinion, or states a fact from positive professional knowledge, we ought at once to defer to him; but if he speaks from mere conjecture, we must re- . member that professional experience does not preserve a man from prepos- : sessions and delusions, and that such men are often marvellously wanting in common sense. To neglect these rules, under the pretext that in the absence of positive evidence of the crime alleged we must necessarily look : only to presumptions, is to all intents and purposes to violate the awful i sanctity of a juryman’s oath. How, will you say, are we to distinguish presumptive or probable from ’ positive or demonstrative evidence! Let us hear what the great authority ' on such subjects—Bishop Butler—says: “Probable evidence is essentially distinguished from demonstrative by this, that it admits of degrees; and of all variety of them, from the highest moral certainty to the very lowest pre- ! sumption. We cannot, indeed, say that a thing is probably true upon one : very slight presumption of it, because, as there may be probabilities on both > sides of a question, there may be some against it; and though there be not, yet a slight presumption does not beget that degree of conviction which is i implied in saying a thing is probably true. But that the slightest possible j presumption is of the nature of a probability appears from hence that such low presumption, often repeated, will amount even to moral certainty.” And farther on he says: “So likewise—our expectations that others will : act so and so in such circumstances, and our judgment that such actions proceed from such principles, all these rely upon our having observed the •] like to what we hope, fear, expect, judge; I say, upon our having observed i the like, either with respect to others or ourselves.” Presumptive Evidence lies in Verisimilitude. Thus you see that presumptive evidence lies wholly in likeness to truth —verisimilitude. These admirably-expressed principles show at once to what an almost unappreciable presumption that of the murder here charged is reduced by right reason, and severely do they rebuke the readiness with which that presumption has been received, not only as a high moral proba- bility, but as a fact. Can any of you, Gentlemen, say that the horrible tale of perfidy and murder, with which the prosecutor, in a speech of fifty pages, : entertained the country, is either in its general result or in the details as he represented them, like to what you have ordinarily observed, or read, or heard of being observed, either with respect to others or yourselves! Can there be any verisimilitude in a hypothesis wdiicli, in professing to remove some difficulties, starts many more, which required such immense elabora- tion in order to smooth down the absurdities which shock one at every turn, and where the denouement is absolutely without precedent in the j history, not of Glasgow—not of Scotland—not even of Europe—but of j the human race! Not one of you but must have observed a thousand times the readiness of the human mind to connect the horrible with the unknown in cases of sudden death, to entertain the darkest suspicions on | the slightest presumptions, and to allow the imagination to determine the judgment in the absence of evidence or even against evidence. But not one of you has ever observed or heard of such a tale, I do not say of horrors only, but of horrors intermingled with such palpable absurdities— ■](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28269482_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
