Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/40

12 HAR VARD LA W RE VIEW, 4. The admission of the accused person in all criminal proceed- ings, with the qualifications stated before {stipra, p. 2), was allowed by Stat. 1866, c. 260. This remarkable inroad upon the common law had been first made in Maine by a statute of 1864, c. 280; and it has long been the law in most of our States. It was introduced in the Federal jurisdiction by a statute of March 16, 1878.^ The enactment in Maine of this sensible and very important change, not yet accomplished in England, is understood to have been principally due to the efforts of Chief Justice Appleton, an early disciple of Bentham, and author of a little treatise on Evi- dence, published in i860. This book was largely a reprint of an early set of articles published thirty years earlier in the American Jurist,^ eagerly advocating the English reformer's views. It was mainly Bentham's influence working through younger men, such as Denman, Brougham, and Taylor, the writer on Evidence, that overthrew so rapidly in England the system of witness exclusion. It was the English example that moved us. And as we see, it was the same powerful influence of Bentham that has finally carried the reform on this side of the water to a point not yet reached in his own country.^ James Bradley Thayer. 1 20 U. S. Stat, at Large, 30. 2 Beginning in Vol. IV. p. 286. 8 " I do not know," says Sir Henry Maine, " a single law reform effected since Bentham's day which cannot be traced to his influence." Early History of Institutions (London, 1880), 397.