Legal Reminiscences. might have carried no weight. But the par ties were men of business, who recognized the fact that, coming from Judge Nelson, it demanded consideration. The result was that within forty-eight hours the parties had compromised the litigation by conceding to each other an equal interest in the invention, and the making of a scale of royalties, which led to an increase in the sale and use of the sewing machine, and earned fortunes for each of the parties within the time that would have otherwise been occupied in a ruinously expen sive litigation. Thus the sound sense and wisdom of a great judge brought the sewing machine into general use at least four years before the decision of the questions in volved would have permitted the beginning of its general manufacture, and a boon was conferred upon the sempstresses of the country, for which they blessed the name of Samuel Nelson. Judge Nelson was so thoroughly just, and had so little pride of opinion, that he re versed his own decisions with apparently greater satisfaction than he did those of his associates, when satisfied that his first con clusions were erroneous. Old lawyers love to recall his massive leonine head, his broad shoulders and solid frame — his peculiar ges ture, when his right hand and arm described a half circle — his unimpassioned but resist less logic, which swept away his erroneous decision, and built up stone by stone his just and final conclusion in its place! Truly, "there were giants in the earth in those days." That neither the elective nor the appoint ing system secures the most competent men for the judicial office in our large cities, must be admitted. Whether either system can be improved, or any better one substi tuted, is not for me to say. But there is one modern habit into which the old judges never fell. They did not repeat their mis takes — they never refused to be guided by established rules of evidence or principles of law. Seventy-five years ago, in one of
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the New England States, two innocent men were convicted of the crime of murder and sentenced to be hung. Hung, one of them would have been if a venerable old colored minister had not possessed more good sense than the court and jury that found him guilty. He was found guilty because the rule of evi dence was disregarded which requires posi tive evidence of the corpus delicti; in other words, direct evidence that a murder has been committed, before there can be a con viction for the crime. In the same trial another rule of evidence was disregarded. Where the evidence is wholly circumstantial, there should be no conviction unless the evidence is incon sistent with any theory save that of the guilt of the respondent. If there is any hypothesis of innocence upon which all the evidence can be accounted for, he must be acquitted. For example : suppose a per son is found dead, from morphine poisoning, and the prisoner is proven to have purchased and handed the poison to him. On this proof there should be no conviction, for the evi dence is just as consistent with the theory that the deceased administered it to himself as that the prisoner administered it with criminal intent. In the celebrated Boorn case both these rules were disregarded, and the prisoners though innocent, were convicted. Not only have these rules been rigidly observed in everj' trial that has been had in the State where the Booms were convicted, 'but their trial is cited upon all proper occasions as a warning against disregarding well settled principles of law. But there is at least one city in which convictions followed by executions have resulted directly from the violation of these rules. The convictions would have been otherwise impossible. In every such case there must have been a possibility of the respondent's innocence. The heart of judge or juror responsible for such a result must be as unfeeling as the hardest timbered oak,
