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580 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

the white man because of the matter, I bave found the old
fighting, it would be good to wee practice good enough for me,
whether the pistol-barrel could end have made no experiments
have got it? Then, sir, you must in the way you allude to,
inguire elsewhere touching that

THE SPEECHES TO THE JURY.

Mr. Morton addressed the Court, premising that it was his
intention to be very brief, and to confine himself entirely to
the positive testimony and the inferences of law which it fur
nished, and leave to the counsel associated with him the va-
rious topies of curiosity which had been introduced.

Although this case was not of so grave an import, nor
80 serious in its consequences a8 a trial for a rape, yet atill
it was one in which the nature of the proof should be equally
certain, as it went to inflict whet, to a poor man, was @ very
heavy penalty, and which, if he waa innocent of the charge,
would be an insupportable oppression. The conviction here,
as in a case of rape, would be founded upon the evidence of a
woman, who, by the fact itself might become mother to a
bastard child, whose character for virtue and good morals
makes a principal part of the consideration. Necessity made
this woman a witness, for it is her own cause in which she is
swearing. But wherever from policy such testimony is ad-
mitted against the great ruling principle of law, that ‘‘none
shall be witness in their own cause, nor to swear to their own
criminality,” it 1a always admitted with extreme caution,
and qualified with well-placed jealousy. For it is better evan
that the community ehould suffer an inconvenience than an
example of injustice be set, and a door opened te oppression.

This woman’s evidence, without the irresistible proof which
the child’s appearance furnishes, and which the opinion of
#0 many skillfol men of profession confirms, carries with it
its own refutation. [Mr, Morton here recapitulated the dates
and epoch fixed by the woman from the time she first became
tequainted with Whistelo in August, 1806—his going’ to sea
on the first of May, and returning on the first of August—
that she felt life two months before his return, which was

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