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 equal care and equal fidelity you will weigh them in the scales of the reason God has given to you. I have placed myself in the most favorable position for addressing you I can devise. I shall hope to speak with the utmost distinction of which I am capable; and I shall hope not to employ a word whose meaning is obscure to you, or a phrase which is equivocal or open to misconstruction. That you are prepared to surrender your whole attention to me you tell me with your looks. That I shall hold that attention I dare to believe, unless the hand of Providence deprives me of the power to give utterance to those things with which my mind is charged to the bursting-point.

"You will not refute me when I assert that the fact in our common experience which at the present time has the greatest power to oppress us is the imperfection of human nature. And upon entering a court of justice this fact is apt to demoralize a feeling mind. The science of appraising criminal evidence has been carried among us to a curious pitch, as witness the unexampled skill of my learned friend; the paraphernalia of incrimination, if the expression may be allowed to me, is consummate; but in spite of the rare ingenuity of great legal minds, human nature is fallible. It is liable to err. It does err. To the deep grief of science it errs with great frequency. Indeed, its errors are so numerous that they even impinge upon the sacred domain of justice. Miscarriages of justice occur every day.

"In a cause of this nature it is most necessary that steps should be taken to exclude the element of injustice by all means that are known to us. We