Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/251

 was locked up in prison, but the pistol, which was regarded as an essential part of the evidence, could nowhere be found. A detective went to him and, finding him crying, told him that if he would tell where the pistol was, he, the detective, would take him home to his father and mother. Thereupon the boy said he had thrown it into a quarry, describing the place, and the detective went there and found it. He testified to these facts at the trial and was much astonished and chagrined to hear the judge instruct the jury that they ought not to place the slightest reliance upon his evidence; that having charge of a child eleven years of age, he had, according to his own statement, deliberately lied to the child in order to gain an advantage over him and, therefore, could be trusted by nobody. John Weaver, who was then district attorney, came to me privately to remonstrate on behalf of the detectives and was informed that the instructions could not be modified to the slightest extent.

I once sent a man to prison for eight months for cutting off the tail of a dog. He had mutilated the animal and left it to perish miserably. Had a police officer who had made use of what is called “the third degree” with prisoners in his charge, or a gunner who had been shooting pigeons at a match, or a jockey who had docked the tail of his horse, or a doctor who had practiced vivisection, been brought before me while on the bench they would each have learned that the customs and technical needs of their professions would have been an unsafe dependence. The opponents of vivisection make the mistake of standing upon the weak ground of utility where they are necessarily mistaken. Of course, something concerning human construction and diseases can be learned from cutting up a living animal. More could be learned by cutting up a human being, however. The answer to the doctors is that we have no business with the information that can only be secured in this way. Let us do without it. Let each creature bear its own ills. It Rh