"I don't think that you have given me a full and fair account of the transaction; for I cannot believe that Jeremiah would have come and taken away the fish without any pretext whatever. You must have omitted some important part of the account, I think."
Marco then told Forester that Jeremiah said that the fish was just going to bite at his hook; and, after several other questions from Forester, he gradually acknowledged the whole truth. Still, he maintained that it was his fish. He had a right to put in his line, he said, wherever he pleased, whether another boy was fishing or not; the fish belonged to the one who caught him; and, before he was caught, he did not belong to anybody. It was absurd, he maintained, to suppose that the fish became Jeremiah's, just because he was swimming near his hook.
"Sometimes one can judge better of a case," said Forester, "by reversing the condition of the parties. Suppose that you had been fishing, and a large fish had come swimming about your hook, and that Jeremiah had then come to put his hook in at the same place, should you have thought it right?"
"Why, I don't know," said Marco.
"It is doubtful. Now, it is an excellent rule," continued Forester, "in all questions of right between ourselves and other persons, for us to give them the benefit of the doubt."
"What does that mean?" asked Marco.
"Why, if a man is tried in a court for any crime," replied Forester, "if it is clearly proved that he is innocent, of course he goes free. If it is clearly proved that he is guilty, he is convicted. But if neither the one nor the other can be proved, that is, if it is doubtful whether he is innocent or guilty, they give him the benefit of the doubt, as they term it, and let him go free."
"I should think that, when it is doubtful," said Marco, "they ought to send him back to prison again till they can find out certainly."
"No," said Forester, "the jury are directed to acquit him, unless it is positively proved that he is guilty. So that, if they think it is doubtful, they give him the benefit of the doubt, and let him go free. Now, in all questions of property between ourselves and others, we should all be willing to give to others the benefit of the doubt, and then the disputes would be very easily settled, or rather, disputes would never arise. In this case, for instance, it is doubtful whether you had a right to come and interfere while the fish was near his hook; it is doubtful whether he did or did not have a sort of right to try to catch the fish, without your interfering; and you ought to have been willing to have given him the benefit of the doubt, and so have staid away, or have given up the fish to him after you had caught it."
"But I don't see," said Marco, "why he should not have been willing to have given me the benefit of the doubt, as well as I to have given it to him."