“Then,” said Mr. Burchard, “have you not admitted so much as to make untenable your position, namely, that you approve the law which requires an attorney to be faithful to his client, the law which assigns counsel to the accused, the law which compels the attendance of the witnesses for the criminal at the expense of the state, and provides that the accused shall be executed only after the fullest investigation? What is the object of these enactments? Undoubtedly the interest of the state and not primarily of the criminal. The state in its wisdom requires for its own safety, and lest it should commit the crime and the blunder of hanging an innocent man, that the whole truth should be known. How greatly would the government and jurisprudence suffer if a guiltless man should be executed? When, therefore, a lawyer assumes the defence of a known murderer he is complying with the commands of the statutes and is serving the best interests of the government when he compels the prosecuting officer to the proof of the offence; and not only so, he is serving justice itself and not the criminal only. Even the judges have no authority to punish, except these provisions of law are complied with and the offence be proved. Who has not heard of the indictment of the two Bournes in Vermont, and of their having pleaded guilty to the crime of murder, for which they were on the eve of being executed, when the supposed murdered man put in his appearance? How much better would justice have appeared had the defence been conducted by a tenacious, faithful, and conscientious lawyer instead of being conducted in such a bungling manner that the bones of a horse did duty for the bones of the supposed murdered man! That case has done better duty as a bugbear for a century than any other legal decision.”
Mr. Burchard became quite warm, and made the assertion that he would never take a retainer, and afterwards, no matter what knowledge he should subsequently acquire, desert a client; and he doubted if a conscientious lawyer had a moral right to refuse to defend a brother mortal accused of crime. “For the refusal,” said he, “proceeds upon the ground taken by the doctor, which substantially is that no defence ought to be made, but that sentence should be passed upon a real criminal whether the crime can be proved or not. And I am at a loss to discover how my friend the doctor can approve of the requirements of the statutes which have been referred to, and yet assert that honest, conscientious lawyers alone cannot comply with them.”
Mr. Burchard, feeling that he had been somewhat more enthusiastic than the occasion demanded, changed the subject in this wise:
“You all remember that a certain firm in Philadelphia made a special deposit of eighteen thousand dollars in gold in the Trust Company, and some expert thieves by means of a forged check obtained possession of the money. The manner of accomplishing the feat was peculiar and was most adroitly carried out. The thief drove so sharp a bargain for funds current in New Orleans that the cashier’s mind was diverted from the genuineness of the check to the percentage of exchange to be realized by the operation. Many propositions were made on both sides which were not mutually satisfactory. At last the rogue told the cashier that rather than submit to imposition he would take the gold, and the eighteen thousand dollars were handed over to him in twenty-dollar gold-pieces. The forgery was not discovered till thirteen days after, when the depositor called for his special deposit. Immediately detectives were employed. One of them you have all seen. He is a personal friend of mine, and his ability in this department surpasses Vidocq’s as much as Vidocq’s was superior to that of an ordinary country constable. He judged, by an intuition that none of us can comprehend, that these rogues had carried their plunder to Baltimore, and thither he proceeded. For three months he prowled about that city by night and by day, his mind intent upon the one object of ascertaining some clew that should direct him to the discovery of the robber. At the end of twelve weeks he had made no progress, and returned to Philadelphia. There he continued some ten days, and became discontented and vexed at being baffled. Asserting that he felt certain that the thieves made Baltimore their head-quarters, he proceeded thither again. After ten days’ further search, one evening as he was walking slowly past a newspaper-stand on the corner of a street, he observed a boy who wore no hat purchase a New York Herald and give in exchange a twenty-dollar gold-piece. He followed the lad into a drinking-saloon in the rear of which was a gambling-room. He soon ascertained the proprietor’s name, and learned that his family occupied the upper part of the house. He became acquainted with the proprietor’s wife, and found that she was sister to the wife of C. B., who was that year the president of the association of rogues, he having been elected to that position at M. in the State of Indiana in the month of August. He also learned that her father resided about fifty miles from Baltimore. The detective was aware that this close corporation of rascals had nine directors, and, knowing the position of C. B. in the association and his connection with the proprietor of the saloon, and understanding also the method of distribution, he concluded that two thousand dollars fell in the division to C. B., and a like amount to the proprietor of the saloon. He left the saloon at midnight, and drove immediately to the residence of the father of the proprietor’s wife, and arrived there between nine and ten o’clock on the following morning, meeting the old gentleman in his wagon between his house and the main road, from which it was distant about half a mile. The detective was also aware of a rule among these robbers, that any considerable sum of money stolen, less ten per cent, should be buried for two years; and, having ascertained only what has been above related, he felt sure of the fact that the old gentleman was the keeper of one ninth, at least, of the money stolen. He also felt confident that he had gathered enough of the truth to make a powerful impression upon the man he had gone so far to see, and that if he was not altogether given over to the service of this band of bad men, he could state facts enough, which the old gentleman knew were profound secrets, to stagger his mind and arouse his conscience. After an interview of less than an hour this detective, by an art of which we cannot conceive, and by a magnetism and eloquence that no other man of my acquaintance ever possessed a tithe of, actually induced the father of these two women to dig up out of his garden two thousand dollars in twenty-dollar gold-pieces and hand them over to—my friend Mr. Sidney, who sits at the other end of the table. And not only so, but he prevailed upon the old gentleman to go with him to Baltimore in order to get possession of the other two thousand dollars held by the proprietor of the aforesaid saloon, which he also actually accomplished at a little inn about six miles from Baltimore, where the saloon-keeper and his wife met her father and my friend.
“Yesterday in the Supreme Court I had occasion to avail myself of Mr. Sidney’s marvellous ability as an expert in handwriting. The case turned entirely upon his testimony, although some twenty witnesses testified on each side that they had seen the defendant write, and that, in their opinion, the signature was or was not genuine. Mr. Sidney did not arrive till the moment the case was about to be given to the jury, and I had no opportunity of conversing with him, except to ascertain that in his judgment the signature was not a forgery.
“After he took the witness-stand and had qualified himself as an expert in handwriting, the note in suit was handed him, and he was requested to state whether or not in his opinion the signature was genuine. It was some minutes before he responded. During the latter portion of the time of his silence his mind seemed intent upon something else. The presiding judge inquired of him if he intended to answer, when he replied:
“‘I was considering the matter, not whether the signature was genuine, but how I could convince the jury of the truth of what I have to say. This signature is genuine. The man who wrote it is a moral and religious man, and has therefore forgotten that he executed it. He is aged forty-seven, stands five feet ten, is broad-shouldered, full-favored, with muscular hands, thick, hard, and small; he is a merchant and a bachelor, and finds it hard to give up when he has been mistaken. I judge that the man who sits at the other end of the table wrote his name to this note, and I think I can convince him of it, for his honest face corresponds to the morality of the signature. The jury will observe that the first letter of the name is written while the quill pen was full of ink, which was almost exhausted on the second letter and replenished on the third, and the operation is repeated five times. I think, also, that the writer was in poor health, and his muscles relaxed when he wrote his name. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the signature was made while the writer was on his back and the nib of the pen was higher than the tip.’
“At this point of the testimony the face of the defendant against whose interest the witness was testifying became luminous, and he at once rose and declared that the statement of the expert was the truth, and that it had altogether passed from his mind till that moment.
“I hope now I shall have the pleasure of giving you such an entertainment that you will remember it for your lifetime; and I know whereof I affirm when I state that my friend here present will, one hundred times in succession and without a mistake, from a single specimen of the handwriting of an individual, give his age within two years, his height within an inch, his weight within ten pounds, his profession, whether married or single, his temperament and peculiarities, his moral character, whether—”