32 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



It was urged, too, before the Committee, that it was obviously 

 ungenerous, as well as unjust, at the same time that it teuded to bring 

 the administration of justice into contempt, to comjDcl honest and 

 honorable experts, who had made themselves masters of any science by 

 study, observation, and experience, to put themselves in conflict in 

 open court upon, so far as the public saw, terms of equality with pre- 

 tenders, who were willing to lend themselves, and the science to which 

 they pretended, for hire, to promote the views or interests of their 

 emjjloyei's. And this, too, when the comparative claims of the two to 

 confidence and respect were to be passed upon and determined by 

 jurors drawn from the various walks and pursuits of life, untrained 

 and uninformed in the matters upon which they are called to judge. 

 Instances were cited and enumerated from both English and American 

 courts, where juries have been subjected to such a discrimination, while 

 the lives of persons upon trial depended upon the hap-hazard result 

 to which they might come in trying to distinguish between what was 

 true and false in science. 



Whether and how far these suggestions were deemed worthy of 

 thought or attention, your Committee have no means of judging. The 

 first and only communication with which they have been favored by 

 the Committee of the Judiciary was a brief note, bearing date May 

 24th, which simply announced that " the Committee do not see their 

 way clear to reporting favorably upon the accompanying bill." This 

 refers to the original draft of the bill, which had been left with them, 

 and accompanied the note. The note contained no reasons for the 

 result at which the Committee had arrived, nor how far, if at all, the 

 scheme found favor with them. 



If the bill was objectionable in any of its terms or details, it is 

 much to be regretted that it did not occur to the Committee that these 

 might easily be modified or wholly changed, inasmuch as the bill, as 

 offered, was merely by the way of suggestion, and might, without 

 objection, have been wholly changed in its form, if it could any better 

 express the views of the Committee. 



If the brevity of the session, or the period of two months during 

 which the Committee held the matter in their hands, was inadequate to 

 the forming of a satisfactory conclusion upon the subject submitted to 

 them, it ought to be regarded as a public misfortune. If, on the con- 

 trary, it was the deliberate judgment of that Committee that the 

 course of justice is better served, and the honor of our courts more 

 effectually advanced, by such exhibitions of trumped-up testimony and 

 pretended skill and science as have, at times, signalized what are called 



