EDITOR'S TABLE. 



Ill 



and the very difficulties of the claimant's 

 case seemed only to strengthen the blind 

 faith of his adherents. ... It may be said 

 that stupidity is a misfortune and not a 

 fault ; but there is a sort of cranky, cantan- 

 kerous, pragmatical stupidity which sets it- 

 self up as superior to all plain and obvious 

 considerations, and claims the gift of seeing 

 through stone-walls, and of proving tliat two 

 and two make four only for common folk, 

 which is really an oifense against decency 

 and reason. There are people of tins kind, 

 who can bring tliemselves to believe any 

 thing; and Arthur Orton may take his 

 place by the side of the Cock-Lane ghost, 

 the sea-serpent, and Mrs. Toft's litter of 

 rabbits." 



The London Times, referring to the 

 dapes who were made witnesses, re- 

 marks : 



" If they fell into an open trap, half Eng- 

 land showed themselves ready to do the same. 

 "We are all now persuaded that the claimant 

 is a low-born, illiterate, vulgar scoundrel, 

 without any trace of education, either of 

 schools or of society, with no lingering sug- 

 gestion of culture of any kind about him. . . . 

 It would have been quite impossible for this 

 man Orton to have kept up his enterprise 

 for a fortnight, if his way had not been made 

 easy by a number of dupes of various ranks, 

 which for weeks, and months, and even 

 years, went on increasing. . . . We may 

 now ask — and that is the point which most 

 concerns us — how came this man, in spite of 

 the most unfavorable appearances, to at- 

 tract, to confirm, and to organize into a sort 

 of faith, so vast an amount of human credu- 

 lity ? The answer must be that, in the first 

 place, a large part of mankind, and that by 

 no means of the lowest or least educated, 

 wish to believe the improbable and prodi- 

 gious. They are ready for any thing, because 

 they really desire it. For this purpose, and 

 in order that they may be more free to be- 

 lieve what they choose, they close their 

 eyes to the most important and most mate- 

 rial facts of the question, and their reasons 

 to the great laws which should control a de- 

 cision. They prefer to look about for tbe 

 smaller particulars, the incidental circum- 

 stances, and some trifle or other, which may 

 give them a key to the question. Vanity is 

 satisfied, labor saved, and perplexity avoided, 

 by an intuitive assent, resting upon some- 

 thing which, if not wholly inexplicable to 

 other inquirers, is next to nothing at all in 

 the scale of right reason. When people 

 have no laws of judgment in themselves, 



little experience, or at least little fruit of it, 

 no tests which they know how to apply, 

 their faith, and with it their adhesion, is as 

 much at the mercy of any one who prac- 

 tises upon it as a salmon is at the mercy of 

 a dexterous angler. ... It has been freely 

 said, and will probably be often said again, 

 that the length of time consumed before 

 Arthur Orton has been convicted, as a per- 

 jured impostor, is a scandal upon our law. 

 We cannot join in this opinion. Scandal 

 there has been, undoubtedly, but the blame 

 is misplaced when it is attributed to the ad- 

 ministration of justice. The real ground of 

 humiliation is the defect of common-sense, 

 and the imperfect education of so large a 

 proportion of the English people. If one 

 thing more than another is and ought to be 

 the object of training in schools, in colleges, 

 and in daily life, it should be to enable a 

 man of full years, and in the possession of 

 ordinary faculties, to know what to believe, 

 and what to disbelieve, to discriminate the 

 value and the weight of evidence, to reject 

 the false and to detect the true." 



The British press, it is evident, has 

 not failed to draw the proper lesson 

 from this seven years' experiment upon 

 the state of mind of that country. It 

 is especially noteworthy that the folly 

 which made it possible was not con- 

 fined to the illiterate classes; the delu- 

 sion carried away half the English 

 people of all grades, and the result is 

 no doubt correctly attributed to that 

 general deficiency in educational meth- 

 ods which neglects the proper study of 

 evidence. 



And from this point of view the 

 Tichborne case is not without interest 

 to us ; for we have an education similar 

 to the English in that it does not en- 

 force the critical study of proof, and 

 therefore leaves the people without 

 protection against the tactics of ingen- 

 ious imposture. That impositions of all 

 kinds should arise under such circum- 

 stances is natural. We may not be able 

 to exhibit any such stunning example 

 of audacious imposture as our English 

 friends have just exploited, but we have 

 plenty of the same kind of thing on a 

 smaller scale. Whether deception and 

 fraud are more extensive here than 

 elsewhere, or more extensive now than 



