138 POLITICAL LIFE-VI 



the judge, he should decide that the ends of justice would 

 he furthered thereby. 



The bill was referred to the Senate judiciary committee, 

 of which Judge Folger was chairman. After it had lain 

 there some weeks and the judge had rather curtly an- 

 swered my questions as to when it would be reported, it 

 became clear to me that the committee had no intention of 

 reporting it at all, whereupon I introduced a resolution 

 requesting them to report it, at the earliest day possible, 

 for the consideration of the Senate, and this was passed 

 in spite of the opposition of the committee. Many days 

 then passed; no report was made, and I therefore intro- 

 duced a resolution taking the bill out of the hands of the 

 committee and bringing it directly before the committee 

 of the whole. This was most earnestly resisted by Judge 

 Folger and by his main associate on the committee, Henry 

 Murphy of Brooklyn. On the other hand I had, to aid me, 

 Judge Lowe, also a lawyer of high standing, and indeed 

 all the lawyers in the body who were not upon the judi- 

 ciary committee. The result was that my motion was 

 successful; the bill was taken from the committee and 

 immediately brought under discussion. 



In reply to the adverse arguments of Judge Folger and 

 Mr. Murphy, which were to the effect that my bill was an 

 innovation upon the criminal law of the State, I pointed 

 out the fact that evidence as to the character of the person 

 charged with crime is often all-important; that in our 

 daily life we act upon that fact as the simplest dictate of 

 common sense ; that if any senator present had his watch 

 stolen from his room he would be very slow to charge the 

 crime against the servant who was last seen in the room, 

 even under very suspicious circumstances ; but if he found 

 that the servant had been discharged for theft from vari- 

 ous places previously, this would be more important than 

 any other circumstance. I showed how safeguards which 

 had been devised in the middle ages to protect citizens 

 from the feudal lord were now used to aid criminals in 

 evading the law, and I ended by rather unjustly compar- 



