TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IN COURTS OF LAW. 875 
Tt has long been allowed therefore to transfer cases which would have been 
blindly determined by persons possessing no nautical skill, from the ordinary 
tribunals to a judge assisted by a certain number of Masters of the Trinity 
House, before whom the evidence is given. 
The result of all the inquiries which the Committee have been enabled to 
make is, that there will be found no method of correcting the present practice 
in the trial of intricate scientific questions, so little open to exception as one 
that should be founded on the principle thus already adopted in questions of 
navigation. 
There is reason to believe that opinions in evidence stated before a Court 
capable of appreciating them would be given with a greater measure of care 
and a more prudent reserve, and that a judge assisted by assessors who 
(being themselves experts) fully understood the technical value of the evi- 
dence, would deliver a judgment more founded in reason and accordant with 
justice than can ever be obtained from the present tribunals. 
The Committee would therefore propose that, by a legislative act, judges 
should be empowered, on application from a suitor, in causes of a technical 
character, to convene skilled assessors, the number of whom should not 
exceed three, and who should give their opinions truly on the statements of 
the witnesses, in such manner as they shall be required by the judge, pre- 
yious to his adjudication of the cause. 
A Court constituted as is here proposed might see a necessity in some 
cases for independent evidence of the facts on which either party relied. The 
allowing the judge to call in witnesses independent of the parties in such 
_¢ases, as is done on various occasions by Courts of Chancery and by Parlia- 
mentary Committees, is a measure which has been suggested by a high 
judicial authority, and would, in the opinion of the Committee, be a valuable 
supplement to the preceding provision. 
In recommending these changes, the Committee have had in view the 
evidence given in civil causes: in criminal cases the opinions of witnesses are 
ar less affected by partisan feelings. There may be a few instances, however, 
in which it might serve the interests of public justice that the judge should 
‘have power to direct an issue to be tried by a Court constituted on the 
principles here proposed. But the defect of the scientific evidence in criminal 
causes chiefly consists in want of competence on the part of the witnesses : 
questions, for instance, of secret poisoning sometimes hang on the judgment 
of a practitioner or analyst of insufficient experience. The remedy for this 
deficiency is indeed understood to be virtually in the hands of the magis- 
tracy, since the Government authorities never refuse to select proper persons 
for the investigation of cases in which the Crown is concerned; but the 
Committee are of opinion that it would be an important improvement on the 
present practice, if the magistrates were advised that application should be 
made by them for the appointment of such competent persons by the Crown 
in every case requiring accurate scientific investigation. 
If the recommendations contained in this Report should be approved by 
the Association, the Committee would advise that they should be laid before 
the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with an application for his 
concurrence in carrying them into effect, and that the Parliamentary Com- 
mittee of the Association should be requested to support the application, and 
to promote any Bill in Parliament which may be founded on the foregoing 
principles. 
