344 
“ Technical Trials .” 
[June, 
occur. There is, I believe, at present one judge upon the 
bench who is fully competent to deal with scientific evidence. 
But we shall the better understand the rarity of such quali- 
fications if we remember that a brilliant and versatile Lord 
Chancellor, concerning whom it was said that “ he would 
have known a little about everything if he had only known 
a little law,” proved, by his pitiful critique of Young’s re- 
searches in optics, how infinitesimally little was his know- 
ledge of physics. I fully recognise the ability which counsel 
often display in “ reading up ” some subject which is involved 
in any case they may have in hand. But the knowledge 
thus acquired is often deficient in clearness, and is sometimes 
more adapted for baffling a supposed hostile witness, or for 
bewildering a jury, than for arriving at the truth. It may, 
perhaps, be questioned whether the entire training of a 
lawyer is not (unless he has made a special study of some 
department of natural science) liable to give him a bias 
which is here to be regretted. He is accustomed to search 
for truth not in things, but in words, spoken or written, and 
he consequently is apt to lose the power of learning from 
things. He is also, in his ordinary sphere, necessarily 
swayed by authorities. Hence in “ reading up ” for (say) a 
poisoning case he attaches an exaggerated importance to the 
works of Christison or Orfila, of Liebig or Fresenius, even 
when visible and palpable fadts are much the safer guides. 
Having thus dealt, as I fear some will think rather un- 
courteously, with the bench, the bar, and the jury-box, I 
come to the experts summoned as witnesses. I saw, some 
little time ago, in this Journal, the alleged didtum of a judge 
that while he had “ a great respedt for professional witnesses, 
he had none for witnesses by profession.” Now of all men 
concerned in a technical trial the expert witness is placed in 
the most radically false position. He is supposed to be, like 
every other witness, the partisan of the side by whom he is 
called. Often — too often, indeed — he is so in reality. Hence 
comes the scandal, with which we are all but too familiar, 
of scientific men contradidting each other in a manner little 
creditable to Science, and certain to lead any impartial hearer 
to one of two very derogatory conclusions. “ Either,” it 
will be, and it has been said, “ Science can lay but little 
claim to certainty, and is rather a mass of doubtful specula- 
tion than a body of demonstrable truth, or else these experts 
are men who for a fee will say anything.” No one I fear can 
read, c.g., the report of the trial of Palmer, or of the great 
Torbane Hill case, without entertaining very painful re- 
fledtions. In fadt, some of the most eminent scientific men 
