“You will forgive me, gentlemen, I hope, in making what may seem to be a digression from this extremely painful case we are considering, but it is a point that arises very naturally out of it. The counsel for the defence saw fit to touch upon it in the course of his address, and I would like to assure him and to assure you that during the five and twenty years I have had the honor to occupy a seat on the judicial bench, this question has seemed to me of such paramount importance that it has been constantly before my mind. This is the last opportunity I shall have of making a reference to it in the presence of you gentlemen of the jury; this is the last occasion on which I shall take my seat in this or any other court; therefore I feel a desire to record, with whatever authority twenty-five years of public service may confer on a mere expression of opinion, the conclusion at which I have arrived. “In the ears of many my conclusion will sound utopian, in many minds it will seem to be a counsel of perfection, for it is this. In important criminal cases it is the duty of the Crown to make the same ample provision for the accused as it does for itself. It should afford equal facilities to the accused person to establish his innocence as it affords to itself to establish his guilt. After many profound searchings of heart, more particularly upon circuit, where cases affecting the life and liberty of the subject are so often left entirely to the discretion of a rural practitioner, this is the conclusion I have reached. Such a conclusion will, I fear, be taken as a confession of weakness on the part of an individual judge. It is a confession of weakness, gentlemen, but I do not think I shall be contradicted when I urge that it is a confession which the strongest and most able of my learned brethren have been called upon over and over again in their heart of hearts to make.