The caution, my lords, with which our ancestors have always proceeded in
inquiries by which life or death, property or reputation, was
endangered; the certainty, or at least the high degree of probability,
which they required in evidence, to make it a sufficient ground of
conviction, is universally known; nor is it necessary to show their
opinion by particular examples, because, being no less solicitous for
the welfare of their posterity than for their own, they were careful to
record their sentiments in laws and statutes, and to prescribe, with the
strongest sanctions, to succeeding governments, what they had discovered
by their own reflections, or been taught by their predecessors.

They considered, my lords, not only how great was the hardship of being
unjustly condemned, but likewise how much a man might suffer by being
falsely accused; how much he might be harassed by a prosecution, and how
sensibly he might feel the disgrace of a trial. They knew that to be
charged with guilt implied some degree of reproach, and that it gave
room, at least, for an inference that the known conduct of the person
accused was such as made it probable that he was still more wicked than
he appeared; they knew that the credulity of some might admit the charge
upon evidence that was rejected by the court, and that difference of
party, or private quarrels, might provoke others to propagate reports
once published, even when in their own opinion they were sufficiently
confuted; and that, therefore, an innocent man might languish in infamy
by a groundless charge, though he should escape any legal penalty.

It has, therefore, my lords, been immemorially established in this
nation, that no man can be apprehended, or called into question for any
crime till there shall be proof.

First, that there is a _corpus delicti_, a crime really and visibly