"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "the rule of Lord Hale obtains in
this State and is binding upon me. It is the law as stated by
counsel for the prisoner: that to warrant conviction of murder
there must be direct proof either of the death, as of the finding
and identification of the corpse, or of criminal violence adequate
to produce death, and exerted in such a manner as to account for
the disappearance of the body; and it is only when there is direct
proof of the one that the other can be established by
circumstantial evidence. This is the law, and cannot now be
departed from. I do not presume to explain its wisdom. Chief-
Justice Johnson has observed, in the leading case, that it may have
its probable foundation in the idea that where direct proof is
absent as to both the fact of the death and of criminal violence
capable of producing death, no evidence can rise to the degree of
moral certainty that the individual is dead by criminal
intervention, or even lead by direct inference to this result; and
that, where the fact of death is not certainly ascertained, all
inculpatory circumstantial evidence wants the key necessary for its
satisfactory interpretation, and cannot be depended on to furnish
more than probable results. It may be, also, that such a rule has
some reference to the dangerous possibility that a general
preconception of guilt, or a general excitement of popular feeling,
may creep in to supply the place of evidence, if, upon other than
direct proof of death or a cause of death, a jury are permitted to
pronounce a prisoner guilty.

"In this case the body has not been found and there is no direct
proof of criminal agency on the part of the prisoner, although the
chain of circumstantial evidence is complete and irresistible in
the highest degree. Nevertheless, it is all circumstantial