g it to be poison, but believing
it to be a good medicine, giveth it to C., who dieth of it;
in this case A., who is absent, is principal, or else a man
should be murdered, and there should be no principal. For
B., who knoweth nothing of the poison, is in no fault,
though he gave it to C. So if A. puts a sword into the hands
of a madman, and bids him kill B. with it, and then A. goeth
away, and the madman kills B. with the sword, as A.
commanded him, this is murder in A., though absent, and he
is principal; for it is no crime in the madman, who did the
fact by reason of his madness."[149]

[Footnote 149: See the case in Kelyng's Reports (London, 1708), p. 52.
The opinion of Justice _Jones_ was only the charge of an inferior
judge given to the grand-jury in 1634.]

Mr. Morton also laid down this as law, "_the adviser of one who
commits a felony of himself is a murderer_." He might have added, "the
adviser of one who breaks into his own house is a burglar."

Chief Justice Parker--who once declared that the jury had nothing to
do with the harshness of a law--charged the jury that the important
question for them was, Did Bowen's advice induce Jewett to kill
himself? if so, they were to find him guilty of wilful murder! "The
community has an interest _in the public execution_ of criminals [the
crowd having an _interest in the spectacle_] and to take such an one
out of the reach of the law [by advising him to self-destruction] is
no trivial offence." "_You are not to consider the atrocity of this
offence in the least degree diminished by the consideration that
justice was thirsting for its sacrifice_; and that but a small portion
of Jewett's earthly existence could, in any event, remain to
him."[150]

[Footnote 150: 13 Mass. Rep. 356.]

There was no doubt that Bowen advised Jewett to commit suicide; but
the jury, in defiance of the judge's charge and Mr. Kelyng's law,
nevertheless returned "NOT GUILTY."

Here, Gentlemen, is a remarkable instance of a judge, in private a
benevolent man, perverting his official power, and constructing the
crime of murder out of advice given to a man to anticipate a public
execution by privately hanging himself! The law relied on was the
Memorandum of the charge to a grand-jury made by a judge who
notoriously broke the fundamental laws of England, by declaring that
the king had a constitutional right to imprison, at will and as long
as h