he came into the presence of superior numbers.

If such be the true nature of the relations men hold to each other in
this world, it puts an end to all such things as crimes, unless they be
perpetrated upon those who are equal or superior, in number, to the
actors. All acts committed against persons _inferior_ in number to the
aggressors, become but the exercise of rightful authority. And
consistency with their own principles requires that all governments,
founded on the will of the majority, should recognize this plea as a
sufficient justification for all crimes whatsoever.

If it be said that the majority should be allowed to rule, not because
they are stronger than the minority, but because their superior numbers
furnish a _probability_ that they are in the right; one answer is, that
the lives, liberties, and properties of men are too valuable to them,
and the natural presumptions are too strong in their favor, to justify
the destruction of them by their fellow-men on a mere balancing of
probabilities, _or on any ground whatever short of certainty beyond a
reasonable doubt_. This last is the moral rule universally recognized to
be binding upon single individuals. And in the forum of conscience the
same rule is equally binding upon governments, for governments are mere
associations of individuals. This is the rule on which the trial by jury
is based. And it is plainly the only rule that ought to induce a man to
submit his rights to the adjudication of his fellow-men, or dissuade him
from a forcible defence of them.

Another answer is, that if two opposing parties could be supposed to
have no personal interests or passions involved, to warp their
judgments, or corrupt their motives, the fact that one of the parties
was more numerous than the other, (a fact that leaves the comparative
intellectual competency of the two parties entirely out of
consideration,) might, perhaps, furnish a slight, but at best only a
very slight, probability that such party was on the side of justice. But
when it is considered that the parties are liable to differ in their
intellectual capacities, and that one, or the other, or both, are
undoubtedly under the influence of such passions as rivalry, hatred,
avarice, and ambition,--passions that are nearly certain to pervert
their judgments, and very likely to corrupt their motives,--all
probabilities founded upon a mere numerical majority, in one party, or
the other, vanish at once; and the de