That the flight of a person accused of a crime may in some cases be a strong ingredient in a proof of his guilt, I readily acknowledge, but it is not necessarily so. If he has not been previously accused of that particular crime, and other reasons occur sufficient to account for his leaving his native country, the circumstance is at best equivocal.
In this case it cannot be denied that Mr. Brodie had strong reasons for taking this step separated from any consideration of guilt connected with this offence. His gambling connection with these men was too well known, and though nothing further could be proved against him, it must be a painful feeling for a man of any spirit to remain in that place where persons with whom he had been so intimate were taken up by public justice on charges of so heinous a nature. Joined to this, you find in evidence that a prosecution was depending before the magistrates of Edinburgh against my client for using loaded dice. I do not say, nor do I suppose that this prosecution was well founded, but the very report of such a charge, when added to the connection he had with these men, must have rendered his situation so disagreeable as to induce him to leave Edinburgh, at least for a time, or even to have resolved on settling in some foreign country, where his former folly and dissipation were unknown and where his professional skill might enable him to repair his shattered fortune. What were the real motives of Mr. Brodie it is not for man to judge, but, if his actions were equivocal, you are bound in charity, in justice, in humanity, to put the most favourable construction upon them.
Yet even when he abandoned this country, he does not appear to have conducted himself as one who never intended to return, or who was afraid of any consequences to himself, beyond the pain of enduring in his own country the loss of honest fame. He corresponds, as you find, with his friends in Edinburgh, and the whole tenor of his conduct seems to be such as might have been pursued by a person who intended only to retire out of view for a short time, till the clamour of a prejudiced public against him should cease. A flight under such circumstances and conducted in this manner can never be held as proof of guilt, or even as a circumstance sufficient to stamp credibility on the testimony of a witness base and profligate beyond all example, deponing under the strongest temptations to falsehood, unsupported by the direct testimony of any other witnesses, and directly contradicted by a proof of _alibi_, proved by a cloud of witnesses altogether free from suspicion.