In his own profession he recognized the trials of law-breakers only as
experiments which went to establish and explain a general principle.
And prisoners were not men to him, but merely the exceptions that
proved the excellence of a rule. Holcombe would defend the lowest
creature or the most outrageous of murderers, not because the man was
a human being fighting for his liberty or life, but because he wished
to see if certain evidence would be admitted in the trial of such a
case. Of one of his clients the judge, who had a daughter of his own,
said, when he sentenced him, "Were there many more such men as you in
the world, the women of this land would pray to God to be left
childless." And when some one asked Holcombe, with ill-concealed
disgust, how he came to defend the man, he replied: "I wished to show
the unreliability of expert testimony from medical men. Yes; they tell
me the man was a very bad lot."
It was measures, not men, to Holcombe, and law and order were his twin
goddesses, and "no compromise" his watchword.
"You can elect your man if you'll give me two thousand dollars to
refit our club-room with," one of his political acquaintances once
said to him. "We've five hundred voters on the rolls now, and the
members vote as one man. You'd be saving the city twenty times that
much if you keep Croker's man out of the job. You know _that_ as
well as I do."
"The city can better afford to lose twenty thousand dollars," Holcombe
answered, "than we can afford to give a two-cent stamp for
corruption.
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