Accordingly it is held justifiable to exhume
a body recently buried, in order to discover the cause of death, or
to settle a question of disputed identity: nor is it usually held
unjustifiable to exhume a body long since deceased, in order to find
such evidences as time may not have wholly destroyed, of his
personal appearance, including the size and shape of his head, and
the special characteristics of his living face.
It is too late for the most reverential and scrupulous to object to
this as an invasion of the sanctity of the grave, or a violation of
the rights of the dead or of the feelings of his family. When a man
has been long in the grave, there are probably no family feelings to
be wounded by such an act: and, as for his rights, if he can be
said to have any, we may surely reckon among them the right of not
being supposed to possess such objectionable personal defects as may
have been imputed to him by the malice of critics or by the
incapacity of sculptor or painter, and which his remains may be
sufficiently unchanged to rebut: in a word we owe him something
more than refraining from disturbing his remains until they are
undistinguishable from the earth in which they lie, a debt which no
supposed inviolable sanctity of the grave ought to prevent us from
paying.
It is, I say, too late to raise such an objection, because
exhumation has been performed many times with a perfectly legitimate
object, even in the case of our most illustrious dead, without
protest or objection from the most sensitive person.
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