date

3 March 1804 Evidence Securities
3 March 1804

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

Falshood formed /encouraged/ by

Law Agents for want of

Confrontation

Nothing can equal /exceed/ the security with which falshood in this case obtains the assistance /benefit/ of an accomplice. Not only no punishment but scarce any the slightest danger of any the slightest risk[?] of disrepute /loss of character/ can attach upon any such existence of interested /professional/ prudence. The claim will miscarry /cause will be lost/: the Attorney forsees it will: - but he has his answer ready. It was your own doing: did not you say /tell me/ so and so - does it not appear upon the face of the Case which I took down from your mouth, and which you heard and /or/ read after I had penned it? Was it for me to contradict or so much as doubt you in regard to a fact that lay within your own knowledge? was it for me to charge you with either advancing falshood or with suppressing or disguising truth? Was it for me to suppose you /charge you/ capable of deceiving your own adviser, and where the deceipt could not but operate to your own prejudice?

The professional interest of the Attorney prompts /urges/ him to bring forward every communication that can tend to bring in /promote the constitution of/ the suit, to keep back every communication that can tend to prevent it. in the one case to bring forward the false just as much as if they were true. in the other case to keep back the true, just as much as if they were false. Is there common sense in the expectation - that the general course /train/ of conduct should run on in opposition to the general stream /force/ /current/ of interest?

In this profession, as in another, that instances may not be found, of here and there an individual, who having laid it down to himself as an inflexible rule, to be guided without deviation by the interest of his client without suffering himself to be biased by opposite personal interest arising out of his profession - having once for all laid this down to himself /this course of conduct/ in the character of an inviolable rule /law/ should throughout preserve resolution enough to persevere in it, is certainly not impossible, and may without danger of inherent[?] /practical/ error be conceded. But in this profession of all others - not to speak of other professions will any one seriously contend, that a stream of probity thus [...?] can reasonably be looked for on the part of the birth[?] of men[?]?
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  • Title: [3 March 1804 Evidence Securities]
    Description: 3 March 1804

    Evidence

    Securities

    Ch. Procedure Technical

    ''. Non-Confrontation

     [...?] This here or under Makeshift. Many Media[?]

    ''.1. Confrontation [...?] justice: abolition of it encourages mendacity by the multiplication of Agents through whom the information is transmitted

    In the established system - in every system in which the truth of the allegation is not supported by the immediate testimony - the [...?] and scrutinized testimony of the party in whose name and on whose behalf it is advanced /made/ - mendacity receives the most adequate encouragement in its enterprises against justice.

    The party say in the first instance the plaintiff tells his story in the first place to the Attorney. The bias which every man has in favour of his own cause is sufficient without conscious mendacity to produce more or less misrepresentation in the instance of privileges the majority of those who under /in/ the existing system come into a Court of law. Quantities are either encreased or diminished - qualities are either too strongly or too faintly coloured - often facts and circumstances that make against a man's wishes, especially if they reflect the /any/ slightest [...?] of disrepute upon his character - are more or less disguised or suppressed.

    The Attorney who has no such /at least no equal/ bias upon his mind, shares not in any degree or at least in equal degree the false conception of his Client. But by the sinister interest constantly attached to his situation he so far from being urged to dispel the falshood and bring the truth to view, he is urgent to thicken it. He has every thing to hope and to gain without any thing to fear by keeping the mask on the falshood, every thing to lose by the removal of it. By extracting the truth from the Client, he loses the benefit at any rate of that one cause: if, in his endeavours /course of/ the operation he happens to give offence to a man the state of whose mind is such as disposes him more or less strongly to take offence, not only the cause is /may be/ lost, but the Client: not only that one cause, but other causes the indefinite train /source/ of other causes that might have flowed from this same source.