25 March 1805

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

''. Security proof

To the situation of the plaintiff substitute that of the defendant, it makes little difference. Preserved from hopeless insincerity by the prospect of these [...?] and unanswerable questions, a man will see beforehand the impracticability of carrying on a plan of manifestly groundless dilatory defence for the mere purpose of deferring the fulfilment of a known obligation, or continuing as long as possible the flowing in of profit from an unlawful source.

But Injury[?]? - when is the bar opposed in this case to the iniquity of him who will not stick at perjury? Unquestionably not an effectual one. But the question lies between this only natural system of procedure and all existing technical ones: and the difference is this. Under the natural system /if the sanction of an oath be called in/ /being necessarily supposed to/, a man can not derive profit from conscious iniquity without encountering the perils /risk/ attached to perjury; those perils enhanced by the obligation of encountering the scrutinizing /searching/ interrogations of the injured adversary: whereas under every technical system a dishonest man, in the character of plaintiff in all cases in the character of defendant in most cases injury /reaps/, of course in the first instance all the benefit /profit/ of [...?] /[...?] an/ iniquity, and without exposing himself to the smallest risk of punishment either for /as/ perjury or for mendacity enjoys it to the whole extent of the time that he can [...?] to give to the litigation /contest/, enjoys it at no other expence than that of paying the price which the man of law, the organizer and accomplice of the iniquity and the delay, has set upon the labour expounded by him /himself/ in the manufacture of it.

As the lustre of the game would in great part be lost were it not for the fact that lies beneath it so the excellence of the natural system would be apt to escape from notice /escape from notice/ until contrasted by the correspondent and through devious arrangements of technical procedure.