10 June 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch. Procedure Technical

''.1.

Under the natural system, the Judge not having any interest in keeping back or stifling the truth of the case, will bring it to light as quickly and place it in as strong a light as possible. He will therefore be seen to employ as of course, those arrangements that have already been pointed out or the only ones that are efficacious and competent to the /that/ purpose. He will call the parties before him in the first instance, at the very outset of the cause, and between the one and the other, he will get out of them all that either of them know, or believe, or wish, in relation to it: and then, in a great majority of the causes which are liable and want to come before a Judge, the first hearing, the first operation (after the one in which the summons /ex parte application of the plaintiff/ to the defendant was grounded) will also be the last /will be the only one/.

This speedy[?], this almost instantaneous, termination of the cause is the very event which the author of the technical system deprecates as the sum and substance of all calamity: it nips all profit in the bud. He will do what depends upon him to avert it. At all events he will do his utmost to keep the truth from coming to light as long as possible: and if it never does come /comes/ to light, what cares he /difference does it make to him/?

In many cases he has something to gain by the mishap, in none has he any thing to lose by it.