21 May 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch. Investigatorial Eng Law

§.2. Common Law [...?]

a /one/ person likely to afford evidence, a person from whose answers a chance of obtaining material and at the same legally admissible evidence promised to result. In the course of an examination of this kind it would every now and then appear that what the party thus examined had to say upon the subject did not amount to that sort of information that would be admissible above in the character of evidence; but that by what he said in relation to the same subject, an indication was afforded of some other person from whose answers, if examined in like manner, information of an unexceptional kind might probably be obtained.

Had the research /time/ been confined to /within/ the compass of a day, the light thus obtained would most commonly have been of no use - there was the /would have been/ evidence could it have been /be/ obtained; but the necessary time was not allowed for the obtaining it. But, owing to the absence of that wisdom by which under the auspices of professional /[...?]/ lawyers, the time and space were to be considered as annihilated, and the business of days and weeks or months was required to be finished /dispatched/ in a few hours, the researches of this non-professional magistrate were not confined within that time, nor in short within any definite /exactly defined/ compass of time: the science[?] which in so many instances had rendered it impossible that justice should be done by a Jury, had omitted to extend its wisdom /care/ to this subordinate /inferior/ and neglected course of judicature. That love of power which in a greater or less degree nature has implanted in every human breast that active propensity, which when lodged in official /judicial hands/ and confined by proper barriers contained within the limits becomes in effect the love of justice, would in this as on any other occasion, when not perverted or overawed by prejudice inspire a man with /infuse into a man's breast/ the desire of obtaining useful information, wherever such information was to be found. but the knowledge thus obtained by the Magistrate could this be obtained at the same time to /by/ the party, who would always be privy to the enquiry, and whose suggestions relative to the course to be taken relative to /on the occasion of/ it would