26 May 1804

Evidence

Ch Extraction

§ 5 Engl. Law

§ 5. English law.

The English law, how happy soever it may have bee in the choice it has made /invention it has displayed/ of coercive processes applicable to this purpose, is still more conspicuously /manifestly/ unhappy in the application it has made of them. The most coercive and only effectual process it employs may without any misapplication of terms /abuse of words/, be stated torture, adding to distinguish it from the drastic violently and promptly operating processess elsewhere understood by /commonly designated by/ that name, slow torture. The class of persons it is applied to are not criminals nor delinquents or persons labouring under so much as a suspicion of delinquency - but honest men /men without reproach/ - nor yet honest men /men of that description/ taken at random but silent men - the good men and true of whom the Jury is composed. The compliance - the sort of service for the extraction of which it is applied to men thus honourably distinguished, is that sort of service which on the part of each man to whom the torture is applied, consists in concurring in his quality of the Judge in /with/ a decision which to him appears false and injurious /unjust/, as that in

violation of an oath which he has just been forced to take:

torture applied to a person acting in the character of the [074-426/2]

Judge, for the purpose of compelling him to do injustice aggravated by perjury.

In practice, by the punishment /infliction/ terrible in description, no actual suffering to any considerable amount is ever produced: why? because of the irresistible severity of it. For the offence which he is thus forced /promted/ [...?] to the commission of to commit - the offence against justice - compleat impunity is secured to him: from the injury and death to which if he did not committ the offence he would be consigned, there is no escape.

Of this reason [?] of tyranny and corruption, what is the object if it has any? / / Falshood, inexpressibly everlastingly delicious falshood. To produce a false appearance of unanimity, applicable in the way of argument, to a variety of deceitful purposes.