4 Oct 1803

Evidence

Judicature

Anonymous

Were it necessary for a man to look over whatever stricture have been made in publications /books/ on the subject of anonymous evidence, my expectation would be to find /what he might expect to find would be a/ sentence of condemnation without distinction or reason. So far as concerns the examples /applications/ on the contemplation of which the censures have been grounded, I should suppose it to be well /the censures may not improbably have been/ grounded: but were it to be extended to the use here proposed to be made of it, that ground has no application /would fail/.

Mention anonymous evidence, the imagination transports itself immediately to quondum[?] Venice and the liar's mouths. But In Venice the system /course/ of penal procedure was secret, and therefore arbitrary, and justly /horrible[?]/ terrible to [...?]. towards that darkness a circumstance that could not be known was - in which of the two characters the evidence of this stamp would be employed - simply indicative or ultimate. In the character of ultimate evidence, for any thing that any body could be afraid of: a character in which it could not be made use of, without horrible injustice.

If there be a country the judicial procedure of which contrasts more strongly than that of another with the judicial procedure of quondum Venice, it is that of existing England. In the character of indicative evidence, as a clue to evidence not anonymous instances of its having been employed in England by superiors for the discovery of misdemeanours on the part of subordinates in office have fallen under any view observation in more instances than are not infrequently office have been made known every here and there by the public newspapers. But to make use now and then of anonymous evidence of this sort is one thing: to make officially known to all concerned that on every occasion attention will be regularly paid to it, is another. Abuses of no inconsiderable magnitude have abounded time out of mind in certain offices: the bringing to light some of these abuses was the object of the correspondence held by authority with anonymous informants in three scattered instances. The object of this correspondence was to obtain grounds for punishments to punish abuses which had the determination to listen to such information been <...> and intentions[?] would probably never have existed.