25 Sept 1803

Evidence

Instructions

Considerations

1. Interest in general

9. Against criminative perjury, so powerful, so efficacious is the action of the guardian interests, that in the character of seductive interests, two of the most powerful motives, self-preservation and pecuniary interest viz: love of life are acting in the greatest possible force, the others are acting with more than ordinary force, in different degrees of magnitude, are scarce ever known to produce. Pardon together with pecuniary reward in [...?] from ,10 up to ,1000 are expedients continually resorted to in an English procedure for the obtainment of the evidence in the case of [...?] [...?] [...?] of first rate crimes. obtaining from accomplices. All this while, where self-preservation is out of the question, pecuniary interest, though in a magnitude ever so trifling, and though it be of that comparatively weaker sort which is created by the desire of gain, and not of that stronger sort which is created by the apprehension of loss, is under the same system made to operate as a ground of peremptory exclusion, preventing the testimony from being so much s heard: and this too, let the pecuniary interest at stake be ever so trifling /inconsiderable/ and consequently the damage to the party injured, were perjury of that sort to take place /suffering by the perjury, suffering it to take place/ Pecuniary interest acting upon the witness by itself, is thus made to shut the door against his testimony: pecuniary interest when reinforced by another interest infinitely more powerful by the most powerful of all interests acting on the same side - by an interest which includes all others put together - by this incomparably more powerful interest acting on the same side, no longer shuts the door against, opens it to /but throws it wide open to/ the same testimony. All this while this apparently irresistible invitation to perjury has scarce ever been productive of its natural and to appearances unavoidable effect. The reason is no where to be found in the joint influence of two concurring senses. In one is the particular difficulty of carrying in to effect a plan of perjury in this particular case: a cause which belongs not to the present purpose: the other is the joint of the interest of humanity, seconded and supported by a sort of narrow and spurious sort of honour or regard for a portion of the mass of popular opinion, as above explained. But the force of the action of the principle of humanity in a case where the tendency of it is to cause one man to save another from a mass of suffering - from a mass of punishment, will naturally be, ceteris paribus, directly as the magnitude of that punishment. Hence although the force of the motive acting in a sinister direction viz: self-preservation as also in the case - is by the supposition as the magnitude of that same punishment, yet such is the force of the principle of law - namely, [...?] as above that it almost always gets the better of the sinister interest of the same kind, even when that sinister interest has the force of allied force of pecuniary interest for its support