[clxii. 8]

1820. July 24

Emancipation Spanish

Summary

III. Appeal

- for sympathy. If Christians let the d o in this world be done by.

Yet if any such appeals be allowed, note well the consequence. The practice of receiving Appeals from any such distance, be the cause what it may, is an inexhaustable source of injustice and oppression: oppression inevitable, certain, boundless, irremediable: oppression such as is incapable of being produced by any other means.

By the expence unavoidably imposed on both parties, it has the effect of a compleat denial of justice to all who are unable to provide for that same expence: that is to all the inhabitants of the territory with the exception of a comparatively small number.

By the vexation and delay, in addition to the expence, it imposes a grievous burthen on the few who are not absolutely incapable of sustaining it.

By its effect on the body of evidence belonging to each litigation, it gives a prodigious chance in favour of misdecision as compared with right decision: a prodigious advantage to the bad side of the cause, whichever it be, to falsehood and deceit in their contest with truth and probity.

If witnesses are not permitted to be sent from the judicatory appealed from in Spanish America to the judicatory appealed to in Spain, it affords not to the judicatory in last resort those indispensable means for securing the trustworthiness of evidence which the subordinate judicature had or should have had at its command: namely eventual interrogation and counter interrogation by word of mouth, in the face of a public audience:- on a species of unpaid judicatory, which employing its inspecting vigilance, as a security against misconduct, through improbity or negligence, on the part of the Judge.

If witnesses are permitted to be sent, as above but only on condition of willingness on their part, it confines the benefit of the evidence to that one, if there be but one, of the two sides which is able to defray the expence: and even if they are sent on both sides, it opens the door to corruption to an indefinite amount on both sides; to corruption, on pretence of indemnity agaist expence, and loss of time, and thereby of the means of maintenance: of maintenance - not merely such as shall be sufficient for subsistence, but such as shall be proportioned to the rank of the witness in the scale of opulence: prospect of encrease included where the opulence is in a course of encrease.