21 May 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch. Investigatorial Eng. Law

§. Statue addition

naturally be heard: and by the same means he would frequently gain such lights as would enable him with a reasonable prospect of success /advantage/ to summon in the character of a witness to be examined at the trial, this or that individual, of whose capacity to yield evidence he could not have been assured by any exertions of his own, unaided by the power of justice. But a course of preparatory inquiry thus conducted under the aid of judicial power is neither more nor less than what has been so /already/ frequently met to be designated by the name of investigatorial procedure. And thus without any care, and perhaps happily perhaps for justice, without observation /remark/ on the part of the sage of the law, a power crept silently /gradually sprung up/ into use /exercise/, by which without intending it they were enabled to hear the truth and thereby to do justice, in many a case in which had the business been conducted without variation in the plan chalked out by themselves /their own wisdom/, no such result would have taken place /would or could have been obtained/.

The [...?] thus /once/ laid, accession chrystallized around it with out difficulty: the private towns of the Country Magistrate became the radiant point of judicial truth, the sanctuary of justice. In the year 1554 by a statue of Philip and Mary, an act of the legislator was passed, from which the practice of preliminary /preparatory/ examination, under the name of examination took its rise. It extended to all offences of the rank of felony: but it went no further: it descended no lower in the penal law: it extended to no species of non penal suit. By these statutes a person being apprehended for felony, was /is/, before he was either bailed or committed for trial, t be examined before the Justice to /before/ whom he was /is/ thus brought: the result of the examination is to be committed to writing: and the writing transmitted to the Court in which the trial is to take place. Another examination to be taken, under a requisition added by the same statutes is that of the persons by whom the defendant was thus brought. To these are now added, no

1 & 2 P. & M. C. 13 §.h.5

2 & 3 P & M. C. 10

A o 1555