15 Apr 1804

Evidence

Forthcomingness

Ch. Real

§. Appearance

Under the head of investigatorial procedure, forthcomingness, considered in a general point of view being then the subject of consideration - discovery of the source, production of the source and extraction of the evidence included - but more particularly the operation of discovery as being the earliest of the three - the necessity of that comprehensive and efficient plan /scheme/ /course/ of procedure has already been brought to view. In the case of personal evidence, the utility of it appeared to bear in a more particular manner /almost exclusively/ upon the preliminary operation of discovery: the attendence of the witness at the judgement seat remaining in that case to be provided for by other means : viz: by those other means that have also been brought to view. In the case of real evidence, over and /after and/ above discovery, the use of this instrument of justice continues to be equally indispensible, for the purpose of securing the production and preventing the disposition of it. A man can not be locked up in a box, and shifted from hand to hand among a confederacy of hands interested in /bent upon/ the suppression of his evidence. A jewel or a deed may, without prejudice to its existence for other purposes, be disposed of in this manner, and without difficulty. Under the investigational system let but one hand in the chain be discovered, the document may be pursued through all the rest - pursued from hand to hand, till it be arrested and secured by the hand of law /for the use of justice/. No hand into /through/ which it has ever come /passed/, that can either deny the receipt of it, or refuse to indicate the next ulterior hand into which it has been passed, but at the peril of the pains of perjury.