4 Oct 1803

Evidence

Judicature

Anonymous

In the case where the mischief of the above finds /affords to/ no individual any person nature /motive of a personal nature/ for giving information of it the demand /need/ for this vehicle of intelligence is still more urgent. Sympathy for the public, antipathy against improbity, both of them modifications of Public spirit, to these pure and social motives especially if reinforced by the disocial motive of personal enmity towards a delinquent may urge a man with some considerable force urge man to convey to his superiors information the efforts of which if followed up would draw down punishment /censure/ on the heads of his delinquent colleagues. But in such case, under the /any such/ condition as that indispensable condition of open accusation what chance /security/ can there be of that degree of knowledge regularity /exactness/ of information which is necessary to the prevention of abuse when the only occasions on which it can be obtained are those rare and casual ones where the inciting force of enmity has burst through the restraints imposed by ordinary prudence? When the abuse is of such a nature that, the mischief of it /abuse/ without counting[?] any individual, falls exclusively on the public purse in[?] information given of it by a colleague to the prejudice of a colleague, is resented /almost seen to be/ by all as an act of treachery to all and a sort of civil excommunication, and much less intolerable than the ecclesiastical of old times is the natural and almost necessary consequence. What of the /case be of the number of those/ abuse in which the whole fraternity have their profit, and the removal of which would be felt by each of them as the private loss?