1 March 1808

Letter VI

Omissa & Facienda

II. No exclusion for Improbity

By the security afforded by the suspicious [...?] which[?] on the part of even the most undiscerning mind the character and position of the witness can never fail in such a case /under such circumstances/ to draw /point/ down upon such testimony - by this security added to that of cross-examination, the admission given to such evidence has been preserved from having ever been regarded as a formidable source of danger to the amount[?] in the [...?] of defendants - from ever having been regarded as an advantageous instrument of security to individuals at large as against the aggression of criminality /malefactors/ in its most formidable shapes:- and this although [...?] have been known as which under the allowance of the Judge, men have suffered, suffered capital punishment without any ground for the infliction, other than what was composed of testimony thus circumstanced.

If the virtue, the [...?] /preservative/ virtue of cross examination be placed by this point of practice in a conspicuous point of view, in a no less conspicuous view is placed the inconsistency[?] and perversity of those other points of practice which expose in man /men/ to less to an amoral altogether unlimited by misdecision, produced by testimony to which this[?] scarcity has been withholden. I speak of that enormous class of causes distinguished in Letter I by the name of Motion Causes: causes in which evidence is admitted in no other shape than hat of affidavit evidence: testimony delivered by a man, he [...?] further and in his own causes, and without the possibility of its being subjected to the scrutiny of cross-examination either in the vivâ voce, or in the epistolary mode.