18 Sept. 1803

Evidence

Instruction

Considerations

2. Pecuniary interest

Time

Clearance or

If however it be really supposed, that by any such mechanical process the mind of men can really be cleared of interest, or /and/that the security /probability/ for truth for the absence of incorrectness and mendacity is, after the performance of any such ceremony, in any considerable degree greater than before, the supposition will upon examination be found delusive. Against simple incorrectness it will be found of scarce any use /little or no use/. Against mendacity - against wilful perjury - it will be found of no use at all.

Mendacity, wilful perjury out of the question, any departure from the line of perfect correctness, of absolute /exact/ truth can have no other cause than bias. /come under no other case than that of bias./ Whatever deviation from that line may later place in his testimony, the witness himself is not sensible of any such deviation: if he is, so far as he is, so far is the testimony mendacious, and himself a perjurer. In this case whatever may have been the state of his mental faculties in relation to the facts in question - his perception -his judgment his memory before the operation, it does not seem natural that by the operation any very determinable or material alteration should be produced.

But suppose the bias previously existing and in action and suppose the legal process to have cleared away this sinister interest - this cause of aberation from the line of truth - there is /remains/ another which it is not in the nature of it to clear away, and which /of which the action/ will naturally be more powerful than that of the bias itself. This is his regard for his own character - for his own reputation in respect of veracity, his sensibility to the pains of the moral sanction. Before the time and occasion for the performance of this legal ceremony can have taken place, he will almost always have given his account /statement/ of the affair: it is from /by/ this statement alone that in general the party who has an interest in the restoration of the testimony can obtain that information, from which his inducement to put in practice the expedient for the clearing away the objection was denied. But having once given his account of the matter, the witness is concerned in point of reputation to abide by it; What he has to lose by such departure /were he to depart from it in any considerable degree to depart from it/ by such departure is so much of his reputation as is at stake: