3 June 1803

Evidence

Best

2. Scrutinised with unscrutinised

1. Comparison the first: - Scrutinized with unscrutinized; and more perfectly with less perfectly scrutinized.

The scrutative operation /catalogue of scrutative arrangements/ has already been brought to view:- they are comprized in the mode of proceeding to be /to be/ pursued /observed/ in the examination of witnesses: 1. Questions in a series, successive not simultaneous: that maintain, mendacious invention may have the less light to work by: 2. Answers, extemporaneous, and thence unpremeditated and uninstructed: 3. Questions not immutably-pre-arranged, but each succeeding question grounded in and thence guided by the answer to the question last preceding 4. Depositions of each preceding, kept /[...?] concealed from each succeeding deponent: that memory, and not mendacious instruction any more than mendacious invention may be thee guide. 5. Cross-examination: i:e: the testimony that has been extracted by questions put by the party at whose instance the witness is produced /made to come forward/, checked and compleated by questions propounded on the other side. 6. Confrontation, where /upon occasion, as/ necessary between deponent and deponent for example non-litigious witness and defendant, that personal identity may be the more satisfactorily established. 7. the - examination of a deponent upon occasion, that other depositions given on a preceding examination may be corrected by the lights furnished collected as well from the depositions of precedently examined deponents were communicated to him as from his own maturer recollections. 8. Publication, certain or more or less probable, and consequently expectation entertained by each deponent of the publicity of his deposition, - and thence an encreased chance for the ultimate detection of any errors on on his part, designed or undesigned.

If the above arrangements, all /each/of them without exception have their use, in how high a degree must a lot or a body of evidence /of [...?] which/ that for the deposition and completion of it has had the benefit of their united influence be superior to one which has not had the benefit of any part of that influence? And again /But moreover/ if there be not one of them that in the state of things to which it applies has not its use, it will follow that by any one of them that can be added the superiority the security for the correctness and veracity of the evidence will be encreased; by every one omitted, it will be decreased.