[094-272v]

27 Oct 1806

B C

Evidence

Exclusion II. Causes II. devices

Ch.3. Substitute of enforce[?]

'.3. Use to Lawyers

'.2. Uses to Judge and C o

It is not without valuable causes and considerations that it has become a rule, with Judges (understand always learned Judges) a rule with learned Judges never to suffer themselves, and that an inviolable one, never to hear evidence in any other shape than one in which, in a contested case, of truth and justice were /had been/ the objects, it never would be /have been/ heard at all.

Advantages reaped by Judges and other lawyers from the /never/ receiving testimony in no other shape than that of affidavit evidence.

1. Fees to the Judge or his official subordinates for registration, called filing.

2. Fees to professional members of the partnership for drawing and vamping up.

3. Stamp-duties for the personal accommodation of the financier /Minister of finance/ to give him a corrupt interest in shutting /concerning to shut/ an inexorable door against truth and justice.

4. Ease and accommodation to the Judges, by substituting ready penned evidence in the reception of which they are purely passive to the vivâ voce evidence in the extraction and registration of which they are obliged /as matter of toil and trouble/ to take and active share.

5. Multiplication of suits /Increase of the number/: viz. by the addition of a greater or less proportion of malâ fide demands and defences. He who is in the right and feels himself to be so, attacks or defends himself because /he thinks/ he has the best chance: he who knows he is in the wrong, and sees no hope but in legalized injustice, attacks or defends himself in this way, because in this way he has /sees/ some chance, which in any other way he would have none.

Delivered in this shape, evidence presents the best possible chance of being productive of injustice: and under the technical system injustice, in whatever shape, not only in those which yield ready money, but in whatever other shape, is remotely, if not immediately so much gain to the man of law.

6. Corruption of morals promoted: encouragement given to perjury.

(a) Note that in this most untrustworthy shape Judges know the testimony of persons whose testimony they would not hear in any less untrustworthy shape. See B │ │ Exclusion improper Deception.