Justice and humanity
are necessarily to be supported, without which no society can subsist,
nor the life or property of any man be enjoyed with security: and
neither justice nor humanity can truly be said to reside, where a law
like this has met with approbation.
My lords, to prosecute any man by such methods, is to overbear him by
the violence of power, to take from him all the securities of innocence,
and divest him of all the means of self-defence. It is to hire against
him those whose testimonies ought not to be admitted, if they were
voluntarily produced, and of which, surely, nothing will be farther
necessary to annihilate the validity, than to observe that they are the
depositions of men who are villains by their own confession, and of whom
the nation sees, that they may save their lives by a bold accusation,
whether true or false.
That the bill will, indeed, be effectual to the purposes designed, that
it will crowd the courts of justice with evidence, and open scenes of
wickedness never discovered before, I can readily believe; for I cannot
imagine that any man who has exposed his life by any flagrant crime,
will miss so fair an opportunity of saving it by another.
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