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Gentlemen, fear is sometimes the cause of perjury-such as fear of offending some person-fear of offending popular opinion, by supporting with a statement of the truth, an unpopular prosecution for the breach, perhaps, of an unpopular law, or one that is so regarded. It is painful, in such cases, to observe the manner in which witnesses will sometimes endeavor to evade a direct reply, and to conceal facts, of which, their manner, at the same time, gives everybody reason to believe they have a direct and certain knowledge. This is not to be tolerated. Neither judge, juror, nor witness, can, without crime, nullify the laws by a dereliction of duty. If the law be bad, let it be carried into effect, with all its necessary consequences, and it will be the sooner repealed. There is a satisfaction, gentlemen, in going straight forward in the discharge of one's duty-against wind and tide-against the violence of popular agitation, and the angry passions of a misguided populace. In doing so, one feels a strength that comes not from earth, but Heaven. He who from fear commits perjury, richly deserves a double punishment-punishment for his perjury, and punishment for his cowardice.

Passion, or the irritation of the witness in the cross-examination, is sometimes the occasion of bringing his testimony into disrepute. If the cross-examination is ever urged with this view, it is extremely culpable, and if it can be distinguished as such, I hesitate not to say, that it ought not to pass without censure. But the witness who, on an occasion so solemn as when he is under the oath of God, will permit the angry passions to get the mastery of his mind-to confuse his recollections, and betray him into error in his testimony, is himself worthy of severe censure. He may not expose himself to a prosecution for perjury, but he has brought his testimony into disrepute and injuriously affected the administration of justice. Witnesses should recollect that it is the appropriate business of counsel to examine their testimony critically-that in so doing they necessarily appear suspiciousthat they will take that view of the testimony which belongs to the side of the case which they advocate-that they will endeavor to elicit some fact which is beneficial to it, and, by pushing their examination into particulars, and even into collateral circumstances, try to do away the force of the facts most prejudicial to their client.

Gentlemen-if incautious answers often involve false testimony, an excess of caution sometimes results in consequences equally pernicious. There are some habitually so cautious as rarely to answer a question with the simple yea or nay. Their answer is, "I believe so," "I think so." This habit is said to be somewhat peculiar to New England;

it was universally prevalant, it was no doubt, perfectly understood, and did not mislead, but we have become, and are becoming still more, I regret to say, a mixed race; and answers in this form, are liable to be misinterpreted. It is becoming liable to be understood only as the language of uncertainty, and it is no longer proper, (if it ever was,) for a witness to say, "I believe so," "I think so," when he knows so. If the witness knows the fact, he ought to say so, and not clothe his answers in the language of uncertainty. The omission to speak positively, where he knows positively, may be the cause of a wrong verdict, and of as great iujustice as absolute perjury.

In all cases a testimony of facts should be nothing but a repetition in language, of the memory. The witness is indeed often called on to state his judgment as to time, distance, magnitude, &c., but then, in such cases, it is perfectly understood to be nothing but his judg ment or opinion; and he may be questioned as to the facts on which such judgment is founded, and it thus amounts after all, to nothing more than a repetition of memory. But when a witness proceeds tacitly mentally-to infer from facts which he does remember, the probable existance of others, which he does not remember, and then states them as if they were objects of his memory, he goes beyond his duty as a witness and trenches on that of the juror. The witness ought, in such case, merely to state the facts which he remembers, and leave the jury to its own inferences. He would not be permitted to state them as inferences of his own; and he surely ought not silently, and mentally, to form his inferences, and then give them to the jury as distinctly remembered facts. But when the witness infers the existance of one fact from another, and his memory of it is thereby revived, there can be no more impropriety in testifying to such a fact, as remembered, than if his memory had been aided by a written memoranda. It is only when the inferences exist in the mind unsupported by the memory, that the evidence is illegal, and, if communicated without representing it to be an inference, untrue-untrue because the idea exists in his own mind in one form, whilst he conveys it to the mind of the jury, under another form.

For a mere defect of memory, no witness is either morally or legally responsible, unless the defect be the result of a vicious bias or propensity. The memory, especially in reference to remote, or, at the time, inconsiderable events, is liable to become falsified in a thousand ways, without the fault of the individual. He is perpetually liable to confound one time with another-one transaction with another-especially where there is a strong analogy-and by acting, or thinking upon the

and to derive its parentage from ancient puritanical precision. When subject thus falsified, he sometimes so confirms himself in his error as never to be able to detect it. Sometimes one event, from its magnitude or importance obliterates, or covers over many that are of less consequence. Sometimes, when we are eye-witnesses of a transaction, our attention is exclusively directed to one object, and thus many others escape it. In fact there are as many different memories as there are different minds, or states of the same mind. Twenty different persons may witness the same transaction-an affray, for instance—and they may honestly, each speaking according to his own memory, give twenty different accounts of the affair, at least each differing in some respects from the others. There are some who are never more collected than in moments of great danger, or excitement; and who retain in their memories, an indelible impression of the slightest event that takes place on such occasions. Whilst there are others that lose all distinct recollections. Between these extremes there is an infinitude of degrees, and consequently a great variety of memory. Since then the memory of every one may be more or less defective, what shall a witness do who anxiously desires not to mislead. I answer, let him calmly take the stand-throw open the windows of his breast-show all the workings of his mind-where it is doubtful, where it is confused, and, even, where it is biased; and then leave the court or jury to place their own estimate on his testimony. Such a witness may rest assured, that if it be their opinion that he has erred, it will also be their opinion, that he has honestly erred. Those who are accustomed to examine witnesses, or to attend to their examination, after a thorough examination, almost as easily distinguish the true from the false, as a skilful cashier of a bank can distinguish a genuine, from a counterfeit bill. Witnesses may rest assured that there is in general no escaping their scrutiny-though when perjury has been committed it may not be possible for them to say precisely in what the perjury consists, or whether it be merely moral, or legal.

Gentlemen, there is one part of the oath to which I have not called your particular attention-it is the solemn adjuration with which it terminates. The meaning of the phrase, "So help me God," is often, I am afraid, not fully appreciated, and, sometimes wholly misunderstood. To one who looks beyond the bourn of space and time, who considers that he lives, moves, and breathes in that Being, who instantly notes the slightest moral discord in the grand organic harmony of his all-comprehending existence-who considers that he is to subsist in this relation through a never ending eternity: these words are of the

most solemn and awful import-and that import is: "As I speak truly or falsely, so may God help me in my utmost need." But to him, (if indeed there be such,) who has said in his heart "There is no God," and who considers this little life as rounded by an eternal sleep, these words can have no meaning. In his vocabulary they have at least lost their original import, and can mean nothing more than an asseveration to speak the truth; and with that asservation on his lips, he commits his character to the sound and enlightened sense of the Court and jury-to be sustained if he speak truly, to be condemned and reprobated if he speak falsely. But the existence of such downright and positive atheism is hardly to be credited. A speculative atheism may indeed be no uncommon thing; but an atheism springing naturally from the human mind, and acted upon on trying and serious occasions, seems an utter impossibility. We are so constituted as instinctively and necessarily to believe in the existence of a Great First Cause, and as instinctively to feel ourselves in the midst of a great system of things over which an unseen power presides, who, whatever may be our course, eventually controls and orders all. And every witness, whatever may be his avowed creed, must irresistibly and instinctively feel and believe, that if his course be not in accordance with this all-pervading order, he must eventually be crushed to atoms beneath the movement of its almighty force. There is no man, Gentlemen, whatever may be his professions, but that, instinctively, believes, that his life here, is but a span in a never-ending existence, and that in some step of the progress of being, this all-pervading order, will bring the hour of retribution. The perjured witness is not in harmony with Divine order and he must be thrown out of it. Though he may be borne up for the moment upon the surge of a vitiated popular opinion, yet it will soon sink from under him, and leave him a wrecked and broken hulk. So his own conscience will tell him, and to his conscience I here leave him.

Gentlemen-Justice herself is nothing but truth carried into action. She appears here in the shape of legal evidence-she passes through the forms of judicial proceeding in the verdict of a jury-thence into a judgment or sentence of the law, and thence into final execution. He is a superficial lawyer, and worse philosopher, who holds with Helvetius, that justice is created by legislative enactment. She is created by truth. She is truth herself, ever in substance the same, yet manifesting herself under a variety of forms-now in the shape of laws, which are nothing but instruments declarative of the pre-existent requirements of society, giving them definite forms, and bringing them

within the scope of judicial power-now in the shape of evidence, which is but declarative of the relations in which an individual stands to those laws, and now in a combination of these two declarative forms, in the judicial sentence or judgment.

Truth, Gentlemen, to conclude, is everything to society, and that man, who can come into court and commit deliberate perjury, is an enemy to himself, and a traitor to all mankind.

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