But in crimes, where the prosecution is on the part of the public, (as all criminal prosecutions are, except appeals,) the public prosecutor ought not to be considered as a plaintiff in a cause of meum et tuum; nor the prisoner, in such a…
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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He thinks that all the resources of ingenuity ought to be employed to baffle chicane, not to support it.
The chief benefit of any process which admits of adjournments is, that it may afford means of fuller information and more mature deliberation.
A judge is not placed in that high situation merely as a passive instrument of parties.
Whilst the cause continues under hearing in any shape, or in any stage of the process, it is the duty of the judge to receive every offer of evidence, apparently material, suggested to him, though the parties themselves, through…
These are purely arbitrary, without the least reference to any fixed principle in the nature of things, or to any settled maxim of jurisprudence, and consequently are variable at every instant, as the conveniencies of the cause may require.
The doctrine appeared and still appears to your Committee to be totally abhorrent from the genius of circumstantial evidence, and mischievously subversive of its use.
The doctrine so laid down demands that every several circumstance should in itself be conclusive, or at least should afford a violent presumption: it must, we were told, without question, be material to the charge depending.
Comparing the proceedings on that trial, and the doctrines from the bench, with the doctrines we have heard from the woolsack, your Committee cannot comprehend how they can be reconciled.
It is known to them, that, when this proof is in its greatest perfection, that is, when it is most abundant in circumstances, it is much superior to positive proof; and for this we have the authority of the learned judge who presided at…
Against the prejudices of the ignorant your Committee opposes the judgment of the learned.
In all criminal cases, the crime (except where the law itself implies malice) consists rather in the intention than the action.
Crimes are the actions of physical beings with an evil intention abusing their physical powers against justice and to the detriment of society: in this case fictions of law and artificial presumptions (juris et de jure) have little or no…
Thus it is with things which owe their existence to men; but where the subject is of a physical nature, or of a moral nature, independent of their conventions, men have no other reasonable authority than to register and digest the results…
The legislator therefore always, the jurist frequently, may ordain certain methods by which alone they will suffer such matters to be known and established; because their very essence, for the greater part, depends on the arbitrary…
The rules of evidence in civil and in criminal cases, in law and in equity, being only reason methodized, are certainly the same.
But an informer, in case of highway robbery, may obtain forty pounds to his own profit by his own evidence: this is not in consequence of positive provision in the act of Parliament; it is a provision of policy, lest the purpose of the act…
There is no rule more solid than that a man shall not entitle himself to profit by his own testimony.
It is against fundamental maxims that an accomplice should be admitted as a witness: but accomplices are admitted from the policy of justice, otherwise confederacies of crime could not be dissolved.
The period of the cases and arguments we have cited was that in which large and liberal principles of evidence were more declared, and more regularly brought into system.
We do not know on what precedents or principles the evidence proposed by us has been deemed inadmissible by the Judges; therefore against the grounds of this rejection we find it difficult directly to oppose anything.
His expressions are remarkable:--"Courts of law ought to concur with courts of equity in the execution of those powers which are very convenient to be inserted in settlements; and they ought not to listen to nice distinctions that savor of…
Presumptions stand no longer than till the contrary is proved.
The true rule is laid down by Lord Vaughan, fol. 37, 38. 'Where the law,' saith he, 'is known and clear, the Judges must determine as the law is, without regard to the inequitableness or inconveniency: these defects, if they happen in the…
Another general rule, that a wife cannot be witness against her husband, has been broke in upon in cases of treason.
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