the suspicion is founded upon probability. Requisites so reasonable in
their own nature, so necessary to the protection of every man's quiet
and reputation, and, by consequence, so useful to the security and
happiness of society, that, I suppose, they will need no support or
vindication. Every man is interested in the continuance of this method
of proceeding, because no man is secure from suffering by the
interruption or abolition of it.

Such, my lords, is the care and caution which the law directs in the
first part of any criminal process, the detainment of the person
supposed guilty; nor is the method of trial prescribed with less regard
to the security of innocence.

It is an established maxim, that no man can be obliged to accuse
himself, or to answer any questions which may have any tendency to
discover what the nature of his defence requires to be concealed. His
guilt must appear either by a voluntary and unconstrained confession,
which the terrours of conscience have sometimes extorted, and the
notoriety of the crime has at other times produced, or by the deposition
of such witnesses as the jury shall think worthy of belief.

To the credibility of any witness it is always requisite that he be
disinterested, that his own cause be not involved in that of the person
who stands at the bar, that he has no prospect of advancing his fortune,
clearing his reputation, or securing his life. For it is made too plain
by daily examples, that interest will prevail over the virtue of most
men, and that it is not safe to believe those who are strongly tempted
to deceive.

There are cases, my lords, where the interest of the person offering his