preserve that life which the justice of the nation might take away.

Nothing, my lords, is more obvious, than that this offer of indemnity
may produce perjury and false accusation; nothing is more probable, than
that he who is conscious of any atrocious villanies, which he cannot
certainly secure from discovery, will snatch this opportunity of
committing one crime more, to set himself free from the dread of
punishment, and blot out his own guilt for ever, by charging lord ORFORD
as one of his accomplices.

It may be urged, my lords, that he who shall give false evidence,
forfeits the indemnity to which the honest witness is entitled; but let
us consider why this should be now, rather than in any former time,
accounted a sufficient security against falsehood and perjury. It is at
all times criminal, and at all times punishable, to commit perjury; and
yet it has been hitherto thought necessary, not only to deter it by
subsequent penalties, but to take away all previous temptations; no
man's oath will be admitted in his own cause, though offered at the
hazard of the punishment inflicted upon perjury. To offer indemnity to
invite evidence, and to deter them from false accusations by the
forfeiture of it, even though we should allow to the penal clause all
the efficacy which can be expected by those who proposed it, is only to
set one part of the bill at variance with the other, to erect and
demolish at the same time.

But it may be proved, my lords, that the reward will have more influence
than the penalty; and that every man who can reason upon the condition
in which he is placed by this bill, will be more incited to accuse lord
ORFORD, however unjustly, by the prospect of security, than intimidated
by the forfeiture incurred by perjury.