The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
page 67 of 406 (16%)
page 67 of 406 (16%)
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shall only remark shortly, that Gaill, a writer on the practice of that
law the most frequently cited in our own courts, gives the rule more in the form of a maxim,--"that the law is contented with such proof as _can_ be made, if the subject _in its nature_ is difficult of proof."[48] And the same writer, in another passage, refers to another still more general maxim, (and a sound maxim it is,) that the power and means of proof ought not to be narrowed, but enlarged, that the truth may not be concealed: "_Probationum facultas non angustari, sed ampliari debeat, ne veritas occultetur._"[49] On the whole, your Committee can find nothing in the writings of the learned in this law, any more than they could discover anything in the Law of Parliament, to support any one of the determinations given by the Judges, and adopted by the Lords, against the evidence which your Committee offered, whether direct and positive, or merely (as for the greater part it was) circumstantial, and produced as a ground to form legitimate presumption against the defendant: nor, if they were to admit (which they do not) this Civil Law to be of authority in furnishing any rule in an impeachment of the Commons, more than as it may occasionally furnish a principle of reason on a new or undetermined point, do they find any rule or any principle, derived from that law, which could or ought to have made us keep back the evidence which we offered; on the contrary, we rather think those rules and principles to be in agreement with our conduct. As to the Canon Law, your Committee, finding it to have adopted the Civil Law with no very essential variation, does not feel it necessary to make any particular statement on that subject. Your Committee then came to examine into the authorities in the English |
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