magisterial jurisdiction, but in the highest and most solemn tribunals of our country. The complaints of our judges, as to different parts of our native land in this respect, are most distressing to one's moral sense, and when we reflect on the tremendous consequences of perjury in a spiritual point of view, truly appalling. Every obligation of an oath upon the conscience, they tell us, is forgotten. Indeed one gentleman, very high in the Profession, assured me, as the result of his own observation, that not one half of those who came before him to swear affidavits, seemed to feel that they were under the slightest religious obligation to speak the truth.

On almost every circuit, the reports of trials, both in civil and criminal investigations, represent the presiding judge, in some case or other, as leaving it entirely to the jury to decide on the mass of conflicting testimony, alleging that gross perjury on matters of fact must lie at the door of the one set of witnesses or the other, and congratulating himself that it is the province of the jury, and not his, to pronounce by their verdict which of the two parties have incurred the guilt. In our police reports, scarcely one day passes without affording accumulative evidence on the same melancholy subject; and in transactions whether of a parochial nature or affecting the interests of individuals, where the value of any property, of what kind

soever, is involved in the question, the facility is quite proverbial with which both contending parties can obtain whatever evidence they wish; either raising the valuation above the sum specified, or sinking below it, just as the witness is instructed to prepare his appraisement.

I felt a horror on being informed, on authority, that during the continuance of the former system of Custom-house oaths, there were houses of resort where persons were always to be found ready at a moment's warning to take any oath required; the signal of the business for which they were needed, was this inquiry, "Any damned soul here?" Let us turn whichever way we will, let us look at the subject from any point of view, and we are driven inevitably to the same lamentable conclusion, that oaths form no efficient barrier against falsehood, and that perjury is a crying sin in our land and age.

Indeed I cannot contemplate such a state of things without associating with it the reflection, how much the vengeance of the insulted Majesty of heaven is provoked among us daily! I cannot help hearing the same voice addressing our own country, which once might well have made perjured Jerusalem shake to her very foundation-stone? "Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"

* Jerem. v. 29.

Whether it is a growing sin, whether it is more prevalent now than in former days, I have no means of establishing satisfactorily. At all events, the awful nature of the subject would recommend the inquiry to every reflecting Christian and every true friend of his country, whether the quantum of truth secured by the present system of oaths above what would still be preserved under either a totally changed, or a modified system, is in itself great enough to counterbalance the dreadful mass of rash, impious, and false swearing, which is acknowledged to be the result of the system now in general operation. And in estimating that quantum of additional truth, I regret to say, that the more I reflect upon the subject myself, and the more I become acquainted with the sentiments of observing minds, the more I am convinced of its diminutiveness, and the more do I feel the force of Cicero's view, and the more readily subscribe to it as my

own.

"But what is the difference between the perjurer and the liar. He who is accustomed to tell falsehoods, has acquired also the habit of forswearing himself. If there is a man whom I could induce to lie, I could easily persuade him to commit perjury. The man who has once gone astray from the truth, is usually drawn, with no greater religious fear, to perjury than to falsehood. For who is influenced by an imprecation of the Gods, who is not in

fluenced by the force of a good conscience? The same punishment, consequently, which is assigned by the immortals to the perjurer, is also appointed for the liar. For those immortal powers are wont to have their anger and vengeance roused, not so much by the form of the covenanted words of an oath, as by the perfidy and malice of overreaching and fraud*."

* At quid interest inter perjurum et mendacem.—Orat. pro. Q. Rosc. Com. 16.

CHAPTER VIII.

ARE ANY CHANGES NECESSARY?

IN venturing to offer a few suggestions, resulting from this review of the subject of our present inquiry, I first feel anxious to make a brief addition to what has already incidentally fallen from me, on the mode, or form, of taking an oath in England. The mode now universally adopted among us is imprecatory. In the first place, I must not refrain from giving an opinion into which I have been very reluctantly and painfully driven, that practically the mode adopted in England, of all modes either known to me before, or with which this inquiry has made me acquainted, appears (as at present generally witnessed), the very least calculated to impress on the mind of the juror, a religious sense of the awful obligation by which he is binding himself; and in numberless cases, seems to fall little short of an irreverent prostitution of the Almighty's name. In the second place, I would again observe, that whilst the mode now universally adopted among us, is imprecatory; the invoking of God's vengeance in case we do not fulfil our engagement to speak the truth, or perform the specific duty, "SO help me God,”—I am not aware of this form being sanctioned by the words, or the example, either of Christ himself, or any of