Note 66 — Chapter VIII · WITNESSES.

According to the criminalists the greater the atrocity of the crime the greater the credibility of the witness. Look at the iron maxim dictated by the most cruel stupidity: In atrocissimis leviores conjecture sufficiunt, et licet judici jura transgredi. Translate this into common language, and Europeans will see one of the very many and equally senseless rules to which almost without knowing it they are subject: In the most atrocious crimes (that is, in the least probable) the slightest conjectures are enough, and the judge may legitimately exceed the law. Absurd legal practices are often the result of fear, which is the principal source of all human contradictions. Legislators (who are really only lawyers, authorised by chance to decide about everything, and to become from interested and venal writers arbiters and legislators about the fortunes of men), alarmed by the condemnation of some innocent person, have loaded jurisprudence with superfluous formalities and exceptions, the exact observance of which would cause anarchy to sit with impunity on the throne of justice. In their fright at some crimes of an atrocious nature and difficult to prove, they thought themselves under the necessity of getting over the very formalities established by themselves; and so, now with despotic impatience, now with feminine timidity, they have transformed grave trials into a kind of play, in which hazard and subterfuge act the principal part.