"[56] In
conformity to this principle, the supposed rules of evidence have, in
late times and judgments, instead of being drawn to a greater degree of
strictness, been greatly relaxed.
"_All evidence is according to the subject-matter to which it is
applied._ There is a great deal of difference between length of time
that operates as a bar to a claim and that which is used only by way of
evidence. Length of time used merely by way of evidence may be left to
the consideration of the jury, to be credited or not, or to draw their
inferences one way or the other, according to circumstances. _I do not
know an instance in which proof may not be supplied._"[57] In all cases
of evidence Lord Mansfield's maxim was, _to lean to admissibility_,
leaving the objections which were made to competency to go to credit,
and to be weighed in the minds of the jury after they had heard it.[58]
In objections to wills, and to the testimony of witnesses to them, he
thought "it clear that the Judges ought to lean _against_ objections to
the formality."[59]
Lord Hardwicke had before declared, with great truth, "that the
boundaries of what goes to the credit and what to the competency _are
very nice, and the latter carried too far_"; and in the same case he
said, "that, unless the objection appeared to him to carry a strong
danger of perjury, and some apparent advantage might accrue to the
witness, he was always inclined to let it go to his credit, only _in
order to let in a proper light to the case, which would otherwise be
shut out_; and _in a doubtful case_, he said, it was generally his
custom _to admit the evidence_, and give such directions to the jury as
the nature of the case might require.
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