These precedents and these doctrines are brought to
show the general temper of the courts, their growing liberality, and the
general tendency of all their reasonings and all their determinations to
set aside all such technical subtleties or formal rules, which might
stand in the way of the discovery of truth and the attainment of
justice. The cases are adduced for the principles they contain.
The period of the cases and arguments we have cited was that in which
large and liberal principles of evidence were more declared, and more
regularly brought into system. But they had been gradually improving;
and there are few principles of the later decisions which are not to be
found in determinations on cases prior to the time we refer to. Not to
overdo this matter, and yet to bring it with some degree of clearness
before the House, your Committee will refer but to a few authorities,
and those which seem most immediately to relate to the nature of the
cause intrusted to them. In Michaelmas, 11 Will. III., the King _v._ the
Warden of the Fleet, a witness, who had really been a prisoner, and
voluntarily suffered to escape, was produced to prove the escape. To the
witness it was objected, that he had given a bond to be a true prisoner,
which he had forfeited by escaping: besides, he had been retaken.
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