His
testimony was allowed; and by the Court, among other things, it was
said, in secret transactions, if any of the parties concerned are not to
be, for the necessity of the third, admitted as evidence, it will be
impossible to detect the practice: as in cases of the Statute of Hue and
Cry, the party robbed shall be a witness to charge the hundred; and in
the case of Cooke _v._ Watts in the Exchequer, where one who had been
prejudiced by the will was admitted an evidence to prove it forged.[64]
So in the case of King _v._ Parris,[65] where a feme covert was admitted
as a witness for _fraudulently_ drawing her in, when sole, to give a
warrant of attorney for confessing a judgment on an unlawful
consideration, whereby execution was sued out against her husband, and
Holt, Chief-Justice, held that a feme covert could not, by law, be a
witness to convict one on an information; yet, in Lord Audley's case, it
being a rape on her person, she was received to give evidence against
him, and the Court concurred with him, because it was the best evidence
the nature of the thing would allow. This decision of Holt refers to
others more early, and all on the same principle; and it is not of this
day that this one great principle of eminent public expedience, this
moral necessity, "that crimes should not escape with impunity,"[66] has
in all cases overborne all the common juridical rules of evidence,--it
has even prevailed over the first and most natural construction of acts
of Parliament, and that in matters of so penal a nature as high treason.
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