It is known that statutes made, not to open and enlarge, but on fair
grounds to straiten proofs, require two witnesses in cases of high
treason. So it was understood, without dispute and without distinction,
until the argument of a case in the High Court of Justice, during the
Usurpation. It was the case of the Presbyterian minister, Love, tried
for high treason against the Commonwealth, in an attempt to restore the
King. In this trial, it was contended for, and admitted, that one
witness to one overt act, and one to another overt act of the same
treason, ought to be deemed sufficient.[67] That precedent, though
furnished in times from which precedents were cautiously drawn, was
received as authority throughout the whole reign of Charles II.; it was
equally followed after the Revolution; and at this day it is undoubted
law. It is not so from the natural or technical rules of construction of
the act of Parliament, but from the principles of juridical policy. All
the judges who have ruled it, all the writers of credit who have written
upon it, assign this reason, and this only,--_that treasons, being
plotted in secrecy, could in few cases be otherwise brought to
punishment_.
The same principle of policy has dictated a principle of relaxation
with regard to severe rules of evidence, in all cases similar, though of
a lower order in the scale of criminality.
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