EVIDENCE ABOUT CHARACTER
There has been during the week a loud and increasing demand for
the application of the legal process of discovering truth to the
Tilton-Beecher case. People ask that it be carried into court, not
only because all witnesses might thus be compelled to appear and
testify, but because apparently there is, in the minds of many, a
peculiar virtue in "the rules of evidence" used by lawyers.
Witnesses examined under these rules are supposed to receive from
them a strong stimulus in veracity and explicitness, while they at
once expose prevarication or concealment. One newspaper eulogist
went so far the other day as to pronounce the rules the product of
the wisdom of all ages, beginning with the Phoenicians and coming
down to our own time. There is, however, only one good reason that
we know of for carrying any attack on character into court, and that
is the obvious one, that the courts only can compel those who are
supposed to know anything about a matter of litigation to appear and
state it.
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