Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/262

 which confirmation was entirely owing to a mistake. They imagined, in reading the code de Testibus, that the words testes intrare judicii secretum, signified that the witnesses were examined in private; but secretum means here the chamber of the judge. Intrare secretum, if intended to signify private interrogation, would be false Latin. This part of our law therefore is founded on a solecism. The evidence in these cases are commonly the dregs of the people, whom the judge may, in such private examination, make say whatever he pleases. They are examined a second time, but still privately; and if, after this re-examination, they retract from their deposition, or vary in any material circumstance, they are punished as false evidence. So that if a simple honest fellow, recollecting that he has said too much, that he misunderstood the judge, or the judge him, revoke his deposition from a principle of justice, he is punished as a reprobate. The natural consequence of this is, that men will confirm a false testimony