Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/523

 15. DILLON: INFLUENCE OF BENTHAM 509 content myself with mentioning, without dwelHng upon, these interesting subjects. Passing from these general considerations, I proceed to notice specifically two other subjects. One is Bentham's reforms in the Law of Evidence. Here the direct fruits of Bentham's labors are plainly to be seen. In some respects his " Judicial Evidence," before mentioned, is the most im- portant of all his censorial writings on English law. In this work he exposed the absurdity and perniciousness of many of the established technical rules of evidence. " In certain cases," he says, " jurisprudence may be defined, the art of " being methodically ignorant of what everybody knows." Among the rules combated were those relating to the com- petency of witnesses and the exclusion of evidence on various grounds, including that of pecuniary interest. He insisted that these rules frequently caused the miscarriage of jus- tice, and that in the interest of justice they ought to be swept away. His reasoning fairly embraces the doctrine that parties ought to be allowed and even required to testify. This work appeared in Paris in 1802, and in England in in Louisiana, his codes were never enacted into laws. Each code was accompanied with an elaborate introductory report; and these labors gave him great and deserved fame at home and abroad. Chancellor Kent declared that Livingston had "done more in giving precision, specification, accuracy, and moderation to the system of crimes and punishment than any other legislator of the age, and that his name would go down to posterity with distinguished honor." Hunt, p. 281. Bentham urged that Parliament should print the whole work for the use of the English nation. Hunt, p. 278; Bentham's Works, vol. xi., p. 37. Villemain declared it to be " a work without example from the hand of any one man." Hunt, p. 278. Sir Henry Maine pronounced Livingston to be " the first legal genius of modern times." " Village Communities," paper on " Roman Law and Legal Education," published in 1856. Although the Livingston Code was not adopted as a whole, yet Bancroft is quite justified in the observation that "it has proved an unfailing fountain of reforms suggested by its principleis." Intro- duction to Hunt's Life of Livingston, p. xvii. The Livingston Codes and Reports were republished in full in 1873 by the National Prison Association of the United States, with an Introduction by Chief- Justice Chase, in which he expresses the satisfaction of the Association in re- producing a work marked with such " keenness of insight, clearness of statement, force of logic, beauty of diction, elevation of sentiment, and breadth of sympathy." He declared his own opinion to be that the work " will prove that if Livingston was in advance of his times, the day is at least approaching when his broad and comprehensive views will not only be appreciated but realized."