JB/141/144/001

Click Here To Edit

Punishment in alienam perforiam Inf.
Incompetency
False testimony not
mischievous unless
it misleads

the account he gives of the matter would rather mislead
those who are to judge that set them right.
I say mislead the judges: I do not say be
a false one: for whether it be true or not, is what
to the purposes of justice is a matter of indifference.
The point is for them to [be enabled to] form such
a notion of the fact in dispute as shall prove a true
one: by what means they come at it is a matter.
He would committ Perjury indeed: but that is
quite another evil: and an evil for which there is
another and more proper remedy than that of
prematurely repelling for his evidence. His want of veracity therefore
is no objection to him unless he has the to the faculty professes such a
of maintaining th the last such a degree of pleas consistency
and plausibility as shall enable hime to
conceal it.

As to [want] of the point of veracity it should be consider'd
that the greatest liar in the universe scarcely Answer
Truth more common
among the worst men
than Falshood.
swerves from truth ( I mean what to him seems
truth) in one instance out of a hundred. The natural
bent of all mankind is to speak truth:
it requires the force of some particular interest real or imaginary to divert the man fromoverbalance that propensity. Some men
it is ??? willare made to deviate from it by very
slender motives: but nobody tells a lie absolutely without
a motive.

Now then do but suppose him absolutely without any interest No man Speaks false
wothout an interest.
to give a false account, and the most abandoned
criminal that ever was upon earth might be trusted
to as safly as the man of the most consummate virtue
Where then lies the difference? In this: that the

---page break---

Identifier: | JB/141/144/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 141.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering	not numbered
Box	141	Main Headings	rationale of punishment
Folio number	144	Info in main headings field	punishment in alienam personam
Image	001	Titles	incompetency
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f51 / f52
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::propatria [britannia motif]]]
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	48361
Box Contents