se to them. All occasions do not arise at once: now a particular
species of Indians appears; hereafter another species of Indians may
arise. A statute can seldom take in all cases. Therefore the Common Law,
that works itself pure by rules drawn from the fountain of justice, is
for this reason superior to an act of Parliament."[55]

From the period of this great judgment to the trial of Warren Hastings,
Esquire, the law has gone on continually working itself pure (to use
Lord Mansfield's expression) by rules drawn from the fountain of
justice. "General rules," said the same person, when he sat upon the
bench, "are wisely established for attaining justice with ease,
certainty, and dispatch; but the great end of them being _to do
justice_, the Court will see that it be really obtained. The courts have
been more liberal of late years in their determinations, and have more
endeavored to attend to the _real justice_ of the case than formerly."
On another occasion, of a proposition for setting aside a verdict, he
said, "This seems to be the true way to come at justice, and what we
therefore ought to do; for the true text is, _Boni judicis est ampliare
justitiam_ (not _jurisdictionem_, as has been often cited)."[56] In
conformity to this principle, the supposed rules of evidence have, in
late times and judgments, instead of being drawn to a greater degree of
strictness, been greatly relaxed.

"_All evidence is according to the subject-matter to which it is
applied._ There is a great deal of difference between length of time
that operates as a bar to a claim and that which is used only by way of
evidence. Length of time used merely by way of evidence may be left to
the consideration of the jury, to be credited or not, or to draw their
inferences one way or the other, according to circumstances. _I do not
know an instance in which proof may not be supplied._"[57] In all cases
of evidence Lord Mansfield's maxim was, _to lean to admissibility_,
leaving the objections which were made to competency to go to credit,
and to be weighed in the minds of the jury after they had heard it.[58]
In objections to wills, and to the testimony of witnesses to them, he
thought "it clear that the Judges ought to lean _against_ objections to
the formality."[59]

Lord Hardwicke had before declared, with great truth, "that the
boundaries of what goes to the credit and what to the competency _are
very nice, and the latter carried too far_"; and in the