Cry, the party robbed shall be a witness to charge the hundred; and in
the case of Cooke _v._ Watts in the Exchequer, where one who had been
prejudiced by the will was admitted an evidence to prove it forged.[64]
So in the case of King _v._ Parris,[65] where a feme covert was admitted
as a witness for _fraudulently_ drawing her in, when sole, to give a
warrant of attorney for confessing a judgment on an unlawful
consideration, whereby execution was sued out against her husband, and
Holt, Chief-Justice, held that a feme covert could not, by law, be a
witness to convict one on an information; yet, in Lord Audley's case, it
being a rape on her person, she was received to give evidence against
him, and the Court concurred with him, because it was the best evidence
the nature of the thing would allow. This decision of Holt refers to
others more early, and all on the same principle; and it is not of this
day that this one great principle of eminent public expedience, this
moral necessity, "that crimes should not escape with impunity,"[66] has
in all cases overborne all the common juridical rules of evidence,--it
has even prevailed over the first and most natural construction of acts
of Parliament, and that in matters of so penal a nature as high treason.
It is known that statutes made, not to open and enlarge, but on fair
grounds to straiten proofs, require two witnesses in cases of high
treason. So it was understood, without dispute and without distinction,
until the argument of a case in the High Court of Justice, during the
Usurpation. It was the case of the Presbyterian minister, Love, tried
for high treason against the Commonwealth, in an attempt to restore the
King. In this trial, it was contended for, and admitted, that one
witness to one overt act, and one to another overt act of the same
treason, ought to be deemed sufficient.[67] That precedent, though
furnished in times from which precedents were cautiously drawn, was
received as authority throughout the whole reign of Charles II.; it was
equally followed after the Revolution; and at this day it is undoubted
law. It is not so from the natural or technical rules of construction of
the act of Parliament, but from the principles of juridical policy. All
the judges who have ruled it, all the writers of credit who have written
upon it, assign this reason, and this only,--_that treasons, being
plotted in secrecy, could in few cases be otherwise brought to
punishment_.