elinquent will always find shelter in
ambiguities, and the law will remain inactive, like a balance loaded
equally on each side.

On the present occasion, my lords, I pronounce with the utmost
confidence, as a maxim of indubitable certainty, _that the publick has a
claim to every man's evidence_, and that no man can plead exemption from
this duty to his country. But those whom false gratitude, or contracted
notions of their own interest, or fear of being entangled in the snares
of examination, prompt to disappoint the justice of the publick, urge
with equal vehemence, and, indeed, with equal truth, that _no man is
obliged to accuse himself_, and that the constitution of Britain allows
no man's evidence to be extorted from him to his own destruction.

Thus, my lords, two of the first principles of the British law, though
maxims equally important, equally certain, and equally to be preserved
from the least appearance of violation, are contradictory to each other,
and neither can be obeyed, because neither can be infringed.

How then, my lords, is this contradiction to be reconciled, and the
necessity avoided of breaking the law on one side or the other, but by
the method now proposed, of setting those whose evidence is required,
free from the danger which they may incur by giving it.

The end of the law is the redress of wrong, the protection of right, and
the preservation of happiness; and the law is so far imperfect as it
fails to produce the end for which it is instituted; and where any
imperfection is discovered, it is the province of the legislature to
supply it.

By the experience, my lords, of one generation after another, by the
continued application of successive ages, was our law brought to its
present accuracy. As new combinations of circumstances, or unforeseen
artifices of evasion, discovered to our ancestors the insufficiency of
former provisions, new expedients were invented; and as wickedness
improved its subtilty, the law multiplied its powers and extended its
vigilance.

If I should, therefore, allow, what has been urged, that there is no
precedent of a bill like this, what can be inferred from it, but that
wickedness has found a shelter that was never discovered before, and
which must be forced by a new method of attack? And what then are we
required to do more than has been always done by our ancestors, on a
thousand occasions of far less importance?

I know not, my lords, whether it be possibl