of Numbers and the book of Deuteronomy to prove that
no man ought to be condemned to death by the mouth of a single witness.
"Caiaphas and his Sanhedrim," said Harley, "were ready enough to set up
the plea of expediency for a violation of justice; they said,--and we
have heard such things said,--'We must slay this man, or the Romans
will come and take away our place and nation.' Yet even Caiaphas and his
Sanhedrim, in that foulest act of judicial murder, did not venture to
set aside the sacred law which required two witnesses." "Even Jezebel,"
said another orator, "did not dare to take Naboth's vineyard from him
till she had suborned two men of Belial to swear falsely." "If the
testimony of one grave elder had been sufficient," it was asked, "what
would have become of the virtuous Susannah?" This last allusion called
forth a cry of "Apocrypha, Apocrypha," from the ranks of the Low
Churchmen. [760]

Over these arguments, which in truth can scarcely have imposed on those
who condescended to use them, Montague obtained a complete and easy
victory. "An eternal law! Where was this eternal law before the reign of
Edward the Sixth? Where is it now, except in statutes which relate only
to one very small class of offences. If these texts from the Pentateuch
and these precedents from the practice of the Sanhedrim prove any thing,
they prove the whole criminal jurisprudence of the realm to be a mass of
injustice and impiety. One witness is sufficient to convict a murderer,
a burglar, a highwayman, an incendiary, a ravisher. Nay, there are cases
of high treason in which only one witness is required. One witness can
send to Tyburn a gang of clippers and comers. Are you, then, prepared to
say that the whole law of evidence, according to which men have during
ages been tried in this country for offences against life and property,
is vicious and ought to be remodelled? If you shrink from saying this,
you must admit that we are now proposing to dispense, not with a divine
ordinance of universal and perpetual obligation, but simply with an
English rule of procedure, which applies to not more than two or three
crimes, which has not been in force a hundred and fifty years, which
derives all its authority from an Act of Parliament, and which may
therefore be by another, Act abrogated or suspended without offence to
God or men."

It was much less easy to answer the chiefs of the opposition when they
set forth the danger of breaking down th